We’ll Miss Dick Clark Tonight! <\/p>\n
The photo is from New Year’s Eve 1988, and the story below is from the New York Times from April of this year. It’s a nice and interesting read. Enjoy and Happy New Year!
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Dick Clark had a commuter\u2019s relationship with New York \u2014 a long-distance commuter\u2019s relationship. He did not arrive on a train from the suburbs; he arrived on a plane from the West Coast.<\/p>\n
For the man who kept Times Square in the national consciousness in the 1980s and 1990s, New Year\u2019s Eve was a one-night-a-year broadcast and home was 2,500 miles away.<\/p>\n
For nine years as the host of the \u201cPyramid\u201d game show \u2014 \u201cThe $10,000 Pyramid\u201d until, in inflationary times, it became \u201cThe $20,000 Pyramid\u201d \u2014 he spent two days a week in Manhattan. He arrived in time to be at the studio on West 58th Street at 8 a.m. on Tuesday. He taped five shows, returning on Wednesday to tape five more. Then he was off to catch a flight to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere is the incredible thing,\u201d Mike Gargiulo, who was the show\u2019s director, recalled on Thursday, one day after Mr. Clark\u2019s death. \u201cIn nine years, we had only one day when he missed his 6 o\u2019clock plane at J.F.K.\u201d<\/p>\n
So he was here but not here. Dick Clark\u2019s New York was transitory, almost ephemeral, the New York of appearances on television, of parties for other television types, of business meetings. In a stopover in Manhattan in 2000, he said he had flown more than nine million miles, produced more than 7,000 hours of television programs and signed more than 800,000 autographs.<\/p>\n
Then he added two postscripts. The first was, \u201cThat estimate was made three years ago.\u201d The second was, \u201cThank God I have a short name.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a name everyone seemed to know. Jane Rothchild, a producer on \u201cThe $20,000 Pyramid,\u201d remembered a night when she and Mr. Clark went out for a drink after the day\u2019s tapings. \u201cWe passed a guy who was lying drunk in the gutter,\u201d she said. \u201cDick lifted him up and leaned him against a parking meter. As he was teetering with drunkenness, he barely opened his eyes, but did so, focused on who had lifted him, and said, \u2018Thanks, Dick.\u2019 You knew he\u2019d be thinking the next day, \u2018Did Dick Clark really lift me out of the gutter last night?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
For television viewers, he lifted Times Square out of its seediness, just by sticking with his New Year\u2019s Eve show.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe really understood that New Year\u2019s Eve in Times Square could be a vehicle for changing the perception of Times Square,\u201d said Gretchen Dykstra, who was the president of the Times Square Business Improvement District from its creation in 1991 through 1998. \u201cHe and his producers were very amenable to accepting from us suggested scripts that he could include. We would write short pithy paragraphs that he could plug in throughout the evening about a new day coming to Times Square.\u201d<\/p>\n
Times Square is a 20-minute walk from the Elysee Theater, where the \u201cPyramid\u201d shows were videotaped. Mr. Gargiulo said Mr. Clark was unflappable. Did Tony Randall, a guest panelist, say a word you can\u2019t say on television? In the control room, Mr. Gargiulo was frantically figuring out a do-over. On the set, Mr. Clark stayed cool.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like the ball coming down in Times Square,\u201d Mr. Gargiulo said. \u201cHe didn\u2019t get overly excited when people were winning, he didn\u2019t get under-excited when they were losing. He had his own choreography that worked for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2006, Mr. Clark auctioned off memorabilia he had collected presiding over \u201cAmerican Bandstand\u201d and \u201cNew Year\u2019s Rockin\u2019 Eve\u201d and producing made-for-television movies and specials. On the block were such items as his hand-held microphone from \u201cAmerican Bandstand.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt saw every famous rock \u2018n\u2019 roller that was ever born,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Guernsey\u2019s, the auction house that handled the sale, arranged to have the auction in the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, in the Time Warner Center. Arlan Ettinger, the president of Guernsey\u2019s, remembered a moment from the night before the sale, when he and Mr. Clark walked outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was saying how he had grown up in Mount Vernon, you know, a suburb,\u201d Mr. Ettinger said, \u201cand had these visions that someday he hoped he could have an influence on people. We could see down Broadway, and he said, \u2018Just think, here I am in this greatest of all cities, and now they all look at me on New Year\u2019s Eve.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was very humbled,\u201d Mr. Ettinger said. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t saying it in a braggadocio style. He was saying how wonderful to have had an impact on so many lives, how lucky he was. It was very touching.\u201d<\/p>\n
http:\/\/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/04\/19\/looking-back-at-new-yorks-dick-clark\/<\/a><\/p>\n