‘American Bandstand’ kept secret that teen stars were gay

From: New York Post

"American Bandstand" stars Kenny Rossi and Arlene Sullivan

 When cute young teenagers Arlene Sullivan and Kenny Rossi slow danced together on “American Bandstand” back in the late ’50s and early ’60s, kids across the country swooned.

They wrote thousands of letters. They joined Arlene’s and Kenny’s fan clubs. The big teenybopper magazines of the era — Sixteen and Teen — plastered “Bandstand” dancers on their covers and wrote glowing, gossipy stories about their lives in Philadelphia, where Dick Clark produced the show.

Arlene Sullivan and Kenny Rossi
on the cover of Teen magazine in 1959.

 Five-foot-two, brown-eyed, brown-haired Arlene and handsome Kenny, a year younger, were among the TV music show’s elite, its stars, the vaunted “regulars” along with another couple often on camera — pert, blond Justine Carrelli and suave Bob Clayton.

They were the squeaky-clean Kardashians of their era, and “Bandstand” could easily claim the title as the first reality show. Millions of kids from Brooklyn to Beverly Hills ran home from school every weekday to watch them dance, imitate their styles and fantasize about their lives.

What they didn’t know was that Arlene and several of the other female dancers, and most of the handsome teen boys, were gay.

Clark, known as America’s oldest teenager, knew. But he feared that if the show’s secret ever came out, Middle America would change the channel.

“I knew I was different early on, but being with all these [‘Bandstand’] friends, I came to terms with my feelings. I kissed a girl, and I liked it!” Sullivan, now 74 and long out of the closet, reveals in a fascinating self-published book, “Bandstand Diaries” — billed as “The Book You’ve Waited Over 50 Years to Read!”

Sullivan’s co-author, Ray Smith, recently retired after 40 years as an Emmy-winning “Today” show producer. But back in the “Bandstand” days, Smith was one of the show’s secretly gay dancers.

He debuted in Studio 3B at WFIL-TV, near the El train stop in West Philadelphia, in 1956 when he was a 13-year-old junior high school student. He would dance on the show until early 1960.

Ray Smith was one of the show’s secretly gay dancers.

 And while Smith knew he was gay, he was “shocked” to learn that “most of the guys on ‘Bandstand,’ so many of them, were gay,” he told The Post. “And the one thing that really shocked me was that those boys who were 14 and 15 and 16 were sleeping with each other.”

Clark was “determined” to keep the homosexuality of popular “Bandstand” regulars a secret, Smith said. Years later, when Clark was asked whether any of the dancers had died of AIDS, he stated that one had, Smith recalled. “That really annoyed me because quite a few of the Philadelphia dancers on ‘Bandstand’ died of AIDS,” Smith said.

While “Bandstand” fans across the country imagined a true romantic relationship between Sullivan, who secretly liked girls, and her on-screen companion, Rossi, who was straight, she says it was little more than made-for-TV “puppy love.” “We were the first reality show,” she adds.

Like Smith, she believes that if her true sexual preference and that of others on the show had become public in the days before Stonewall and today’s LGBT power, “Bandstand” would have been taken off the air.

“Parents across America would never, NEVER have allowed their kids to put ‘Bandstand’ on,” she writes.

Sullivan and the other dancers often congregated in Rittenhouse Square, the historic epicenter of what is known as the City of Brotherly Love’s “Gayborhood.” There even was chatter and fear that Clark, who died at 82 in 2012, sent members of his production staff to spy on them and report back the names of the suspected gay regulars.

“In other parts of the country, if you were a gay kid growing up, you were probably the only one in town who was gay,” Sullivan said. “But . . . we were like a little family together, and we all had something in common, and we all stuck together, and that made it easier for us.”

But it was not easy on the mean streets of Philadelphia to be a “Bandstand” regular suspected of being gay. In fact, it was dangerous.

As Sullivan puts it: “The boys danced. They weren’t playing football. They weren’t playing basketball. They weren’t playing baseball — they were DANCING. And then they leave the show, go up on the El, go home to their neighborhoods, they then had to run to their door because somebody was always waiting there to beat them up.”

The bashing of “Bandstand” regulars, gay and straight, happened all the time, Sullivan and Smith reveal.

Arlene Sullivan, a star on “Bandstand,” is now 74.

 “One time, Kenny and I went to visit one of the other regulars up in North Philadelphia, and we were leaving her apartment and were headed to the El, and I heard car doors slamming, and I looked back, and all these guys were coming up the steps, and they started beating up on Kenny,” Sullivan says. “I was trying to hit them over their heads with my pocketbook, but they just wouldn’t give up. Finally, we got away and jumped over the turnstile. They were hurting him. It was horrible.”

Smith says he was lucky to have escaped a beating. But he vividly recalls that one of his fellow gay dancers “was thrown onto the El tracks” outside the studio, and another popular regular who was gay and often danced with Sullivan “was dangled over an elevator shaft.”

If it wasn’t assaults from outside haters, some of the “Bandstand” kids suffered in their own homes.

“Some of the stories I heard are heartbreaking,” Sullivan recalls. “The parents of one kid on the show found out that he was gay . . . and they put a drinking cup in front of him and said, ‘This is your cup, and you’re the only one who will use this cup.’ One friend of mine was kicked out of the house.”

Unsure and fearful about her true sexual identity, Sullivan tried passing as straight. On “Bandstand,” she became lifelong friends with one of the celebrity guests, straight Annette Funicello, of “Mickey Mouse Club” and “Beach Party” fame.

“We were like sisters. I never had a crush on her. We’d stay up all night talking about boys,” she said.

For a time, she dated a neighborhood boy, Danny Rapp, lead singer of Danny & the Juniors, who had the hit song “At the Hop.”

Television host Dick Clark presides
over the set of his show “American Bandstand” in 1957.

“I was so afraid that I started trying to talk myself into being straight,” Sullivan says. “I started going out to straight clubs.”

And in her early 20s, she actually tied the knot with a young man. “I didn’t know what I was doing and decided I can’t do this, and I called my dad and asked him to come get me,” she says.

“My parents were always there for me. They accepted me. They knew what was going on, but they never asked the question.”

 Sullivan says there were at least four other popular girl dancers on “Bandstand” who she quickly learned were lesbians “and we all started hanging out together. But I didn’t have any crushes on any of the straight girls. I still really didn’t know who I was. I was SO mixed up.”

Today, Arlene Sullivan lives with a partner and, despite having suffered strokes, still loves to dance. Once a week, she goes to a hop thrown by another “Bandstand” original, 76-year-old Philadelphia radio and TV personality Jerry Blavat, who bills himself as “The Geator with the Heater” and “The Boss with the Hot Sauce.”

“It’s my one night out,” Sullivan says.