Clark, Dick (1929—)

As host of American Bandstand for more than 30 years, Dick Clark introduced rock 'n' roll music via television to a whole generation of teenaged Americans while reassuring their parents that the music would not lead their children to perdition. With his eternally youthful countenance, collegiate boy-next-door personality, and trademark "salute" at the close of each telecast, Clark is one of the few veterans of the early days of television who remains active after nearly half a century in broadcasting.

Richard Wagstaff Clark was born in 1929 in Mount Vernon, New York. His father owned radio stations across upstate New York, and his only sibling, older brother Bradley, was killed in World War II. Clark grew up enamored of such radio personalities as Arthur Godfrey and Garry Moore, and instantly understood the effectiveness and appeal of their informal on-air approach. Clark studied speech at Syracuse University, supplementing his studies with work at campus radio station WAER. After graduating in 1951, he worked for several radio and television stations in central New York radio and television, and even briefly adopted the on-air name "Dick Clay," to his later embarrassment.

In 1953 Clark moved to Philadelphia to host an afternoon radio show, playing popular vocalists for local teenagers. Three years later, he was chosen as the new host of a local-TV dance show, Bandstand, which featured the then-new sounds of rock 'n' roll music. The show's previous host, Bob Horn, had been arrested on a morals charge.

Clark was an instant hit with his viewers. By the fall of 1957, Bandstand was picked up nationally by the ABC network. American Bandstand quickly became a national phenomenon, the first popular television series to prominently feature teenagers. Clark demanded that the teens who appeared on the program observe strict disciplinary and dress-code regulations. Boys were expected to wear jackets and ties, and girls, modest skirts and not-too-tight sweaters. Many of the teens who danced on the show, from Italian-American neighborhoods in south and west Philadelphia, became national celebrities themselves. One of the most popular segments of American Bandstand was one in which members of the studio audience were asked to rate new songs, a poll whose results were taken seriously by record executives. New styles of rock music rose or fell on the whims of the teenagers, who would explain their decisions by such statements as "I'd give it an 87… it's got a good beat, and you can dance to it." Interestingly, Clark's audience panned "She Loves You," the Beatles' first hit. The Bandstand audiences introduced a national audience to such dance moves as the Pony, the Stroll and, most famously, the Twist, by Philadelphia native Chubby Checker.

As Clark was becoming a millionaire, his career was threatened by the payola scandals of the 1950s, when it was learned that record companies illegally paid disc jockeys to play their rock and roll records. Clark admitted that he partially owned several music publishers and record labels that provided some of the music on American Bandstand, and he immediately sold his interests in these companies as the scandal broke, while insisting, however, that songs from these companies did not get preferential treatment on his show. Clark made such a convincing case before a House committee studying payola in 1959 that Representative Owen Harris called him "a fine young man" and exonerated him. Clark thus provided rock music with a clean-cut image when it needed it the most.

Clark produced and hosted a series of Bandstand -related concert acts that toured the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. During their tours in the South, these were among the first venues where blacks and whites performed on the same stage. Eventually, even the seating in these arenas became desegregrated. In 1964, Bandstand moved from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, coinciding with the popularity of Southern California "surf" music by The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. From that point, the show began relying less on playing records and more on live performers. Many of the top acts of the rock era made their national television debut on Bandstand, such as Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Ike and Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder and the Talking Heads, and the teenaged Simon and Garfunkel, known then as Tom and Jerry.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Clark expanded his television presence beyond Bandstand with Dick Clark Productions, which generated between 150 and 170 hours of programming annually at its peak. During these years, Clark hosted the long-running $10,000 Pyramid game show from 1973 through the late 1980s; in subsequent versions, the word association-based Pyramid expanded with inflation, eventually offering $100,000, and featured numerous celebrity guests. In 1974 ABC lost the broadcast rights to the Grammy Awards, and asked Clark to create an alternative music awards show. The American Music Awards quickly became a significant rival to the Grammys, popular among artists and audiences alike. In the 1980s, Clark also produced and hosted a long-running NBC series of highly-rated "blooper" scenes composed of outtake reels from popular TV series. His co-host was Ed McMahon of the Tonight Show, who had been friends with Clark since they were next-door neighbors in Philadelphia during the 1950s. Clark also replaced Guy Lombardo as America's New Year's Eve host, emceeing the televised descent of the giant ball in New York's Times Square on ABC beginning in 1972.

The seemingly ageless Clark, dubbed "America's oldest living teenager" by TV Guide, ushered his series with aplomb through the turbulent 1970s. It was on Bandstand where an audience first body-spelled "Y.M.C.A." to The Village People's number-one hit. With changes in musical tastes and practices, the popularity of Bandstand began to wane. What had begun as a local two-and-a-half hour daily show in the mid-1950s had gradually been whittled down to a weekly, hour-long show by the 1980s. There were several culprits: competing network music programs, including The Midnight Special, SolidGold, and even Saturday Night Live were competing with Bandstand to get the hottest acts of the day. The advent of MTV in 1981, with round-the-clock music videos, further cut into the series' influence. As the years passed, new rock groups devoted more time to video production and promotion, and less to appearing live on shows. Clark retired from Bandstand in the spring of 1989; with a new host, a syndicated version of the long-running show called it quits later that year, only weeks shy of making it into the 1990s.

Ironically enough, however, MTV's sister station had a hand in reviving interest in American Bandstand. In 1997, VH-1 ran a weekly retrospective, hosted by Clark, of highlights from the 1970s and 1980s version of Bandstand. The success of the reruns coincided with the fortieth anniversary of the show's national debut, and Clark returned to Philadelphia to unveil a plaque on the site of the original American Bandstand television studio. That same year, Clark published a comprehensive anniversary volume, and he also announced the founding of an American Bandstand Diner restaurant chain. Modeled after the Hard Rock Café and Planet Hollywood chains, each diner was designed in 1950s style, with photos and music of the greats Clark helped make famous.

—Andrew Milner

Further Reading:

Clark, Dick and Bronson, Fred. Dick Clark's American Bandstand. New York, Harper Collins, 1997.

Jackson, John A. American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock and Roll Empire. New York, Oxford University, 1997.

The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll. New York, Random House, 1992.