From the beginning, WFIL-TV management knew that the biggest factor in Bandstand's popularity wasn't the host or the music played. It was the kids who took over the dance floor every weekday afternoon. We pick up the story with this excerpt from Bandstandland:
"[Bandstand host Bob] Horn built the show’s popularity throughout his nearly four-year run as host. He created a special committee, with “Preferred” written on the back of membership cards in lipstick by his secretary, Shirley Rubin.
Horn also encouraged the regulars to attend his Wednesday, Friday and Saturday night hops at the Carman skating rink, Willow Grove Park and in Avalon, N.J. Special broadcasts from the annual picnic at Woodside Park and in the Arena next door allowed him to pack in crowds not possible in Studio B.
Promotion men valued the opinion of the Bandstand regulars. They’d often round up a bunch of them for a record party where they could solicit their thoughts on recent releases, a practice frowned upon by Horn and [Bandstand producer Tony] Mammarella.
Mary Ann Colella, whose years at John W. Hallahan Catholic Girls High School coincided with Horn’s years helming Bandstand, was one of his biggest supporters.
“I spent half my Bandstand years in the school’s discipline office for wearing my uniform on Bandstand,” she said. “They never called me by name over the loudspeaker. They would say, ‘Would the girl who was on TV dancing yesterday with her uniform please come to the discipline office?’”
When Horn was replaced by Dick Clark in the summer of 1956, Colella was among the large group of regulars who protested the move.
“None of us were crazy about Dick Clark because we felt he inherited this job, where we felt [Bandstand] should have went to Tony Mammarella,” she said.
Like most of the Bandstand regulars, Colella didn’t listen to Clark’s radio show. Their only contact with him was when he did commercials on the show.
“He reminded me of a young punk,” Colella said. “He just wasn’t personable. We were spoiled.”
Although Horn’s very public drunk driving arrest was well known, the charges that we was fooling around with a young girl were just rumors at the time.
“We didn’t believe what he did … none of us thought of Bob Horn that way,” Colella said. “So here’s someone new coming in and Tony Mammarella doesn’t get the job. … It was a bad time for us. We figured, ‘Oh God, what’s going to happen to the show now?’ ”
Did you know? Teen magazines raved about American Bandstand, but when popular regular Pat Molittieri started to write for one of them, Dick Clark banned her from the show. Read more in this excerpt from Bandstandland. Go here to learn the story behind the writing of Bandstandland or here to listen to the Pennsylvania Cable Network's interview with author Larry Lehmer.
Excerpted from Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll, now available from Sunbury Press. Larry Lehmer's book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.
© 2019 Larry Lehmer
