So, simultaneously, the DA was investigating Horn, Allison and Valino and people associated with them, and everything came to a head, so to speak, at the same time. They felt that if the show was perceived as a Negro show, white teenagers would stay away. As WFIL grew financially and the account became less important, Stewart wasn't needed and was eventually dropped from the program. In this part of the story we’ll see what Bob Horn did that caused the ABC network and its Philadelphia affiliate to ignore the 50th anniversary of the program’s start. Local radio disc jockey Buddy Deane was chosen as the host of The Buddy Deane Show on Channel 13, and began a daily two hour broadcast on September 9, 1957. Soul Unlimited was not well-received among its target audience of African-Americans, ostensibly due to its being created by a white man (Clark), and because of its alleged usage of deliberately racial overtones despite this fact. There were trysts of another Jacobs model and another WPEN announcer, and other girls had encounters with a publicist and a photographer, respected professionals who were in love with their wives and felt they were just having some harmless, job-related fun on the side. Due to a combination of factors that included the size of the studio, the need to have as much space available for the teenagers to dance, and the size of the color camera (owing to the technological limitations of the day) compared to the black-and-white models, it was only possible to have one RCA TK-41 where three RCA TK-10s[3] had been used before. This soon became a potential explosive situation, so the studio created an admission system that required passes that were distributed prior to the day of the show. My friends Famous Hooks and Lori Montgomery were told they could no longer be dancing partners because of our racial difference.”, Hooks confirms the story: “The producer told us very nicely that it was okay with him personally, but some stations wouldn’t like it, so please don’t do slow dances together. That didn’t compare with what Horn was doing. Tony Mammarella was the original producer with Ed Yates as director. The teenage committee administered the reservation list. Her notes said that his guests that night were movie star Denise Darcel and crooner Johnny Desmond and that he went home immediately after the broadcast. On May 3, 2002, Dick Clark hosted a one-off special 50th anniversary edition on ABC. “Horn didn’t act like a star,” he says. A 1957 jury deadlocked, then a judge acquitted Horn at a second trial, this one without a jury. Disgraced in Philadelphia, the 41-year-old Allison found employment at radio station at WWDC in Washington. If he did that stuff he was accused of, we never knew about it.”. When Dick Clark wrote in his 1976 autobiography, “Bandstand was a segregated show for years. The TV program American Bandstand was an icon in the entertainment industry, and an important driver of popular culture. dcaligari October 7, 1952 - American Bandstand premiered locally as a live show, Bandstand, on Philadelphia television station WFIL-TV (Channel 6, now WPVI-TV) on this date in Studio 'B', which was located in their just-completed addition to the original 1947 building (4548 Market Street) and was hosted by Bob Horn, with Lee Stewart as co-host. After a ten-month hiatus,[32] Bandstand moved to cable on USA Network[33][34] on April 8, 1989,[35] with comedian David Hirsch[36][37][38][39][40] taking over hosting duties. (I was in his office as he wrote it. Some of the kids would jitterbug in an impromptu fashion while Grady and Hurst played popular records on the air. After awhile, the producers decided that they wanted to change the image of the show, so they created a new policy. From 1965 to 1967 Dick Clark also produced a show called Shebang which spotlighted a Mexican-American regular, Manuel Acosta, who slow-danced with a blonde white girl named Lynn. He says that he would have loved to see blacks in the studio, “so I could learn their dance steps. "With Bandstand, WFIL resolved this tension by drawing on Philadelphia's interracial music scene to create an entertaining and profitable television show, while refusing to allow the city's black teenagers into the studio audience for fear of alienating viewers and advertisers. He was going to cut a record with me singing on one side and my dance partner, Tom DeNoble, singing on the other side. Off-camera his personality was abrasive, egotistical and aggressive. Delmont, Matthew F. (September 30, 2014). Also, the kids danced to Whiteman’s live band, not to records. When Horn got busted, the teenagers were shocked. Clark decided to pitch the show to ABC president Thomas W. Moore, and after some badgering the show was picked up nationally, becoming American Bandstand on August 5, 1957. “Bandstand” was hosted by radio DJ Bob Horn and featured local teenagers bopping to the current hits of the day as well as a vocalist or band performing a couple of songs. I don’t think anyone kept them out; they just didn’t come.”, Bunny Gibson was a dancer on the show for two-and-a-half years in the mid-50s. I couldn't find a factual and chronological account of Bob Horn in one place. Bob Horn with Prince Bandi behind the Bandstand 1955 (photo courtesy Peter Horn) On September 28, 1952 it was decided that the new show would premier Tuesday afternoon, October 7, 1952. His demeanor was haughty. Menefee was a curmudgeon on the air. When I took over the programming of Menefee’s afternoon show in the summer of 1953, Menefee attacked me on the air. I’ve never been sexually attracted to very young girls. As fate would have it, during the summer of 1952, the FCC ended its four year ban on the establishment of new TV stations, and the network abandoned radio in favor of TV. She just walks up and introduces herself. Originally titled "Bandstand," the first episode on October 7 featured New York transplant and former announcer Dick Clark playing records as the first-ever video DJ. People would phone the station if they wanted to attend, and callers were told there was a six-month wait. There’s an El stop there and we used to watch the kids line up. Bob Horn's Bandstand, Houston. It preceded The Guy Mitchell Show. He asked for, and received, whiskey, cash and women from record-promotion men. I hope you've had a good half-hour. He admitted that he gave her birthday presents — a record player one year and one hundred dollars cash another year. Horn was from the old school, a radio announcer conversant with varied forms of music, from semi-classical to pop. When the program moved to California, it presented its first regular dancer who was black. "Bandstand's Backyard". So, when he went on TV, Bandstand was the obvious choice for a name. From the late 1950s and most of the 1960s, Clark's on-camera sidekick was announcer Charlie O'Donnell, who later went on to announce Wheel of Fortune and other programs hosted or produced by Clark, such as The $100,000 Pyramid. Some of the Allison crowd got involved, also, with an aspiring model named Maxine Milder. I'm David Hirsch and, on behalf of American Bandstand, I bid you, for the last time, goodbye. Other stations that carried American Bandstand in syndication included WWOR 9[24] in Secaucus, WTMJ 4[25] in Milwaukee, WWHO 53[26] in Chillicothe, WMYA 40[27] in Anderson, South Carolina, WCBS 2[28] in New York City, WFSB 3[29] in Hartford, KLJB 18[30] in Davenport, WCIX 6[31] in Miami, WDIV 4 in Detroit, WEWS 5 in Cleveland, and WMAQ 5 in Chicago. On Oct. 7, after a two-week summer tryout, Bob Horn’s Bandstand had its TV premiere. Horn led a double life that included activities his virginal dancers never dreamed of. Channel 6, WFIL, was owned by Walter Annenberg, whose newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, campaigned against drunk driving, so he didn’t want to let Horn off lightly. Television Personality. Michael Jackson, a frequent Bandstand guest, performed Making matters worse, on September 13, 1986, ABC reduced Bandstand from a full hour to 30 minutes;[12] at Clark's request, the 2,751st and final ABC installment[13] (with Laura Branigan[14] performing "Shattered Glass"[15][16]) aired on September 5, 1987. On July 31, 1966 While mowing his lawn, Bob Horn had a heart attack brought on by heat stroke. History goes back and forth with the timing and motives of the integration, but nevertheless, American Bandstand socially impacted teenagers' opinions regarding race. When he arrived in Washington and met the 19-year-old news editor of the station, Sam Smith, Allison explained why he had to leave Philly: “Look, all I did was put my cock in the mouth of some under-age girls. Allison said it never happened and his wife provided him with an alibi, consisting of a log she kept of his activities. When questioned as to why a married man would do this, Horn responded by saying that Lois knew many of his friends and “drifted into the same pattern as I did. This, however, was basically a talent show and dancing was secondary. One national market not telecasting Bandstand was Baltimore, Maryland, as local affiliate WAAM (now WJZ-TV) elected to produce a local dance show in the same afternoon time slot. I’ll bet she knows more artists in the business than I do.”. American Bandstand played a crucial role in introducing Americans to such famous artists as Prince, Jackson 5, Sonny and Cher, Aerosmith, and John Lydon's PiL—all of whom made their American TV debuts on the show. Before Alan Freed brought his popular radio shows and concerts to television in 1956, and before Ed Sullivan broadcast Bo Diddley in 1955 and later Elvis Presley in 1956, Bob Horn’s Bandstand had grown into a local show with national influence, making it the most important television venue in this era for artists and producers looking to reach a large audience. We'll see you the next time on American Bandstand. For a brief time in 1973, Bandstand alternated its time slot with Soul Unlimited,[9] a show featuring soul music that was hosted by Buster Jones. He took my friend Adam and me out fishing on his boat, along with some of his record-company friends, and asked us for ideas to improve the show. In this, he was ‘way ahead of his time and ahead of what’s seen in the show Hairspray. “It was an innocent time,” says one of them. It seems curious that a public official needed to rent a private headquarters, but Blanc felt that some city officials, if they knew what he was doing, would tip off their friends who were being investigated. A family member revealed that one day Horn felt so depressed that he put a pistol in his mouth and his wife had to talk him out of committing suicide. Not being able to get in, that was a way of life then. Even when black artists like Chuck Berry and Fats Domino appeared in live shows, 95% of the audience was white. People were routinely arrested when they drove across a state border and had sex. Horn’s radio program was called The Bob Horn Bandstand, which had a nice, alliterative sound. The Bandstand dancers, on the other hand, were fond of him. “I was asked to be a character witness at his trial and I testified that he never tried anything with us. This version was canceled after 26 weeks, and its final show (with The Cover Girls performing "My Heart Skips a Beat" and "We Can't Go Wrong") aired on October 7, 1989,[42] thus ending the show's 37-year run.[43][44]. Horn was a pioneer when he made the youngsters the stars of the show, and when he gave teenagers a forum to set their own standards of music, dance steps and style. For the most part, the white kids from West Catholic and Roman Catholic, etc., were intimidated when we got on the floor. [5], Bandstand originally used "High Society" by Artie Shaw as its theme song, but by the time the show went national, it had been replaced by various arrangements of Charles Albertine's "Bandstand Boogie," including Les Elgart's big-band recording remembered by viewers of the daily version. At the very beginning, Horn’s Bandstand had some racial integration. Chuck Downey, Frank McGuigan, and I (nicknamed “Mickey Bandstand” back then) were on the cover of the first Bandstand Yearbook released in 1955. The number one song was whatever he said it was, and it usually was whatever would bring him the most profit. While the American series has aired thirteen seasons, its format was also replicated worldwide, from Norway (Dansefeber) to Australia (So You Think You Can Dance Australia). Bob was a PR pro who really knew how to spin a story. unsold game show pilots). This was also a time of day when ABC didn’t feed any network product to the local stations, leaving WFIL with a time gap to fill locally. These were the guys I met during my first job in radio, in the music library at WIP, and whom I saw accompanying Horn during his nighttime radio show when I later worked at WFIL. Dick Clark later wrote that he kept that dress code when he took over because “it made the show acceptable to adults who were frightened by the teenage world and teenage music.” Some observers might say that he was making the show acceptable to people who were frightened by the appearance of blacks. This is but one of the many bitter memories that I and many of the people that I grew up with have about American Bandstand.”, Henry Gordon said in 1995 as he looked at an old photo of the kids at Bandstand: “Anything that looks like a black face in this picture is probably a white face in the shadows. Dick Clark Comes to Bandstand He even went back on the air a few minutes later and said: “Hey, that record wasn’t bad after all.”. 54 likes. Black kids from Overbrook High would come also. Allison coined a new name for himself: a “controversialist.” He was advertised as “the man who owns midnight.” Allison’s show also attracted a different type. This more-familiar version of Bandstand debuted on October 7, 1952, in "Studio 'B'," which was located in their just-completed addition to the original 1947 building in West Philadelphia (4548 Market Street), and was hosted by Horn, with Lee Stewart as co-host until 1955. When I saw him socially, he did not seem like a zealot or a crusader. He and his producer Tony Mammarella created Bandstand for the Philadelphia region. First, they required that boys show up wearing suits and ties. Walter DeLegall, a black man who was a teenager then, said about the early days: “I used to dance on the original Bandstand. When I danced on TV people noticed me, and it led to my career in the business. He gave special attention to local singers including Sunny Gale, Gloria Mann, Georgie Shaw and Micki Marlo. Bob is asking me to rate a record. He was convicted and sentenced to jail for that, but not for his sexual activities.
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