This is the opening for a current work in progress, a history of the television show, American Bandstand. The subject is Kathleen “Bunny” Gibson, a popular dancer on the show in the early 1960s. Material came from interviews with Bunny, who has been a successful actress in Hollywood since her Bandstand days.

Bunny’s Story

The bus was late.

The wind was picking up, swirling leaves along the sidewalk and tugging at the hem of the woolen skirt that marked its wearer as a Holy Cross girl.

She barely noticed as she checked the time, again and again. Where is it, she wondered, I’ll be late. For Bunny Gibson, that would be catastrophic. A nation was waiting.

But here she was, standing on a New Jersey corner, cradling the hatbox-shaped luggage that contained the trappings of her real, important world and facing straight into the wind, searching vainly for the bus that would whisk her from the drudgery of her everyday world.

She jammed her hands into the waistband of her skirt, hiding them from passersby. A few days earlier, her trademark long fingernails were the envy of classmates. When a typing teacher suggested her work might improve if she got rid of them, she balked. As nuns dragged her down the hall by her hair, she protested. When the pinking shears reduced them to nubs, she was devastated.

Why me, she complained.

She was a decent student, one of the top spellers in her class. She was one of the top candy sellers in the school’s fund-raising drive. She never caused trouble at school, at least not intentionally. Still, she couldn’t please the nuns.

Her sweaters were too tight. She was boy crazy. A brazen brat.

She did like Elvis, but who didn’t? She loved wearing her mother’s jewelry and probably wore too much makeup, but that was no reason for kids to snicker and make cruel remarks about her.

And she loved to dance.

She imagined herself on the dance floor as she boarded the bus for Philadelphia.

After settling in at the back, she opened her luggage and began her daily ritual.

She carefully wriggled out of her Holy Cross uniform and slipped into a more fashionable skirt and blouse. She teased her hair into a towering bouffant, alternately backcombing and spraying. She applied makeup as best she could as the bus bounced down city streets.

The driver did a double take as she left the bus and scrambled onto the train for the final leg of her journey.

By the time the train pulled back into the daylight a few blocks from its West Philadelphia destination, she was nervous in anticipation. She glanced down at the brick building and saw a long line stretching at least a block, boys on one side, girls on the other. She allowed herself a smile. She was almost there.

Bouncing down the stairs from the elevated station toward Pop Singer’s drug store, familiar voices called out.

“Hey Bunny.”

Her joy was evident as she turned left down Market Street, right past the line of teen-aged boys.

“How’s it going, Bunny?”

“Bunny, save a dance for me.”

She was beaming as she reached the end of the line and flashed a card at a guard.

Barely glancing at the card, he pushed open the big green doors.

“Nice to see you, Bunny. Come on in.”

She catches her breath and steps into the building, where some of her friends have already gathered, including Eddie Kelly.

“I thought you’d never make it,” Kelly says as they work their way toward the bleachers and a dance floor flooded with light.

“I’d never miss this,” she says.

She’s home, on American Bandstand.

©2005, L.W. Lehmer

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