She was one of the chosen few who went to New York to learn how to demonstrate the Madison, and was selected for the exchange committee that represented Baltimores best on American Bandstand. The introductory essay in Dick Clark's American Bandstand (1997) is illustrative in this regard. This sentiment carries through to the songs lyrics. My mother used to pick me up after school to make sure nobody hassled me., The adoring fans could also be a hassle. Ninfa O. Barnard Special to The Commercial Mr. Deane's salary . It was broadcast for two hours a day, six days a week and featured local teenagers dancing to their favorite music played by live bands. In December 1963, producers at Baltimores WJZ-TV cancelled the Buddy Deane Show rather than integrate the popular teen dance program. Because Buddy Deanes competition was soap operas, the budding teenage romances were sometimes played up for the camera. Last spring, five hundred people quickly snapped up the $23 tickets to the third Buddy Deane Reunion, held at the Eastwind, in Essex, to raise money for the Baltimore Burn Center. The Buddy Deane Showwas a teen dancetelevision show, created by Zvi Shoubin, hosted by Winston "Buddy" Deane(1924-2003), and aired on WJZ-TV(Channel 13), the ABCaffiliate station in Baltimorefrom 1957 until 1964. This man approached me, telegrammed me, showed up at the show. IndieWire is a part of Penske Media Corporation. | From 1957-1965, Deane was chosen as host of WJZ-TV, Baltimore's "The . In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to what it meant for young black people to be excluded from entertainment spaces like the Buddy Deane Show. Yeah it was Cosenel, says Joe. With the show beginning at 2:30 in some years, cutting out of school early was common. The show was a teen dance and music show and ran from 1957 to until 1964 on WJZ-TV until the show was canceled. The buddy dean show debuted on Sep. 9. Sometimes youd wrap your hair at night. Buddy wanted it to end happily, but WJZ angered Deaners when it tried to blame the ratings. The first page of the essay, for example, features a full-page picture of black protestors in 1962 in Times . Advertisement. But by far the most popular hairdo queen on Buddy Deane was a 14-year-old Pimlico Junior High School student named Mary Lou Raines. See more ideas about buddy, historic baltimore, baltimore. These dances included the Mashed Potato, the Stroll, the Pony, the Waddle, the Locomotion, the Bug, the Handjive, the New Continental and the Madison. I wanted to get into the record businessand years later he did. Waters: We used to go to the hotel and hed say, Come in, and hed be in bed with a cleaning woman smoking pot., It was Tracy saying to Link: Please dont look at my legs without the benefit of nylons.. Now a receptionist living near Towson with her husband and two grown children, Arlene remains fiercely loyal, organizing the reunions and keeping notebooks filled with the updated addresses, married names, and phone numbers of my kids. She met Winston J. It was maddening: the Mashed Potatoes, the Stroll, the Pony, the Waddle, the Locomotion, the Bug, the Handjive, the New Continental, and, most important, the Madison, a complicated line dance that started here and later swept the country. Six days a week and often two hours a day, Buddy Deane and his Committee Members--the privileged regular teen dancers . This move would have been a footnote in the annals of television if not for the director and Baltimore native John Waters, whose 1988 film Hairspray offered up an alternate history, with its fictional Corny Collins Show and rose-tinted, lets-all-dance-together ending. You had to wear nylons. It was a fluke. Winston "Buddy" Deane was a broadcaster for more than fifty years, beginning his career in Little Rock, Arkansas, then moving to the Memphis, Tennessee, market before moving onto Baltimore . Its fairly neat, commercialized, and revisionist portrayal of 1960s Baltimore sharply contrasts with the current messy, national discussion of identity politicsa disjunction that could prompt new audiences to reevaluate their assumptions about how racism operates. I didnt mean to, because I never would have messed up the makeup.. Owing to Deane's mid-South roots and work history, he featured many performers from the ranks of country and western music (e.g., Skeeter Davis, singing "The End of the World" and Brenda Lee singing "Sweet Nothin's"), who then achieved cross-over hits among rock and roll fans. maintains the basic of Waterss story, but like the Broadway version and musical film, it features more than a dozen songs that help to convey the hopeful narrative. If a guy had one beer, it was a big deal. While he wasnt on the committee, Waters occasionally danced on the show as a guest. That's what really happened, and the show shut down." 3. January 4, 1964. Still, as an historian of the television era that Hairspray so lovingly recreates, I believe the story also presents a more nuanced vision of how popular culture helped to educate white and black teenagers about racial hierarchies. Deane died in Pine Bluff, Arkansas on July 16, 2003, after suffering a stroke. Buddy Deane, a native of Pine Bluff, was one of the first radio hosts to understand the appeal of Rock n' Roll in its infancy, the host of a popular 60s teen dance show, the inspiration for a film and musical character in Hairspray, and so much more. Yet Joe was a dropout when he went on the show and then, once famous, went back to finish. When Barry Levinson, another Baltimore native, requested video from the show for his film Diner, the station told him it had no footage. 'The Buddy Deane Show' was over . Integration ended The Buddy Deane Show. The Deane Show was marketed to a predominantly white audience, but due to integration efforts and the civil rights movement of the time the show first had Black dancers appear once a month then once a week. The Committee, initially recruited from local teen centers, was to act as hosts and dance with the guests. Even today Gene and Linda are the quintessential Deaner couple, still socializing with many Committee members, very protective of the memory, and among the first to lead a dance at the emotion-packed reunions. The very first day on the set, I didnt recognize Divine, the filmmaker said. . On the last day of the show, January 4, 1964, all the most popular Committee members through the years came back for one last appearance. . Whats great about the choreography in [You Cant Stop the Beat] is that, subtly, the black dancers and the white dancers have the same choreography, the executive producer Neil Meron said in the DVD commentary for the 2007 film. That she has an affluent life-style surprises no one on the Committee. So that was all true in a way, in a weird way., The girls hair was higher, the pants were tighter, and in real life it went off the air because they wouldnt integrate it. That show featured local teens who danced to the. If you were a Buddy Deane Committee member, you were on TV six days a week for as many as three hours a dayenough media exposure to make Marshall McLuhans head spin. People already were excited about it, but after the election they were saying, Boy, do we need this now, Meron said while promoting the new television musical. You learned how to be a teenager from the show. But an intrepid group of local and . Here, Clark's memories of American Bandstand are nested in an overview of important events in U.S. history from the 1950s and 1960s. Buddy offered to have three or even four days a week all black, but that wasnt it. I was Tracy, said Waters. Both entities launche. Youre in Baltimore. I took off my steady ring and threw it down. SOUL! As with the drapes and squares of the previous decade, she explains, there were two classes of people thenDeaners and Joe College. Hairspray encourages its audience to take the fight to integrate a teenage TV show seriously, but it does so through songs, dances, and costumes that celebrate and satirize the 60s. These were the first role models I knew. From 1968 into 1973, the public television variety show SOUL! And none are bitter. In 1948, Deane married Helen Stevenson, his childhood sweetheart, whom he first met when he was just four years old. Once I was off the show for a while, and they said I had joined the nunnery, says Helen, laughing. I saw the show as a vehicle to make something of myself, remembers Joe. Some fifty years later, the mindset is STILL the same. By what name was The Buddy Deane Show (1957) officially released in Canada in English? Not a real one. Deane also presented British artist Helen Shapiro, who sang her Baltimore hit, "Tell Me What He Said," at about the time that she was touring England with The Beatles as one of her support acts. "I told him I thought it was terrible," Melva Lee Scruggs said about the "Buddy Deane Show." The star system was born. And according to Arlene, Buddy encouraged one popular Committee member (Buzzy Bennet) to teach himself to read so he could realize his dream of being a disc jockey. As well, a show was broadcast from a local farm in Westminster, Maryland. Each reunion (and a new one is in the works) ls bigger than the last. And if you dared to dance the obscene Bodie Green (the Dirty Boogie), you were immediately a goner. Joe started working for Buddy as teen assistant and, along with Arlene, oversaw the Committee and enforced the strict rules. We are kind of like Ozzie and Harriet, says Gene Snyder as Linda nods in agreement. I wanted to join the circus., Two other ponytail princesses who went on to the Buddy Dean hall of fame were Evanne Robinson, the committee member on the show the longest, and Kathy Schmink. How Actress Rachel Hilsons Baltimore Roots Influence Her Work Today, The Mount Vernon Virtuosi is Much More Than a Chamber Orchestra, Jen Michalski Discusses New Short Story Collection The Company of Strangers. I was aggressive. The racial integration of a take-off of the show, dubbed The Corny Collins Show, provides the backdrop to the 1988 John Waters film Hairspray. Buddy himself, the high priest, returned for the event. For example, Carole King appeared on the show playing her single "It Might as Well Rain Until September", nearly a decade before she burst to popularity with her landmark 1970 album, Tapestry. On this day in 1979, Sweeney Todd first opened on Broadway . Penny nervously stumbles over her answers, and another girl, Nadine Carver, is cut for being Black (the show has a "Negro Day" on the last Thursday of every month, she is told). Hundreds of thousands of teens learned the latest dances by watching Committee members on the show, copying their personal style, and following their life stories and interactions. Friday, February 19 at 7PM. I still believe that footage is out there somewhere. From 1964 to 1984, Deane hosted a show and owned KOTN-FM and KOTN-AM radio stations at Pine Bluff. In my on-going search for African American footage I stumbled across this article in Google. Girl Scout leader, very active in my kids school. Mary Lou is still a star. . After the screening, he was joined by Michael Musto and original cast membersLeslie Ann Powers (Penny Pingleton), JoAnn Havrilla (Prudence Pingleton), and Holter Graham (I.Q. His show became one of the highest rated stations in the country. We got more mail: Oh, please dont break up! Somebody even sent us a miniature pair of boxing gloves. Although he never appeared on Deane's show, Waters attended high school with a "Buddy Deaner" and later gave Deane a cameo in the film, in which Deane played a TV reporter who tried to interview the governor who was besieged by integration protesters. Everywhere we went, people would say Theres Mary Lou. I wondered if she had just been released from the penitentiary.. And they all came together on the Buddy Deane Show, Baltimore's legendary teen dance show. Oh, black teens could dancejust not with the white kids. Participants dressed in "country" style, and danced to country and western music as well as pop. and later on, growing up, it was a definite blow: reality. I still have a whole box of fan mail, says Evanne. In 1957, Deane was chosen by former WITH associate Joel Chaseman to host "The Buddy Deane Show," a dance show for teenagers on WJZ-TV Channel 13. C. Fields in drag.), This movie is the only radical movie I ever made because it snuck in mid-America. Warner, Tony, Buddy's Top 20: The Story of Baltimore's Hottest TV Dance Show and the Guy Who Brought it to Life! Greetings, Pat Brun.Thanks for commenting in this pancocojams discussion thread. Every weekday afternoon, in each of these broadcast markets, these shows presented images of exclusively white dancers and rendered black youth as second-class teenagers. I must have had ten different phone numbers, says Helen, and somehow it would get out. The Corny Collins Show, is a teen dance show in Baltimore's WYZT /WZZT Network. (NWA Media). Other vices were likewise eschewed. All rights reserved. Waters took inspiration from the real-life Buddy Deane Show, a local dance party program that ran from 1957 to 1964 in the Maryland area. "The Buddy Deane Show," which aired on WJZ-TV in Baltimore from 1957 until 1964. . Jones). The Department of Education even withdrew its support of the show, and the show had to be filmed in the parking lot at times because of the threats they received. Waters's nostalgic and detailed appreciation for The Buddy Deane Show, . With the nation in a divisive place, he argued, viewers are looking for entertainment that can be really healing. The New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani saw a similar dynamic at play when Hairspray, the musical, debuting shortly after 9/11, won over fans: Hollywood and Broadway producers have decided [what] Americans want is nostalgiathe logic being that people in times of trouble will gravitate toward comfort entertainment that reminds them of simpler, happier times [such as] the candy-colored Broadway musical Hairspray., Hairsprays history of race in America suggests that racism is an issue of attitudes rather than of policies. We got out of the limousine and there was a huge crowd that went crazy when Divine jumped out, and it was such an exciting night, Waters said. That really hit home then., He adde, That scene where Tracy and [Link] are making out outside and the homeless guy walks up the street singing, that is exactly true. Bill Haley and the Comets did their premier perf of "Rock Around the Clock" on Deane's show, and Deane was named the No. WJZ's show aired from 1957 to 1964 and was popular among Baltimore teens, promoting dances like the twist, mashed potato, and the Madison. The whole day on the show was devoted to me.. Joe remembers a sport coat I bought for $5 from somebody who got it when he got out of prison. Voters approve of . Pixie was barely five feet tall, but her hair sometimes added a good six to eight inches to her height. . Id get letters saying, If you show up at this particular hop, youre gonna get your face pushed in. I wanted to go, but my parents wouldnt let me. From 1996 to 2003, he hosted dance events in Baltimore, Pennsylvania and aboard cruise ships. NBCs Hairspray Live! It was difficult with your peers, recalls Peanuts. Could it be? This assessment proved true when on Aug. 12, 1963 a group of black and white kids stormed the stage of "The Buddy Deane Show" and danced together. Debuting at a mere 11 years of age, taking three buses every day to get to the show, wearing that wonderful white DA (created by her hairdresser father), and causing the first real sensation. Soon after, he and his family moved to Memphis, Tenn. The Buddy Deane Show was a teen dance television show, similar to Philadelphia's American Bandstand, that was created by Zvi Shoubin and aired on WJZ-TV in Baltimore, Maryland from 1957 until 1964.The show was taken off the air because home station WJZ-TV was unable to integrate black and white dancers. While the rest of the nation grew up on Dick Clarks American Bandstand, (which was not even shown here because Channel 13 already had Buddy Deane), Baltimoreans, true to form, had their own eccentric version. Racism is passed down from one generation to the next. Clip from Shake, Rattle, and Roll: The Buddy Deane Scrapbook The show was a teen dance and music show and ran from 1957 to until 1964 on WJZ-TV until the show was canceled.The show was a teen dance and music show and ran from 1957 to until 1964 on WJZ-TV until the show was canceled.The show was a teen dance and music show and ran from 1957 to until 1964 on WJZ-TV until the show was canceled. Every day Id come to the studio in knee-highs, and Id have to take them off. It suggests a way of understanding race that allows viewers to disavow bigotryframed in the story as the belief that white and black Americans should live in separate sphereswithout acknowledging, confronting, or seeking to overturn the actual structures of discrimination. Perhaps the highest bouffants of all belonged to the Committee member who was my personal favorite: Pixie (who died several years later from a drug overdose). sively white show. For many young people, being blocked from swimming pools, skating rinks, or dance shows like the Buddy Deane Show would be one of their first exposures to what King calls the feeling of forever fighting a degenerating sense of nobodiness.. Although the Committee was a valuable promotional tool for WJZ at the time, and belonging was a full-time job, no one (except teen assistants) was paid a penny. You cant do this. I remember once we all got arrested at the drive-in for underage drinking, and the black kids didnt get out and the white kids did. It is hosted by the titular Corny Collins, with the exception of the monthly Rhythm and Blues special which is hosted by Motormouth Maybelle . Over the next several years, Deane's show became the top-rated local TV show in Baltimore and the highest rated local show in the United States. When I became of age to understand it all I became motivated to make a difference. 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