This Week in Television History: April 2022 PART III

April 18, 2012

Dick Clark, host of "American Bandstand" and "New Year's Rockin' Eve," dies.

On this day in 2012, Dick Clark, the TV personality and producer best known for hosting "American Bandstand," an influential music-and-dance show that aired nationally from 1957 to 1989 and helped bring rock `n' roll into the mainstream in the late 1950s, dies of a heart attack at age 82 in Santa Monica, California. The clean-cut, youthful-looking Clark, dubbed "America’s Oldest Teenager," also was the longtime host of the annual telecast "New Year's Rockin' Eve" and headed an entertainment empire that developed game shows, awards shows, talk shows, made-for-TV movies and other programs.

Richard Wagstaff Clark was born on November 30, 1929, and raised in Mount Vernon, New York. His father was a salesman who later managed a radio station. Clark graduated from Syracuse University in 1951 and moved to Philadelphia the following year to work as a radio disc jockey.  In 1956, he became the host of a local, teen-oriented TV show called "Bandstand" (launched in 1952) after the original host was fired.

In 1957, "American Bandstand," as it was renamed, began airing nationwide. The program, which showcased ordinary teenagers dancing to records and musical acts introduced by Clark, quickly became a hit with millions of young viewers, who tuned in for the latest music, fashions and dance crazes. Clark helped end the then-standard practice of having white singers cover the songs of black artists on TV, and a number of African-American performers, including Chuck Berry and Chubby Checker, made their national TV debut on "American Bandstand."

In 1960, amidst the show's success, Clark was called to testify before a congressional subcommittee investigating the practice of payola, in which record companies bribed disc jockeys in order to get airplay for records. At the hearings, Clark testified to holding an ownership stake in more than 30 different record labels, distributors and manufacturers, and featuring the acts from those labels on "American Bandstand." He denied doing anything illegal and was never charged with a crime. However, prior to the hearings, ABC, which broadcast "American Bandstand," directed Clark to divest himself of all his music-related businesses, a move said to cost him millions of dollars.

"American Bandstand" originally aired every weekday afternoon before switching to a Saturdays-only schedule in late 1963. In 1964, the show relocated from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. In the ensuing years, as popular music styles changed, it continued to be a place for artists to launch or advance their careers. Among the multitudes of acts to appear on the program were the Beastie Boys, The Doors, Kiss, The Mamas & The Papas, Prince, Run-DMC, Michael Jackson and Madonna. Clark hosted "American Bandstand" until just months before it was cancelled in late 1989 (the show's final installments were hosted by David Hirsch).

The music impresario furthered his place in pop culture as the host and producer of "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve," a TV special that debuted in 1974 and included musical performances and live coverage of the ball drop from New York City's Times Square. Clark helmed the telecast every year until December 31, 2004, having suffered a stroke earlier that month. Though the stroke left him speech-impaired, he returned to the countdown special the following year, with Ryan Seacrest as co-host, and continued to make annual appearances through 2011.

In addition to being an on-air personality, Clark became a media titan with his eponymous production company, formed in 1957. The company's long list of credits range from "The $10,000 Pyramid" to "TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes" to the American Music Awards and the Golden Globe Awards. Clark also remained involved in radio throughout his career, hosting several national shows and co-founding a radio network. 
After half a century in the entertainment business, the thrice-married Clark suffered a fatal heart attack on April 18, 2012, following a surgical procedure at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica.

April 24, 1962

First coast-to-coast satellite telecast. 

The first coast-to-coast telecast by satellite takes place on this day in 1962. Signals from California were bounced off the first experimental communications satellite, Echo I, and received in Massachusetts.

April 24, 1982

Jane Fonda’s first Workout video released. 

Hollywood royalty, fashion model, Oscar-winning actress, controversial anti-war activist. Jane Fonda fit all of these descriptions by the late 1970s and 1980s, when she emerged in her latest incarnation--exercise guru. On April 24, 1982, Fonda extended her reach into the home-video market with the release of Workout, the first of her many bestselling aerobics tapes.

Daughter of the celebrated actor Henry Fonda (star of 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath), Jane worked as a model before joining Lee Strasberg’s famed Actors Studio. She broke out in 1960 with a Tony-nominated performance in Broadway’s There Was a Little Girl and a starring role in the big-screen comedy Tall Story. She soon established a reputation as both sexpot (1968’s Barbarella) and serious actress, earning her first Oscar nomination for 1969’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and taking home the Best Actress statuette two years later for Klute. As an outspoken member of the opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam, Fonda was famously photographed behind enemy lines next to an anti-aircraft gun during a visit to North Vietnam in 1972. Dubbed “Hanoi Jane,” she earned the lasting scorn of many Vietnam veterans and has since expressed deep regret about posing for the photograph.

Fonda won her second Best Actress Oscar in 1979 for Coming Home. That same year, she opened her first workout studio, breaking into a gym industry previously dominated by male boxers and bodybuilders. A former ballet enthusiast, Fonda had begun practicing aerobics with her future business partner, Leni Cazden, to keep fit. In 1981, Fonda published Jane Fonda’s Workout Book, which remained at No. 1 on the nonfiction bestseller’s list for more than six months and in the top five for more than 16 months. The cover showed a grinning Fonda striking a pose in black tights and legwarmers.

With the phenomenal success of her exercise studios, books and videos, Fonda not only sparked the aerobics trend of the late 1970s and 1980s--she also popularized the concept of working out for women in general. Other instructors soon capitalized on the workout movement, including Richard Simmons and Judi Missett, creator of the aerobics spin-off known as Jazzercise. For the first time, millions of women (and a few men) were exercising together in groups, doing leg lifts, side bends and lifting dumbbells to the beat of peppy music. Aerobics also launched a fashion craze, with neon spandex, legwarmers and leotards becoming ubiquitous among health-conscious women. Fonda’s videos remained top sellers into the latter half of the 1980s, including Jane Fonda’s New Workout (1986) and Jane Fonda’s Low-Impact Aerobic Workout (1987).

The revenues from Fonda’s exercise empire financed the Campaign for Economic Democracy, a leftist political organization founded by her then-husband, the leading 1960s radical Tom Hayden. After divorcing Hayden in 1989, Fonda largely withdrew from the spotlight. She announced her retirement from acting in 1992, explaining her desire to spend more time with her third husband, the media mogul Ted Turner. The couple divorced in 2001. Fonda has recently returned to the big screen in several movies, including Monster-In-Law (2005) and Georgia Rule (2007).

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa