Live! Dick Clark Presents

Did You Know?

• Clark was born on November 30, 1929, in Bronxville, New York, and raised in neighboring Mount Vernon.
• Clark was married three times: to Barbara Mallery (1952–1961), Loretta Martin (1962–1971), and Kari Wigton (1977 until his death).

Radio and television career

Dick Clark began his career in 1945 working in the mailroom at WRUN, an AM radio station in Utica, New York, owned by his uncle and managed by his father. He soon filled in for the vacationing weatherman and within months was announcing station breaks. While attending Syracuse University, he worked at WOLF-AM, a country music station. After graduating in 1951 with a degree in advertising and a minor in radio, he returned briefly to WRUN, using the name Dick Clay. He then took a job at television station WKTV in Utica, where his first hosting role was on Cactus Dick and the Santa Fe Riders, a country-music program. He later replaced Robert Earle as a newscaster. In 1952, Clark moved to Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, and became a disc jockey at radio station WFIL, adopting the Dick Clark handle. WFIL's affiliated television station broadcast Bob Horn's Bandstand, and Clark hosted a similar radio program and substituted for Horn. The show was picked up by ABC, renamed American Bandstand, and debuted nationally on August 5, 1957. Clark's natural rapport with the live teenage audience and his clean-cut image helped introduce rock and roll to many parents.

Business ventures

In 1965, Dick Clark moved beyond hosting to produce Where the Action Is, a daily afternoon show filmed at a new location each week, with Paul Revere and the Raiders as the house band. He launched the American Music Awards in 1973, and his production company went public in 1987. Clark also invested in a restaurant chain using names like Dick Clark's American Bandstand Grill and Dick Clark's AB Diner. Active locations include two airport spots in Newark, New Jersey, and Phoenix, Arizona; one at the Molly Pitcher Service Area on the New Jersey Turnpike in Cranbury; and another at his American Bandstand Theater in Branson, Missouri. That theater opened in April 2006, and a combined theater and restaurant, the American Bandstand Music Complex, debuted near Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, nine months later. For a short period from 1979 to 1980, Clark owned the former Westchester Premier Theatre in Greenburgh, New York, and renamed it the Dick Clark Westchester Theatre.

Illness and death

In April 2004, Clark told Larry King he had type 2 diabetes. A stroke, initially called minor, sent him to a Los Angeles hospital on December 6 of that year. He missed hosting his New Year's Rockin' Eve show, with Regis Philbin taking over. Clark came back the next year, but the stroke left him with dysarthria, making clear speech impossible for the rest of his life. On April 18, 2012, at age 82, Clark died of a heart attack in a Santa Monica hospital, not long after a transurethral resection for an enlarged prostate. His death certificate listed coronary artery disease. His remains were cremated on April 20, and his ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean after his estate got the required environmental permits.

Legacy

Following Clark's death, House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier eulogized him on the floor of the U.S. Congress. President Barack Obama praised Clark's career, stating that with American Bandstand he introduced decades of viewers to the music of their times and reshaped the television landscape as a creative and innovative producer. Motown founder Berry Gordy said Clark was always there for him and Motown, calling him an entrepreneur, a visionary, and a major force in changing pop culture and ultimately influencing integration. Singer Diana Ross noted that Clark presented Motown and the Supremes on tour with the Caravan of Stars and on American Bandstand, where she got her start.