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. The whole day on the show was devoted to me.. producers hope this story of interracial unity will be appealing to television audiences in 2016. One time I was going with this guy, and he was dancing with this guest I didnt like, says Evanne. 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. The best little jitterbugger in Baltimore. One of the first ponytail princesses was Peanuts (Sharon Goldman, debuting at 14 in 58, Forest Park, Chicken Hop), who went on the show because Deaners were folk heroes. She remembers Paul Anka singing Put Your Head on My Shoulder to her on camera as she did just that. No matter how progressive we become, there will always be those who will still hang on to the tradition of hate. It was similar to Philadelphia's American Bandstand. 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. 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. No! she answers, with a conviction that gives me the chills. 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. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached, or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Baltimore Magazine. John Waters, a Baltimore filmmaker and Deane Show fan, loosely based "The Corny Collins' Show" in his movie "Hairspray" on Deane's show. And they all came together on the Buddy Deane Show, Baltimore's legendary teen dance show. In Hairspray (1988), Tammy Turner assists Corny Collins on the show. 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. 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. Sources: www.IMDB.com -- Buddy Deane Biography; www.OzNet.com - A Collection of Articles About Buddy Deane; www.Variety.com -- Winston J. In her home, near Allentown, Pennsylvania, she serves me a beautiful brunch, models her fur coats, and poses with her Mercedes. 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. Deaners seem to come out of the woodwork, drawn by the memory of their stardom. 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. And Divine said, What drag queen would allow themselves to look like this?'. The Stupidity, where you act mentally ill. The Bugs easy, you just catch a disease and throw it to someone else, Waters said. Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. 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. . I got these letters from the Naval Academy, Helen remembers, so I went there one day, and all the midshipmen were hanging out the windows. Six days a week and often two hours a day, Buddy Deane and his Committee Members--the privileged regular teen dancers . Friday, February 24, 2023. Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. Baltimore teenagers rushed home to catch the show daily to listen to the popular music, watch their favorite dancers, copy their style and learn the new dances that were introduced almost every week. Theyd stand outside my home. He eventually became one of the most respected programmers in the country and was even written up in Time magazine. 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. 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 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. Youre in Baltimore. The Committee, initially recruited from local teen centers, was to act as hosts and dance with the guests. 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. I'm sure they could have reached out to me via these posts, but did not. Checking back with the studio, no one had information concerning footage of African American dancers. (They gave her a diamond watch at the last reunion.) 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.. Originally aired 11/5/1986. So the NAACP targeted the show for protests. I even won the twist contest with Mary Lou Raines (one of the queens of The Buddy Deane Show) at the Valley Country Club. 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 havent seen her since we made the movie, said Waters. Most are happily married with kids and maintain the same images they had on the show. Not a real one. Deane helped the Bill Haley and the Comets song "Rock Around the Clock" become a hit in Baltimore a full year before it became a worldwide success by promoting their music while at WITH. The Deaners didnt mind. This town just wasnt ready for that. There were threats and bomb scares; integrationists smuggled whites into the all-black shows to dance cheek to cheek on camera with blacks, and that was it. But black kids in . Both entities launche. 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. Why Europeans Dont Get Huge Medical Bills. The Buddy Deane Show was taken off the air because home station WJZ-TV was unwilling to integrate black and white dancers. three, two, one. . From 1968 into 1973, the public television variety show SOUL! Every day after school kids would run home, tune in, and dance with the bedpost or refrigerator door as they watched. Buddy Deane. 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. has the chance to resurface a forgotten history of how discrimination in pop culture intimately shaped the lives of young people 50 years ago. Some fifty years later, the mindset is STILL the same. Pixie was barely five feet tall, but her hair sometimes added a good six to eight inches to her height. You are watching the "Buddy Deane Show." "The Buddy Deane Show" defined a new generation of rock & roll as well as dance on television in the late 1950s. Hairspray movie was inspired by this show and was based off of the the events but unlike the movies, instead of the show being integrated, it was cancelled. A big strong line!) up the hill to the famous dance party set, the one that now houses People Are Talking. [citation needed]. Then we made up on camera.. From 1996 to 2003, he hosted dance events in Baltimore, Pennsylvania and aboard cruise ships. Neither these AP materials nor any portion thereof may be stored in a computer except for personal and noncommercial use. This page was last edited on 29 July 2022, at 06:25. 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. MPT did a segment which included interviews with former African American dancers who appeared on the show. But most have settled down to a very straight life. After a surprise interracial broadcast, WJZ-TV received bomb and arson threats, hate mail, and complaints from white parents. Associated Press text, photo, graphic, audio and/or video material shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium. ', Although many parents and WJZ insisted that Committee members had to keep up their grades to stay on the show, the reality could be quite different. When Barry Levinson, another Baltimore native, requested video from the show for his film Diner, the station told him it had no footage. I was a misfit. Yes, I miss it very much. 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. The Buddy Deane Show was taken off the air because home station WJZ-TV was unwilling to integrate black and white dancers. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! The movie was eventually turned into a musical by the same name. "I still go to the Buddy Deane reunions," he says. I used to get death threats on the show. Deane died in Pine Bluff on July 16, 2003, after experiencing complications caused by a stroke. It was similar to Philadelphia's American Bandstand. 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. 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. [1], As with many other local TV shows, little footage of the show is known to have survived. Waters grew up with "The Buddy Deane Show" in Baltimore, and modeled his fictitious "Corny Collins Show" after it. Mr. Deane hosted a crowd of exuberant teens, who danced to the music of live rock bands, including many name acts. 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. All rights reserved. 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. 'Buddy' Deane; www.WashingtonPost.com -- The Messy Truth of The Real 'Hairspray.' 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. Pauline Kael praised him. (The rave appeared in The New Yorker, where Kael said it was really Divines movie, calling him W. 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. Many top acts of the day, both black and white, appeared on The Buddy Deane Show. Both black and white activists picketed the . 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 . 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. Influencers: Profiles of a Partnership 2022, How to Pitch Stories and Articles to IndieWire, John Waters Shares His 10 Favorite Films of 2022, 'Peter Von Kant' Tops List, John Waters to Write and Direct 'Liarmouth' from His Own Novel, Quentin Tarantino's Favorite Movies: 50 Films the Director Wants You to See, Oscars 2023: Best Animated Feature Predictions. The show featured only white kids dancing, so Scruggs wrote him a letter in the fall of 1958 to . This program is a tribute to long-time Maryland radio announcer Buddy Deane, who passed away in August, 2003. 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. 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. "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 . Material from the Associated Press is Copyright 2023, Associated Press and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 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. The show's format mirrored Philadelphia's . Deane even played a small role in the movie, which premiered to moderate success but went on to become a cult classic. January 4, 1964. When the subject comes up today, most loyalists want to go off the record. The film would spawn a 2002 Broadway musical adaptation starring Harvey Fierstein and Marissa Jaret Winokur, and a 2007 film adaptation of the musical starring John Travolta and Nikki Blonsky. 1957, it was a huge success as it was portrayed in the musical. Once a month the show was all black; there was no black Committee. There were a lot of obscene phone calls., And the rumors, God, the rumors. The producers of Diner wanted to include Buddy Deane footage in their film, but most of the shows were live and any tapes of this local period piece have been erased. Sometimes youd wrap your hair at night. They are still referred to, good naturedly by some, as the Ken and Barbie of the show. Gene, a member of the first Committee, and I underline first, later became president of the Board. I was aggressive. 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. Joe remembers a sport coat I bought for $5 from somebody who got it when he got out of prison. In its version of 1960s Baltimore, teenagers sing and dance their way past race. I had always studied dance, and I wanted to go on [the show]. I wanted to go, but my parents wouldnt let me. Kathy switched to a great beehive that resembled a trash can sitting on top of her head. The Buddy Deane.phenomenon is hardly dead. Ninfa O. Barnard wrote this article for explorepinebluff.com. 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 . Some of the really dedicated Committee members get tears in their eyes. 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. 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.. . 2003. Could it be? You could throw her down on the ground, and her hair would crack, recalls Gene. 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.. Gene calls it a big loss. It was living in a fantasy world, says Helen. A devoted fan of the Buddy Deane Show, Waters drew on this history to write and direct the original film version of Hairspray. The Corny Collins Show, it turns out, was lifted almost literally from the extremely popular Buddy Deane Show, Baltimore's answer to Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Originally an all-white teen show with a monthly "Negro . 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. When that little red light came on, so did my smile, she says, laughing. August 8, 2022 at 3:55 a.m. Im the biggest ham. Although she denies being conscious of the camera, she admits, I did try to dance up front. The rivalry with Dick Clark meant that Deane urged all his performers not to mention American Bandstand or visits to Clark in Philadelphia. The more hair spray, the better. Yeah it was Cosenel, says Joe. 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.. We faked a feud. Everybody wanted to kick a Buddy Deaners a, says Gene, recalling thugs waiting to jump Deaners outside the studio. 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. 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. He was so happy. Yet Joe was a dropout when he went on the show and then, once famous, went back to finish. It was the era of rock n' roll ducktail, pegged pants, and beehive haridos. The show designated every other friday to their black dancers, similar to "Negro Day" on the Corny Collins Show. I still believe that footage is out there somewhere. Its host was Winston "Buddy" Deane (1924-2003), who died in Pine Bluff, Arkansas after . If I have one regret in life, its that I wasnt a Buddy Deaner. The Corny Collins Show is now integrated! Waters himself commented on the films revisionist history, I gave it a happy ending that it didnt have., Hairsprays happy ending gave the story an arc that appealed to Broadway and Hollywood producers. I was with this guy named Jeff. We really sprayed it, remembers Mary Lou today from her home in Pennsylvania. Greetings, Pat Brun.Thanks for commenting in this pancocojams discussion thread. I only saw Divine alive one more time after that night, so it was a great, great night to remember. Deane began his broadcasting career at KLXR in Little Rock, Arkansas. 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. His show became one of the highest rated stations in the country. As well, a show was broadcast from a local farm in Westminster, Maryland. In the beginning, there was Arlene. I was a square. Advertisement. On Negro day a group of black and white kids staged a similar sneak attack on the Buddy Deane Show. 1 DJ in 1962 by Billboard mag. Sure, as a teenager I was a guest on the show. It was similar to Philadelphia's American Bandstand. Voters approve of . This sort of nearsighted, if not disingenuous, framing persists today, whether in affluent parents in New York City insisting their opposition to school rezoning proposals is not about race, or in arguments suggesting that the best way to address racism is to stop accusing people of being racists.. The Buddy Deane Show was taken off the air because home station WJZ-TV was unwilling to integrate black and white dancers. Nicknamed "Buddy" as a child, Deane . In a long list of reasons why we find it difficult to wait for freedom, King writes: When you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she cant go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. offered an unfiltered, uncompromising celebration of Black literature, poetry, music, and politics, capturing a critical moment in culture whose impact continues to resonate today. 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. Ric Ocasek as the Beatnik cat; Pia Zadora as the Beatnik chick; Production. Soon after, he and his family moved to Memphis, Tenn. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. I had to get up there on time. Vanessa Udon plays Motormouth Maybelle, who hosts the monthly Negro Day on the Corny Collins Show. Not show biz, Arlene answers, hesitating, but the record biz, the people. The Hairspray Live! Museum Day; Art; Books; Design; Food; Music & Film; Video; Newsletter; Travel. In 1984, he sold the station to a local college but bought it back in 1996. Pancocojams showcases the music, dances, language practices, & customs of African Americans and of other people of Black descent throughout the world. So there you have it. Washington D.C.'s The Milt Grant Show offered "Black Tuesday" and Baltimore's The Buddy Deane Show had "Negro Day" because . Unlike the tensions that followed the real integration of the Buddy Deane Show, Waterss Hairspray ends with the protesters triumphing. 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. Seeing Hairspray as more than simply a post-racial American fantasy requires taking the storys teen dance show setting seriously. Just once. 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. All on Pulaski Highway. Being a teenage star in Baltimore had its drawbacks. But an intrepid group of local and . Or Hartford Motor Coach Company? BLACK MUSIC MOMENT #96: Short-Lived Integration Of The Buddy Deane Show. The information used was obtained from WJZ. 2023 IndieWire Media, LLC. . Id hook and have to dance in the back so the teachers couldnt see me, says Helen. 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. . "I remember it well," recalls Evanne. I was honored, touched by it all.. When: Summer 1963. Nationally, American Bandstand blocked black teens from entering the studio during its years in Philadelphia, despite host Dick Clarks claims to the contrary. 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. Special appearances. One girl yelled Buddy Deaner and then threw her plate at me. NBCs Hairspray Live! From 1964 to 1984, Deane hosted a show and owned KOTN-FM and KOTN-AM radio stations at Pine Bluff. . The show featured only white kids dancing, so Scruggs wrote him a letter in the fall of 1958 to . 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. The Buddy Deane Show was a teenage dance party, on the air from 1957 to 1964. His childhood nickname was Buddy. The night was full of delightful anecdotes, including these ten you may not have heard before. IndieWire is a part of Penske Media Corporation. Rather than integrating, the show was canceled. Mary Lou was the last of the Buddy Deane superstars, true hair-hopper royalty, the ultimate Committee member. 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. Buddy himself, the high priest, returned for the event. It was difficult with your peers, recalls Peanuts. Clip from Shake, Rattle, and Roll: The Buddy Deane Scrapbook 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. It was very interesting to see my conversation quoted in this article. He was mad because I was as popular as he was. I appreciate the contribution that you and NOBLE BRUN, and other Black dancers on the Buddy Dean dance show made on that series. As you can see from the December thread my question concerning African Americans was totally dismissed by the Committee member who was speaking. Plot. The black cops would stop us and say: This isnt Greenwich Village, you know. 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. But it went something like this: Buddy Deane was an exclusively white show. 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. On this day in 1979, Sweeney Todd first opened on Broadway . Oddly enough, few of the Deaners Ive talked to went on to show biz. Other vices were likewise eschewed. 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). I wanted to dance., We had a saying: The show either makes you or breaks you,' says Kathy. In early 2003, Deane sold KOTN and three other stations he had acquired over the years. Some of the local teens who danced on the show became local celebrities and had fans of their own. There are other socio-cultural comments in various YouTube comments threads about the Madison dance. I got a little power-crazed, admits Joe. Every day Id come to the studio in knee-highs, and Id have to take them off. 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. Even doing commercials was expected. Deane organized and disc-jockeyed dances in public venues across the WJZ-TV broadcast area, including much of central Maryland, Delaware, and southern Pennsylvania where tens of thousands of teenagers were exposed to live recording artists and TV personalities. The Buddy Deane Show: With Channing Wilroy, Buddy Deane. Also, read the comments in that same excerpt about the series only wanting "attractive" teenagers as featured dancers. 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. Buddy wanted it to end happily, but WJZ angered Deaners when it tried to blame the ratings. Friday, February 19 at 7PM. 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 Buddy Deane Show was taken off the air because home station WJZ-TV was unwilling to integrate black and white dancers. Marie Fischer was the first Joe to become a Committee memberchosen simply because she was such a good dancer. Originally an all-white teen show with a monthly "Negro . You Cant Stop the Beat, for example, is an upbeat dance number that resolves the issue of segregation on the Corny Collins Show. 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