Bill Haley and the Comets did their premier perf of "Rock Around the Clock" on Deane's show, and Deane was named the No. 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. The films executive producer Craig Zadan argued that what makes Hairspray work is, you never feel like were on a soap box, or were preaching to you, or were saying this is a lesson you need to learn and yet, hopefully, you come away from it with something serious to talk about afterwards. There is no guarantee that viewers will take up these discussions, but Hairspray offers plenty of material for those who choose to do so. The show designated every other friday to their black dancers, similar to "Negro Day" on the Corny Collins Show. The guys who wore sport coats with belts in the back from Lees of Broadway (10 percent discount for Committee members), pegged pants, pointy-toe shoes with the great buckles on the side, and drape (greaser) haircuts that my parents would never allow. "I still go to the Buddy Deane reunions," he says. In early 2003, Deane sold KOTN and three other stations he had acquired over the years. Id hook and have to dance in the back so the teachers couldnt see me, says Helen. The "Corny Collins Show" in Hairspray is loosely based on the Baltimore teen dance program called the "Buddy Deane Show." One Baltimore woman fought to get black teens on the popular show back in . John Waters wrote the screenplay under the title of White Lipstick, with the story loosely based on real events.The Corny Collins Show is based on the real-life Buddy Deane Show, a local dance party program which pre-empted Dick Clark's American Bandstand in the Baltimore area during the 1950s and . Hairspray is the gift that never stops giving, Waters told an adoring crowd at New Yorks IFC Center this past weekend, the theater where Hairspray first opened thirty years ago. [citation needed] With an ear for music seasoned by many more years as a disc jockey than Clark, Deane also brought to his audience a wider array of white musical acts than were seen on American Bandstand. . The television news reporter covering the Corny Collins Show in the film sums up the climactic scene: Youre seeing history being made today. has the chance to resurface a forgotten history of how discrimination in pop culture intimately shaped the lives of young people 50 years ago. Dick Clark patterned his ABC-TV show, Where the Action Is, after local remotes done by Deane in Maryland. Motormouth Maybelle, a fictional black deejay and civil-rights activist played in the NBC version by Jennifer Hudson, sings: You cant stop today as it comes speeding down the track / Child, yesterday is history and its never coming back / Cause tomorrow is a brand new day and it dont know white from black. In the films narrative, this utopian vision of a colorblind future solves the problem of segregation and racial injustice. 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. Integration ended The Buddy Deane Show. Print Headline: Buddy Deane Show was huge hit for young viewers in the late 1950s, Copyright 2023, Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC. 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. Buddy Deane was the host of a Baltimore dance show that ran on TV from 1957 to 1964 six days a week. I'm sure they could have reached out to me via these posts, but did not. . The Buddy Deane Show was taken off the air because home station WJZ-TV was unwilling to integrate black and white dancers. Some of the local teens who danced on the show became local celebrities and had fans of their own. 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. Nicknamed "Buddy" as a child, Deane . If a guy had one beer, it was a big deal. It was similar to Philadelphia's American Bandstand. Or Snuggle Dolls? The show's format mirrored Philadelphia's . And because a new dance was introduced practically every week, you had to watch every day to keep up. The Buddy Deane.phenomenon is hardly dead. So I gave it the happy ending that we had, Waters said. 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. . One girl yelled Buddy Deaner and then threw her plate at me. Buddy wanted it to end happily, but WJZ angered Deaners when it tried to blame the ratings. Here, Clark's memories of American Bandstand are nested in an overview of important events in U.S. history from the 1950s and 1960s. Yeah it was Cosenel, says Joe. 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. 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. offered an unfiltered, uncompromising celebration of Black literature, poetry, music, and politics, capturing a critical moment in culture whose impact continues to resonate today. In 1985 the Committee members are for the most part happy and healthy, living in Baltimore, and still recognized on the street. We would always do The Dirty Boogie, the one you arent allowed to do, he said. Racism is passed down from one generation to the next. An then there was teased hair, replacing the 50s drape with a Buddy Deane look that so pervaded Baltimore culture (especially in East and South Baltimore) that its effect is still seen in certain neighborhoods of this great Hairdo Capital of the World. 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 get letters saying, If you show up at this particular hop, youre gonna get your face pushed in. Buddy said to me, Well, heres my little girl whos been with me the longest. I hardly ever cried, but I just broke down on camera. "If you first appeared on The Buddy Deane Show then you could not appear on The Dick Clark Show," Deane said. The Deane program was a segregated show: white and Black teenagers danced on separate broadcasts. WJZ's show aired from 1957 to 1964 and was popular among Baltimore teens, promoting dances like the twist, mashed potato, and the Madison. John Water's himself said that in his movie, he "gave it the happy ending that it didn't have". You had to wear nylons. (Special to The Commercial/OzNet.com/ExplorePineBluff.com). That's one of the things that the Black Lives Matter movement is talking about. The Corny Collins Show is based on the real Buddy Deane Show which, interestingly, was cancelled in 1964 for refusing to integrate black and white dancers, a core theme in this musical. . The show began in September of 1957 when an Arkansan named Winston Joe "Buddy" Deane was approached by Joel Chaseman, the head of programming at WJZ-TV. It was horrible/ says Joe. That show featured local teens who danced to the. Voters approve of . 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. The regulars . All Rights Reserved. I havent seen her since we made the movie, said Waters. Deane began his broadcasting career at KLXR in Little Rock, Arkansas. But it went something like this: Buddy Deane was an exclusively white show. 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. I got a little power-crazed, admits Joe. He just didnt understand., But some have dealt with the problems in good humor. 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. 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. Joanie, whose mother wanted me to be a child star, hit the show in early 57 at age 13 (you had to be 14 to be eligible, but many lied about their ages to qualify), followed a few months later by Joe, 17. Once I was off the show for a while, and they said I had joined the nunnery, says Helen, laughing. I was totally star-struck and had as much fun that night as I did at the Cannes Film Festival. 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. In 1948, Deane married Helen Stevenson, his childhood sweetheart, whom he first met when he was just four years old. Unlike the tensions that followed the real integration of the Buddy Deane Show, Waterss Hairspray ends with the protesters triumphing. Almost every rock 'n' roll star except Elvis graced the Deane Show stage. The Buddy Deane Show was a teen dance television show, created by Zvi Shoubin, hosted by Winston "Buddy" Deane (19242003), and aired on WJZ-TV (Channel 13), the ABC affiliate station in Baltimore from 1957 until 1964. My parents didn't talk much about racism, and as a result I grew up learning to love everybody. And more important, so did the Committee, still entering by a special door, still doing the dances from the period with utmost precision. His running joke with listeners was that he ran the town from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. until the city's real mayor took over. In mixed marriages (with non-Deaners), many of the outsiders resented their spouses pasts. SOUL! The Deane program set aside every other Friday for a show featuring only black teenagers. In December 1963, producers at Baltimores WJZ-TV cancelled the Buddy Deane Show rather than integrate the popular teen dance program. as its newest live-television musical adaptation. I used to lie in bed at my parents house, and there was an African-American community up the street and they went by singing along to the radio. Kathy switched to a great beehive that resembled a trash can sitting on top of her head. Im a typical housewife, says Peanuts. The Buddy Deane Show was a show from the late 50's to the mid 60's. The show was a teen dance television show, similar to Philadelphia's American Bandstand. The rivalry with Dick Clark meant that Deane urged all his performers not to mention American Bandstand or visits to Clark in Philadelphia. But Hairspray also resonates for at least one of the same reasons it did in the 80s: It shows how seemingly innocent moments in popular culture were also sites of struggle over who was worthy of being a counted as a somebody in America. 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 . August 8, 2022 at 3:55 a.m. "How 'The Buddy Deane Show' really went off the air is the white kids crashed Negro Day to integrate it. The big garage-type door they remember would open, and theyd all pile in, past George and Mom, the Pinkerton guards who used to keep attendance, and crowd into Arlenes office to comb their hair, confide their problems, and touch up their make-up. From then on, all bare shoulders were covered with a piece of net. 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. Gene calls it a big loss. It was living in a fantasy world, says Helen. "I remember it well," recalls Evanne. The first stars I could identify with. 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. [citation needed] In several instances, the show went on location to the Milford Mill swim club on the westside of suburban Baltimore County. Buddy himself, the high priest, returned for the event. But an intrepid group of local and . and later on, growing up, it was a definite blow: reality. I still have a whole box of fan mail, says Evanne. I guess Helen Crist was the first drapette: the DA, the ballet shoes, oogies [tulle scarves], eye shadoweyeliner was big thenand pink lipstick., Helen Crist. Buddy Deane used to boast that every major rock 'n' roll star of the era appeared on the show, except Elvis Presley and Rick Nelson. ' And Evanne still shudders as she recalls, Once I was in the cafeteria. "Hairspray" is set in the 1960s and is based on a TV show called "The Buddy Deane Show," which featured Baltimore-area teenagers dancing to popular music but was canceled in 1964, after the . Ric Ocasek as the Beatnik cat; Pia Zadora as the Beatnik chick; Production. "Hairspray" will continue at East Ridge High School through April 23. Many top acts of the day, both black and white, appeared on The Buddy Deane Show. See, the fictional Corny Collins Show is actually based on the real Buddy Deane Show, which aired on WJZ-TV in Baltimore, Maryland from 1957 to 1964, and was the inspiration for John Waters . Winston Joseph Deane was born on Aug. 2, 1924, in Pine Bluff. Once a month the show was all black; there was no black Committee. 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. 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