My friend Frank Buxton writes…
In 1963 I was the host of a daytime game show on ABC called Get The Message. Goodson-Todman had sold ABC on the idea of three back-to-back half-hour game shows to air in the morning Monday-to-Friday. I hosted the first half-hour, Dick Clark was the host of the show that occupied the second half-hour and Bill Cullen, the old reliable, hosted the third half-hour. I don't remember the names or formats of the other two but Get the Message was a pastiche of every game show Goodson-Todman had ever done, mostly Password. They lasted three cycles, 39 weeks.
As you mentioned, Clark would fly in and tape his week's worth of shows in two days and then fly back to L.A. I taped my week's worth of shows in two days, too, but I had a small apartment in New York ("The mice were hunchbacked.") and a lovely home in Northern New Hampshire. I never envied Dick his trip back to L.A. because my heart was in New Hampshire. At the same time I was hosting Discovery so I was visible on ABC many times a week and able to pay the rent and the mortgage.
Sidebar – Not mentioned in the references to American Bandstand was that in 1962 Discovery debuted, running every afternoon Monday through Friday, taking over the second half hour of American Bandstand on the network. I'm sure that Dick objected and I know that some Bandstand fans were unhappy but Discovery ran for nine years, which is not a bad run. I believe that a lot of the reasoning behind cutting Bandstand to a half-hour and airing Discovery had to do with pressure being brought to bear by the FCC for "better programs," whatever that meant.
Another sidebar – Just about everyone in our business has been fired, some of us several times. I was "replaced" as host of Get The Message in its last few weeks, ostensibly because I was not "that familiar a personality to the woman watching at home" and they needed someone who was. So I was replaced by Robert Q. Lewis. It's a story I relish telling but it depends upon knowing who Robert Q. Lewis was. The differences between us were extraordinary.
Yes…the people you worked with, Frank, liked you.
I believe the show Dick Clark hosted as part of that block was Missing Links and the one hosted by Bill Cullen was The Price is Right, which had gone on before the other two and which outlasted them.
As I understand it, Dick Clark taped a lot more than a week's worth of The $10,000 Pyramid when he flew back to New York for a weekend. I hear different tales and perhaps it changed over the years…but I think at one point he'd do ten episodes on Saturday, then five more on Sunday. So…three weeks of shows in a day and a half. I wonder how many hosts could do that at all, let alone not be loopy by the last shows of the first day.
I was a big Discovery fan but never quite got the appeal of Bandstand so I didn't mind the displacement. We had a fellow out in L.A. named Lloyd Thaxton who did a similar, local show (similar to Bandstand) and did it much better…in part because it was local. He talked about events in Los Angeles and places in Los Angeles and the kids who danced on the show were from local schools. And Thaxton got into the spirit of fun, doing lip-sync routines and donning costumes. Dick Clark, even when he was a young man, always came across like an adult with a slightly patronizing attitude towards the teenagers who danced on his show and a "don't muss my hair" arrogance. But I liked him on other things.
I remember an interesting comment he made once to me about how Bandstand had evolved. He said that before around 1980, the kids who came on to dance would — for the most part — just dance the way they danced at parties. After music videos came into being and especially after MTV went on in '81, almost all the kids danced for the camera and some came on with elaborate, practiced routines. That's when I really thought it seemed phony.