My parents didn't talk much about racism, and as a result I grew up learning to love everybody. Vanessa Udon plays Motormouth Maybelle, who hosts the monthly Negro Day on the Corny Collins Show. The show featured only white kids dancing, so Scruggs wrote him a letter in the fall of 1958 to . As you can see from the December thread my question concerning African Americans was totally dismissed by the Committee member who was speaking. "If you first appeared on The Buddy Deane Show then you could not appear on The Dick Clark Show," Deane said. In 1963, the Civic Interest Group, an student integrationist group founded at Morgan State University, challenged this policy by obtaining tickets for black and white teens to attend the show on a day reserved for black teenagers. On Jan. 4, 1964, nearly five months after the first -- and only -- day that black and white kids danced cheek to cheek on TV in WJZ's studios, Buddy Deane put "The Party's Over" on the record player. This program is a tribute to long-time Maryland radio announcer Buddy Deane, who passed away in August, 2003. When: Summer 1963. The Buddy Deane Show was taken off the air because home station WJZ-TV was unwilling to integrate black and white dancers. Girl Scout leader, very active in my kids school. Mary Lou is still a star. Later that year he enlisted in the Army, where he served in Europe involved in some of the most intense battles of World War II. 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. When I became of age to understand it all I became motivated to make a difference. 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. . From 1957 to 1963, only white teens were allowed to attend the weekday broadcasts of the Buddy Deane Show, with the exception of one Monday each month when black teenagers filled the Buddy himself, the high priest, returned for the event. THE BUDDY DEANE SHOW John Waters based The Corny Collins Show on The Buddy Deane Show, a daily Baltimore dance party show that was very popular throughout the late Fifties and early. When the show ended, Deane moved back to Arkansas,. Deane even dubbed himself "the morning mayor." I saw the show as a vehicle to make something of myself, remembers Joe. The Buddy Deane Show was a teen dance television show, created by Zvi Shoubin, hosted by Winston "Buddy" Deane (1924-2003), and aired on WJZ-TV (Channel 13), the ABC affiliate station in Baltimore from 1957 until 1964. You could throw her down on the ground, and her hair would crack, recalls Gene. Perhaps the last thing 2016 needs is a star-studded, light-hearted musical endorsement of colorblindnessthough, viewed holistically, Hairspray is more than that. From 1996 to 2003, he hosted dance events in Baltimore, Pennsylvania and aboard cruise ships. Helens fans flocked to see her at the Buddy Deane Record Hops (Committee members had to make such personal appearances and sign autographs.) The first and maybe the biggest Buddy Deane queen of all. He wanted me to go to a summer training session to be a trapeze artist. Ninfa O. Barnard wrote this article for explorepinebluff.com. Both entities launche. Linda reverently describes her Committee membership as the best experience I ever had in my life. They later became members of the Permanent Committee, the hall of fame that could come back to dance even after retiring. All on Pulaski Highway. Neither these AP materials nor any portion thereof may be stored in a computer except for personal and noncommercial use. Material from the Associated Press is Copyright 2023, Associated Press and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. It was a family: Buddy was the father, Arlene was the mother.. Jul 24, 2017 - Explore Bruce Clarke's board "Buddy Dean Show", followed by 154 people on Pinterest. Buddy called me up before the cameras, and I wasnt dressed my best. Before long I started getting lots of fan mail: I think youre neat. 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. Fran Nedeloff (debuting at 14 in 61, Mervo, cha-cha) remembers the look: Straight skirt to the knee, cardigan sweater buttoned up the back, cha-cha heels, lots of heavy black eyeliner, definitely Clearasil on the lips, white nail polish. On August 2, 1924, Winston Joseph Deane was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I focused on the 1957-1964 television series The Buddy Deane Show in part because I'm interested in documenting old school African American originated line dances, and the Buddy Deane Show's 1958 or 1959 clip of The Madison appears to be the earliest surviving film of that dance.I believe that The Buddy Deane Show is important in part because it documents aspects of Americana such as the way the teenagers (or at least White teenagers] in the late 1950s and early 1960s dressed, danced, interacted, and also documented (through retrospective interviews such as the one quoted in Excerpt #2 of this post) attitudes and values of that time. Buddy offered to have three or even four days a week all black, but that wasnt it. It was similar to Philadelphia's American Bandstand. GOD HELP US! Oh, my God, its Evanne! Autograph books, cameras, this is what they lived for. 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. I was totally star-struck and had as much fun that night as I did at the Cannes Film Festival. In the beginning, there was Arlene. 2003. The first page of the essay, for example, features a full-page picture of black protestors in 1962 in Times . It was a real kick! Her fame even brought an offer to join the circus. If I have one regret in life, its that I wasnt a Buddy Deaner. But I was never a Deaner. 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. . 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. [citation needed]. By representing this realityin bubble-gum, technicolor clarityHairspray does something that pure documentation, at times, cant: It makes a difficult part of a nations history accessible (and entertaining) to millions of viewers. Integration ended The Buddy Deane Show. Hairspray is firmly rooted in 1960s America, but it offers both sophisticated and (tellingly) simplistic ways of understanding racism today. 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.. As with the drapes and squares of the previous decade, she explains, there were two classes of people thenDeaners and Joe College. Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. I was so embarrassed. 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. Some of the local teens who danced on the show became local celebrities and had fans of their own. At just 10 years old, he and a friend set up their own radio station in a chicken coop that belonged to Deane's mother. January 4, 1964. Every rock n roll star of the day (except Elvis) came to town to lip-synch and plug their records on the show: Buddy Holly, Domino, the Supremes, the Marvelettes, Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian, to name just a few. Get off that furniture!? Maybe ''The Buddy Deane Show,'' the teen-dance-party that ran on local television in Baltimore from 1957 to 1964 and inspired ''Hairspray,'' was the only wholesome obsession that ever led to one . She became so popular that she was written up in the nationwide Sixteen Magazine. I used to get death threats on the show. If you leaned on one side, the next day youd just pick it out into shape. 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. 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.. The television news reporter covering the Corny Collins Show in the film sums up the climactic scene: Youre seeing history being made today. The Deaners didnt mind. On the air before Dick Clark debuted, the show was a hit from the beginning, says Arlene today. 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. . So the NAACP targeted the show for protests. "I still go to the Buddy Deane reunions," he says. Mr. Ladies and gentlemen, the nicest kids in town!. Teenagers who appeared on the show every day were known as "The Committee". 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. Deane also played songs that other disc jockeys, including Dick Clark, refused to present to mostly white teen TV audiences because the acts sounded "too black" (e.g. [citation needed]. . Ironically, The Buddy Deane Show introduced black music and artists into the lives of white Baltimore teenagers, many of whom learned to dance from black friends and listened to black radio. I was honored, touched by it all.. But it went something like this: Buddy Deane was an exclusively white show. C. Fields in drag.), This movie is the only radical movie I ever made because it snuck in mid-America. 1957, it was a huge success as it was portrayed in the musical. A special. "The Buddy Deane Show," which aired on WJZ-TV in Baltimore from 1957 until 1964. . "I told him I thought it was terrible," Melva Lee Scruggs said about the "Buddy Deane Show." For the rest of the time, the show's participants were all white. It was difficult with your peers, recalls Peanuts. That's what really happened, and the show shut down." 3. For example, consider the comments of members of the "Committee" [the regularly featured White teenagers on that show] about boys having it worse than girls because boys weren't supposed to dance. When I get depressed, I dont go to the psychiatrist, I go to the jeweler, she says. Several local art contests were also held on the show, with viewers submitting their own art work. Each reunion (and a new one is in the works) ls bigger than the last. I wanted to dance., We had a saying: The show either makes you or breaks you,' says Kathy. The musical is based on John Waters' 1988 campy movie of the same name. The Buddy Deane show aired 6 times a week and had a dance committee just like in hairspray. One time I was going with this guy, and he was dancing with this guest I didnt like, says Evanne. We have a telegram, Buddy would shout almost daily, for Mary Lou to lead a dance, and the cameraman seemed to love her. 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. 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. So there you have it. 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. And Divine said, What drag queen would allow themselves to look like this?'. Image Credit: OzNet.com. That she has an affluent life-style surprises no one on the Committee. The 1988 John Waters film, newly adapted into an NBC live musical, presents a view of racial discrimination thats by turns nave and enlightening. (There was a token all-black program once a month on the show called "Negro Day" in the movie, a phrase that now drips with surreal period flavor but no black Committee, and the protests called for integrating the show.) It was similar to Philadelphia's American Bandstand. Print Headline: Buddy Deane Show was huge hit for young viewers in the late 1950s, Copyright 2023, Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC. Sure, as a teenager I was a guest on the show. After a surprise interracial broadcast, WJZ-TV received bomb and arson threats, hate mail, and complaints from white parents. SOUL! I dont think Ill ever get over missing it, if you want to know the truth., Many of the Committee members spouses faced an even bigger adjustment. Id hook and have to dance in the back so the teachers couldnt see me, says Helen. The Buddy Deane.phenomenon is hardly dead. The Buddy Deane Show was taken off the air because home station WJZ-TV was unwilling to integrate black and white dancers. 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. I graduated from an HBCU, lived through racism, marched on Washington with Martin Luther King, and was active in fighting injustices in Baltimore County at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. "Hairspray" will continue at East Ridge High School through April 23. Oddly enough, few of the Deaners Ive talked to went on to show biz. Another royal Deaner couple who met on the air and later married was Gene Snyder and Linda Warehime. Gene calls it a big loss. It was living in a fantasy world, says Helen. This weekly time slot became known as "Special Guest Day" by the Deane Show's white performers and "Black Monday" by Baltimore's Black teens. 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. Waters grew up with "The Buddy Deane Show" in Baltimore, and modeled his fictitious "Corny Collins Show" after it. Mary Lou laughs at the memory of doing a pimple medicine spot on camera. Advertisement. I didnt mean to, because I never would have messed up the makeup.. Please read our Terms of Use or contact us. 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. 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. Deane also held dances at various Maryland American Legion posts and National Guard armories which were not taped or broadcast on television. 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. Not show biz, Arlene answers, hesitating, but the record biz, the people. Its host was Winston "Buddy" Deane (1924-2003), who died in Pine Bluff, Arkansas after . Buddy Deane was the host of a Baltimore dance show that ran on TV from 1957 to 1964 six days a week. Almost all dancers wore swim wear and beach attire, with music provided by WJZ-TV. 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