Our Daily Trailer: HAIRSPRAY (1988)

Dick Clark has died, officially drawing to a close the 20th century. So much of late 20th century popular music and culture came out of Dick Clark's American Bandstand empire that his place in our cultural history is firm. 

Yet there aren't a lot of movies featuring American Bandstand in a really central way. Grease has National Bandstand, but the dance competition isn't really the centerpiece of the movie. There are films that mention the show or touch on it, but John Waters' Hairspray feels like the movie that most puts teenagers dancing on television at the forefront. To be fair, Hairspray is actually about a local Baltimore show, The Buddy Deane Show (which got canceled because it couldn't integrate black and white dancers). But it's the closest we have, and the Buddy Deane show was seen as enough of a threat to Philly-based American Bandstand that any act that played Deane first was barred from Bandstand.

In a lot of ways American Bandstand was the internet of its time, immediately uniting the nation's teens in one culture and style, no matter where they were.