Oh sure, if you were Joe College [pre-preppie], you just didnt do The Deane Show. Did you ever tum into a Joe College? I ask innocently. When that little red light came on, so did my smile, she says, laughing. Hairspray is John Waters most commercially successful film the 1988 dancing comedy spawned a hit Broadway musical, a movie and TV movie of that musical, plus multiple sequel and TV show offers that never saw the light of day. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached, or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Baltimore Magazine. 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. All on Pulaski Highway. (They gave her a diamond watch at the last reunion.) He got a great review in The New York Times. That's what really happened, and the show shut down." 3. Once a month the show was all black; there was no black Committee. This man approached me, telegrammed me, showed up at the show. BLACK MUSIC MOMENT #96: Short-Lived Integration Of The Buddy Deane Show. 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. I couldnt be bothered with education. It was similar to Philadelphia's American Bandstand. The Buddy Deane Show was taken off the air because home station WJZ-TV was unwilling to integrate black and white dancers. How The Buddy Deane Show really went off the air is the white kids crashed Negro Day to integrate it. To be selected you had to bring a character reference letter from your pastor, priest, or rabbi, qualify in a dance audition, and show in an interview (the Spotlight) that you had personality. At first the Committee had a revolving membership with no one serving longer than three months. I took off my steady ring and threw it down. He was so happy. Not a real one. Joel Chaseman, also a DJ at WITH, became program manager of WJZ-TV when Westinghouse bought it in the mid-50s. Yes, I miss it very much. It was horrible/ says Joe. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll, sponsored by Matt Palumbo's MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN for Friday shows that 46% of Likely U.S. 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. "The Buddy Deane Show" ran on Baltimore's WJZ-TV from 1957 to 1964. The Buddy Deane.phenomenon is hardly dead. You werent one of them anymore. Outsiders envied the fame, especially if they lost their steadies to Deaners, and many were put off by boys who loved to dance. These were the first role models I knew. In Hairspray (1988), Tammy Turner assists Corny Collins on the show. I'll include some of those comments in an upcoming pancocojams series about that dance.However, it seems to me that The Buddy Deane Show is more important because it exemplifies the need to go back and understand how the past has influenced the present with regard to systemic racism in Baltimore, Maryland and elsewhere in the United States. If "The Buddy Deane Show" didn't exactly end happily (canceled in 1964, it never did integrate the dancers), Waters remains a fan. 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. That's what really happened, and the show shut down." 3. 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. "I remember it well," recalls Evanne. He left behind his wife, Helen Stevenson Deane; his three daughters, JoEllen, Dawn, and Debbie and their families. Both black and white activists picketed the . If you couldnt do the Buddy Dean jitterbug, (always identifiable by the girls ever-so-subtle dip of her head each time she was twirled around), you were a social outcast. Nationally, American Bandstand blocked black teens from entering the studio during its years in Philadelphia, despite host Dick Clarks claims to the contrary. Print Headline: Buddy Deane Show was huge hit for young viewers in the late 1950s, Copyright 2023, Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC. And although few will now admit to having been drapes, the styles at first were DAs (slicked back into the shape of a ducks tail), Detroits, and Waterfalls (flowing down the front) for the guys and ponytails and DAs for the girls, who wore full skirts with crinolins and three or four pairs of bobby socks. The ultimate reunion.From all over the country, the Deaners could rise again, congregate at the bottom of Television Hill, and start Madison-ing their way (Youre looking good. Mr. Deane hosted a crowd of exuberant teens, who danced to the music of live rock bands, including many name acts. 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. 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.. I was really mad. Pixie was barely five feet tall, but her hair sometimes added a good six to eight inches to her height. When the subject comes up today, most loyalists want to go off the record. Yet Joe was a dropout when he went on the show and then, once famous, went back to finish. Acts that appeared on the show first were reportedly barred from appearing on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, but if they had been on Bandstand first they could still be on The Buddy Deane Show. The show designated every other friday to their black dancers, similar to "Negro Day" on the Corny Collins Show. In 1958 the Buddy Deane Show lost support from the Baltimore City Board of Education due to it's segregation policies, and in 1964 it went off the air instead of choosing to integrate. Mary Lou, the Annette Funicello of the show, was the talk of teenage Baltimore. Once a month the show was all black. While other radio hosts thought rock 'n' roll music was just a passing trend, refusing to play it in favor of pop songs, Deane played rock 'n' roll music on a regular basis. Waters grew up with "The Buddy Deane Show" in Baltimore, and modeled his fictitious "Corny Collins Show" after it. All rights reserved. 2023 IndieWire Media, LLC. Romance was one thing; sex was another. Deane even dubbed himself "the morning mayor." In meetings with the show's white performers, the producers realized that though most of the dancers were in favor of integration, their parents would not be. Even doing commercials was expected. It was the era of rock n' roll ducktail, pegged pants, and beehive haridos. Many parents and local officials were angry. Several local art contests were also held on the show, with viewers submitting their own art work. Seeing Hairspray as more than simply a post-racial American fantasy requires taking the storys teen dance show setting seriously. As Marie puts it, The rewards were so great emotionally that you didnt have to ask for a monetary award., Many had difficulties dealing with the void when the show went off the air. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! On the air before Dick Clark debuted, the show was a hit from the beginning, says Arlene today. Was it really twenty years ago? 'Buddy Deane' really did have "Negro day" once a month -- it was called worse in some neighborhoods in Baltimore. It was the times, most remember. 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. were the highest rated local TV show in America." Amazingly, Deane's show was aired live, two-and-a-half hours each day on five days a week with three hours on Saturday. That she has an affluent life-style surprises no one on the Committee. We have a telegram, Buddy would shout almost daily, for Mary Lou to lead a dance, and the cameraman seemed to love her. And none are bitter. 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. 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. And the whole concept of the Committee changed. Mr. Deane's salary . I was playing bongos on them in between takes because it was hilarious and he thought it was hilarious and I didnt stop to think, what the hell am I doing?, shared actor Holter Graham, who was 15 years old during filming. On the one hand, the storys feel-good conclusion implies that colorblindness is the silver bullet that ends racial discrimination, that good intentions and individual acts of bravery are enough to bring about harmony. Im the biggest ham. Although she denies being conscious of the camera, she admits, I did try to dance up front. This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC. In 1950, Deane moved to Baltimore to host 1230 AM WITH after Stan Kenton, a performer and guest he was interviewing, informed him of the opening at the radio station. His childhood nickname was Buddy. In 1950, he moved to Baltimore to WITH. Image Credit: OzNet.com. Here is the new video celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Buddy Deane Show and the former Catonsville Community College (now CCBC). Why? Id wonder. She wasnt even a fan of the show. If Im ever depressed, sometimes I think, Well this will make me feel better, and I go and dig in the box., Holding onto the memories more than anyone is Arlene Kozak, who is by far the most loved by all the Committee members. 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. So the NAACP targeted the show for protests. NBCs Hairspray Live! Before long I started getting lots of fan mail: I think youre neat. On the show you were either a drape or a square, explains Sharon. 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. The Funtown reference is powerful because it captures one of the ways that Jim Crow segregation and white supremacy played out for children and teenagers. Theatre producer, Margo Lion, saw a television broadcast of the film in 1998 and started to conceive it as a stage musical. Ladies and gentlemen, the nicest kids in town!. Some kids on the show went a little nuts, with stars in their eyes; they thought they were going to go to Hollywood and be moviestars.. Thank you for including me as one of the Buddy Dean family. Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. Actor: Hairspray. . This article is among features at explorepinebluff.com, a program of the Pine Bluff Advertising and Promotion Commission. Or Snuggle Dolls? Though black and white . I was able after a while to afford some clothes from Lees of Broadway (whose selection of belted coats and pegged pants made it the Saks Fifth Avenue of Deaners). . The action of the musical takes place in 1962 and centers around Baltimore's teenage obsession with the television program The Corny Collins Show, a stand-in for an actual Baltimore production of the day, The Buddy Deane Show. 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. Oh, black teens could dancejust not with the white kids. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. 1 DJ in 1962 by Billboard mag. It was difficult with your peers, recalls Peanuts. The regulars . She was the one of the biggies who refused to be on the Board (they had power; a liked because of it). I wanted to dance., We had a saying: The show either makes you or breaks you,' says Kathy. We really sprayed it, remembers Mary Lou today from her home in Pennsylvania. . He was one of the first to showcase rock and roll music on a continual basis. Friday, February 24, 2023. Everybody wanted to kick a Buddy Deaners a, says Gene, recalling thugs waiting to jump Deaners outside the studio. . In 1985 the Committee members are for the most part happy and healthy, living in Baltimore, and still recognized on the street. That was our whole social life, being a Buddy Deaner, says Gene. I wasnt going to go on and not be seen. But even Evanne turned bashful on one show, when Buddy made a surprise announcement: I was voted prettiest girl on this whole Army base. To this day, Im reluctant to tell some of my black friends I was on Buddy Deane because they look at it as a terrible time.. My heart would have broken in two if I couldnt have gone on. Finally, Helen quit Mergenthaler (Mervo) trade school, at the height of her fame. "The Buddy Deane Show," which aired on WJZ-TV in Baltimore from 1957 until 1964. . The first big stars were Bobbi Bums and Freddy Oswinkle, according to Arlene, but no matter how big anyone got, someone came along who was even bigger. Joe Cash and Joan Teves became the shows first royalty. Hairspray was the actors first film, before Dead Poets Society, which came out the next year. I was so embarrassed. And it was not unique: Dick Reids Record Hop in Charleston, West Virginia; Ginny Paces Saturday Hop in Houston, Texas; John Dixons Dixon on Disc in Mobile, Alabama; Bill Sanderss show in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Dewey Phillipss Pop Shop in Memphis, Tennessee; and Chuck Allens Teen Tempo in Jackson, Mississippi, were all segregated dance shows. Or the Bob-a Loop? By what name was The Buddy Deane Show (1957) officially released in Canada in English? Voters approve of . I thought I was running the world, so they developed a Board, and the Committee began governing itself. Being elected to the Board became the ultimate status symbol. Not one of the Committee members, the ones chosen to be on the show every daythe Baltimore version of the Mouseketeers, the nicest kids in town, as they were billed. There were a lot of obscene phone calls., And the rumors, God, the rumors. We used to go to stand in front of Reads Drugstore, and people would ask for our autograph.. In early 2003, Deane sold KOTN and three other stations he had acquired over the years. We are kind of like Ozzie and Harriet, says Gene Snyder as Linda nods in agreement. 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.. 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