On April 18, 2012, Dick Clark, a man nicknamed “the World’s Oldest Teenager” passed away after a fatal heart attack at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. The 82 year-old Dick Clark was known best for hosting the long-running television show American Bandstand. He leaves behind a wife, Kari Wigton, and two sons, Richard and Duane, and a daughter named Cindy.
Clark was born in Bronxville, New York and was raised in nearby Mount Vernon, the son of Julia Fuller Barnard and Richard Augustus Clark. His only sibling, older brother Bradley, was killed in World War II. His career in show business began in 1945 when he started working in the mailroom of WRUN, a radio station owned by his uncle and managed by his father in Utica, New York. Clark was soon promoted to weatherman and news announcer. During this time, Clark attended A.B. Davis High School (now A.B. Davis Middle School) in Mount Vernon and Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, and was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Phi Gamma); he graduated in 1951 with a degree in business.
After graduating from high school in 1947, Clark started as an office worker at WRUN-AM in Rome, NY. Almost immediately, he was asked to fill in for the vacationing weatherman, and within a few months he was announcing station breaks. His quick rise may have been helped by the fact that his uncle owned the station and his father managed it. While attending Syracuse, Clark worked at WOLF-AM, then a country music station. He returned to WRUN for a short time where he used the name Dick Clay. Clark began his television career at station WKTV in Utica, and was also subsequently a disc jockey on radio station WOLF in Syracuse. His first television-hosting job was on Cactus Dick and the Santa Fe Riders, a country-music program. He would later replace Robert Earle (who would later host the GE College Bowl) as a newscaster. Clark was principal in pro broadcasters operator of 1440 KPRO in Riverside, California from 1962 to 1982. In the 1960s, he was owner of KGUD AM/FM (later KTYD AM/FM) in Santa Barbara, California.
In 1952, Clark moved to Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, where he was neighbors with Ed McMahon. There he took a job as a disc jockey at radio station WFIL. WFIL had an affiliated television station (now WPVI) with the same call sign which began broadcasting a show called Bob Horn’s Bandstand in 1952. Clark was a regular substitute host on the show, becoming its primary host in 1956 after Horn’s dismissal due to a drunken driving arrest. The show was picked up by the ABC television network, renamed American Bandstand, and was first aired nationally on August 5, 1957. On that day, Clark interviewed Elvis Presley.
American Bandstand was credited with introducing numerous artists to national audiences, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and Chubby Checker. Shortly after taking over, Clark also ended the show’s all-white policy, and introduced numerous black artists, such as Chuck Berry. However, Clark did not include the Beatles or The Rolling Stones on his show when they came to America, thinking they would not become significant groups. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Clark produced and hosted a series of concert tours around the success of “American Bandstand,” which by 1959 had a national audience of 20 million. The shows were among the first venues where blacks and whites performed on the same stage, and eventually the seating was likewise desegregated.
Clark moved the show from Philadelphia to Los Angeles in 1964. The move was related to the popularity of new surfer groups in Southern California, including The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. The show’s emphasis changed from merely playing records to including live performers, and as a result many of the leading rock groups of the 1960s had their first exposure to nationwide audiences. A few of the many artists introduced were Ike and Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, the Talking Heads and Simon and Garfunkel, who were at the time called Tom and Jerry. Many of the groups he introduced appeared at the 50th anniversary special to celebrate American Bandstand. Clark noted during the special that American Bandstand was listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the longest running variety show in TV history.
At the peak of his American Bandstand fame, Clark also hosted a 30-minute Saturday night program called The Dick Clark Show. It aired from February 15, 1958, until September 10, 1960, on the ABC network. It was broadcast live from the “Little Theater” in New York City and was sponsored by Beech-Nut Gum. It featured the rock stars of the day lip synching their hits, just as on American Bandstand. However, unlike the afternoon Bandstand program which focused on the dance floor with the teenage audience demonstrating the latest dance steps, the audience of The Dick Clark Show (consisting mostly of squealing girls) sat in a traditional theater setting. While some of the musical numbers were presented simply, others were major production numbers. The high point of the show was the unveiling with great fanfare at the end of each program, by Clark, of the top ten records of the coming week. This ritual became so embedded in popular culture that to this day it is used nightly by the Late Show with David Letterman.
From September 27, 1958 to December 20, 1959, Clark hosted a thirty-minute weekly talent/variety series entitled Dick Clark’s World of Talent on Sunday nights on ABC. A variation of producer Irving Mansfield’s earlier CBS series, This Is Show Business (1949–1956), it featured three celebrity panelists, including comedian Jack E. Leonard, judging and offering advice to amateur and semi-professional performers. While this show was not a success, during its nearly three month duration, Clark was one of the few personalities in television history on the air nationwide seven days a week. Clark has been involved in a number of other television series and specials as producer and performer.
Clark also had a long stint as a top-40 radio countdown show host. He began in 1963, hosting a radio program called The Dick Clark Radio Show. Despite his enormous popularity on American Bandstand, the show was only picked up by a few dozen stations and lasted less than a year. The show proved to be ahead of its time, becoming one of the earliest attempts at radio syndication. On March 25, 1972, Clark hosted American Top 40, filling in for Casey Kasem. In 1981, he created The Dick Clark National Music Survey for the Mutual Broadcasting System. The program counted down the Top 30 contemporary hits of the week in direct competition with American Top 40. Clark left Mutual in 1986, and Charlie Tuna took over the National Music Survey. Clark then launched his own radio syndication group; the United Stations Radio Network, or Unistar, and took over the countdown program called “Countdown America”. It ran until 1994, when Clark sold Unistar to Westwood One Radio. The following year, Clark started over, building a new version of the USRN and a new countdown show: “The U.S. Music Survey”. He served as its host until his 2004 stroke. Dick Clark’s longest running radio show began on February 14, 1982. “Rock, Roll & Remember” was a four hour oldies show named after Clark’s 1976 autobiography. Each week, Clark would profile a different artist from the Rock and Roll era. He would also count down the top four songs that week from a certain year in the 1950s, 1960s or early 1970s. The show ended production when Clark suffered his 2004 stroke.
In 1972, Clark produced and hosted Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, the first of an ongoing series of specials still broadcast on New Year’s Eve. The program has typically consisted of live remotes of Clark in Times Square in New York City, counting down until the New Year ball drops. After the ball drops, the focus of the program switches to musical segments taped prior to the show in Hollywood, California. The special is live in the Eastern Time Zone, and it is delayed for the other time zones so that they can ring in the New Year with Clark when clock strikes midnight in their area. ABC has broadcast the event on every New Year’s Eve since 1972 except in 1999 when it was preempted for ABC 2000 Today, news coverage of the milestone year hosted by Peter Jennings. In the more than three decades it has been on the air, the show has become a tradition in U.S. New Year’s Eve celebrations.
Clark became host of The $10,000 Pyramid on March 26, 1973 (the same day as The Young and the Restless). The show — a word association game created and produced by daytime television producer Bob Stewart — moved to ABC from 1974 to 1980, during which time the top prize was upgraded to $20,000. After a brief 1981 syndicated run as The $50,000 Pyramid, the show returned to CBS in 1982 as The New $25,000 Pyramid, and continued through 1988, save for a three month break. From 1985 to 1988, Clark hosted both the CBS $25,000 version and a daily $100,000 Pyramid in syndication. His daytime versions of Pyramid won nine Emmy Awards for best game show, a mark that is eclipsed only by the twelve won by the syndicated version of Jeopardy!. It also won Clark three Emmy Awards for best game show host. Clark would return to Pyramid as a guest in later incarnations. He was a guest during the Bill Cullen version of The $25,000 Pyramid. During the premiere of the John Davidson version in 1991, Clark sent a pre-recorded message wishing Davidson well in hosting the show. In 2002, Clark played as a celebrity guest for three days on the Donny Osmond version.
One of his most well-known guest appearances was in the final episode of the original Perry Mason TV series (“The Case of the Final Fadeout”) in which he was revealed to be the killer in a dramatic courtroom scene. In 1973, he created the American Music Awards show, which he produced annually. Intended as competition for the Grammy Awards, in some years it gained a bigger audience than the Grammys due to being more in touch with popular trends. Clark attempted to branch into the realm of soul music with the series Soul Unlimited in 1973. The series, hosted by Buster Jones, was a more risqué and controversial imitator of the then-popular series Soul Train and alternated in the Bandstand time slot. The series lasted for only a few episodes. Despite a feud between Clark and Soul Train creator and host Don Cornelius, the two would later collaborate on several specials featuring African-American artists.
He hosted the short-lived Dick Clark’s LIVE Wednesday in 1978. In 1984, Clark produced and co-hosted with Ed McMahon the NBC series TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes. The series ran through 1988 and continued in specials hosted by Clark (sometimes joined by another TV personality) into the 21st century, first on NBC, later on ABC, and currently on TBS (the last version re-edited into 15-minute/filler segments airing at about 5 A.M.). Clark and McMahon were longtime Philadelphia acquaintances, and McMahon praised Clark for first bringing him together with future TV partner Johnny Carson when all three worked at ABC in the late 1950s. The “Bloopers” franchise stems from the Clark-hosted (and produced) NBC “Bloopers” specials of the early 1980s, inspired by the books, record albums and appearances of Kermit Schafer, a radio and TV producer who first popularized outtakes of broadcasts. For a period of several years in the 1980s, Clark simultaneously hosted regular programs on the 3 major American television networks: ABC (Bandstand), CBS (Pyramid) and NBC (Bloopers) and in 1993, he hosted Scattergories.
In 1990 and 1991, he hosted the syndicated television game show The Challengers, which only lasted for one season. In 1999, along with Bob Boden, he was one of the executive producers of Fox’s TV game show Greed, which ran from November 5, 1999, to July 14, 2000, and was hosted by Chuck Woolery. At the same time, Clark also hosted the Stone-Stanley-created Winning Lines, which ran for six weeks on CBS from January 8, 2000 – February 12, 2000. In July 1985, he hosted the ABC prime time portion of the historic Live Aid concert, an all star concert designed by Bob Geldof to end world hunger. Clark did a brief stint as announcer on The Jon Stewart Show, in 1995. From 2001 to 2003, Clark was a co-host of The Other Half with Mario Lopez, Danny Bonaduce, and Dorian Gregory, a syndicated daytime talk show intended to be the male equivalent of The View. Clark also produced the television series American Dreams about a Philadelphia family in the early 1960s whose daughter is a regular on American Bandstand. The series ran from 2002 to 2005.
During an interview on Larry King Live in April 2004, Clark revealed that he had Type 2 diabetes. On December 8 of that year, the then 75-year-old was hospitalized in Los Angeles after suffering what was initially termed a minor stroke. Clark’s spokeswoman, Amy Streibel, said that he was hospitalized but was expected to be fine. However, on December 13, 2004, it was announced that Clark would be unable to host his annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve broadcast that had aired for all but one year since 1972 (in 1999, New Year’s Rockin’ Eve was preempted with the Peter Jennings-hosted ABC 2000 Today though Clark did perform his traditional countdown, but had to do with Jack Ford, as ABC had him stationed in Times Square during the broadcast). For the 2004 show, Regis Philbin was the substitute host, and during the show on December 31, 2004, he gave his best wishes to Clark.
Return to television having not been seen in public since his stroke, Clark announced in a statement that he would be back in Times Square for the annual tradition, bringing in Hilary Duff and Ryan Seacrest as co-hosts, in addition to the latter being co-executive producer. Also in the same August 2005 press release, it was announced that Seacrest would eventually take over as the sole host should Clark decide to retire, or be unable to continue. On December 31, 2005, Clark made his return to television, returning to the Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve broadcast. During the program, Clark remained behind a desk and was shown only in limited segments. Though Clark had noticeable difficulty speaking, he was able to perform his famous countdown to the new year. On air, he stated, “Last year I had a stroke. It left me in bad shape. I had to teach myself how to walk and talk again. It’s been a long, hard fight. My speech is not perfect but I’m getting there.” Before counting down to 2006, he mentioned he “wouldn’t have missed this for the world.” Reaction to Clark’s appearance was mixed, reported CNN.com. While some TV critics (including Tom Shales of The Washington Post, in an interview with the CBS Radio Network) felt he was not in good enough shape to do the broadcast, stroke survivors and many of Clark’s fans praised him for being a role model for people dealing with post-stroke recovery.
On August 27, 2006, Clark appeared on NBC’s telecast of the 2006 Emmy Awards. He was introduced by Simon Cowell after the show paid tribute to his successful career that has spanned decades. He was shown seated behind a lectern, and although his speech was still slurred, he was able to address the audience and introduce Barry Manilow’s performance. For the 2006–07 and 2007–08 ABC New Year’s Eves, Clark still exhibited noticeably slurred and somewhat breathless speech, but improved from previous years, in addition to using his arms again. For the 2008–09 broadcast, he increased his hosting duties to the point where he split duties evenly with Seacrest during the half-hour leading up to the ball drop. For the 2009–10 countdown show, he spoke with improved verbal expression, as well as improved head and arm dexterity, but incorrectly counted down, counting “…14, 12, 10, 11, 10, 9…”. In previous years following the stroke, Clark had only hosted the countdown and one brief segment. Clark was honored at The 37th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards on CBS TV. It was a tribute to his 40 years hosting American Bandstand. Clark returned for the 2010–11 New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and executed a perfect countdown with 24 seconds left on the clock. For the 2011–12 New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, which would be Clark’s last, Clark once again performed the countdown (although slightly rushed around the 0:06 mark to stay in time), this time with 17 seconds left on the clock.
Info-Source: Wikipedia
Tags: american bandstand, dick clark, dick clay, pyramid, ryan seacrest, world's oldest teenager
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