Who’d Give Me A Job?—Dick Clark

I’ve been promoted! Everyone at Photoplay played it very cool as I made my way to my office. (It’s not really an office, you can call it a corner where a desk just happens to be.) Anyway, I opened the door and lo and behold—I knew I had finally arrived! (It brings a lump to my throat just thinking about it.) Photoplay had given me a filing cabinet all my own!

All right! So I am dramatizing the thing a bit, but I guess no one will blame me for being a little “corny.” When you feel that the office gang is out to help you, you just have to feel good. All they want you to do in return is your share of the work. Of course, some people don’t know the secret of “how to work and enjoy it,” but after you’ve been at a few jobs, you begin to understand. Why. I’ve served up coffee and hamburgers and I’ve put in time trying to get my foot in the door and interest a busy housewife in the very latest supersonic, power-steered, ultra-fidelity cleaning brush. And then there was the time when I could never be sure my paycheck would cover the shoe leather I wore out carrying the mail around to all the offices at a radio station.

That last job, now . . . boy, I really had to hustle to get that one. I was a junior at A. B. Davis High School in Mt. Vernon, New York, and I’d already decided that radio was for me. I’d played around at being a deejay on the little phonograph I had at home and now I decided to go down to New York City and get myself hired for real.

I must have sat in the waiting room in every station in town—and that’s a lot of stations. In almost every case, they did give me an interview.

“What experience have you had?” they’d ask.

“None,” I’d answer. “That’s what I’m looking for—experience.”

“That’s fine, son,” they’d say. “Come back and see us after you’ve found some.”

It seemed you needed experience to get experience, which was a kind of vicious circle that left me just where I’d started. I went round on that circle for three years till somebody finally hired me. I was majoring in radio at Syracuse University when a local station nearby finally gave me that mailroom job. After a while, they let me do some announcing and soon after that, there I was—a deejay.

What started me remembering all this was a gab session we had just before “Bandstand” went on the air. Gerry Granahan had just sent around his new Sunbeam record, “I’m Afraid You’ll Never Know,” and I was telling the gang about it.

“Gee, Dick,” said one of the girls, a pretty little blonde with a ponytail, “remember his other record, ‘Please, No Chemise’? You know, I liked the chemise better than the Empire look, didn’t you?”

“Oh, no,” moaned one of the fellows. “Let’s not talk about clothes. Let’s talk about something important.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Boys!” a girl in the last row shouted.

“Love!” someone else suggested.

“Some girls,’ piped up one boy in the back, “never seem to have anything on their minds but boys!”

“What else is there?” my blonde friend asked.

“Well, now,” I suggested. “There are lots of important things to think about. There’s money, for instance.”

“Man, that’s nice stuff,” a tall freckled fellow said, “if you can get it.”

“I’d sure like some,” a sandy-haired, laughing-eyed girl agreed. “Where can I get it?”

“Maybe the Coasters had the right idea,” I suggested, “when they made that record, ‘Get a Job.’ ”

“Golly,” she said, “who’d give me a job?”

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “for one thing, I don’t have any experience in anything.”

“Think again,” I suggested. “There must be lots of things you can do. For instance, do you like animals?”

“Oh, I love them.”

“Did you know that Tony Perkins used to earn money in New York as a dog-sitter?”

“Honest? Gee, I could do that.”

“There are probably lots of things you could do. Why don’t you . . .” At this point, Tony Mammarella, my producer, caught my eye and I could tell he’d been trying to do it for quite a while. “Ooops, I’m sorry, gang. It’s time for me to get this show on the air. But, say, I’ve got an idea. Any of you going to be in New York Saturday morning?” A half dozen hands shot up. “Well, I’ll be in New York for my Saturday night show. I’d love to go on with this talk, if you’re interested.”

“Are we ever!” said my sandy-haired friend. She’d been one of those who’d raised her hand.

“Well, how about meeting me up at the Photoplay offices? I’ll bring the Cokes.”

hen we met on Saturday, there was an eerie quiet about the offices, Saturday being a non-working day for the rest of Photoplay’s staff. We pulled a bunch of chairs around a long rectangular walnut desk, unwrapped the Cokes and the little packages of cookies I’d also brought, and what with the rustling of paper, the scraping of chairs and then with everybody talking all at once, the office soon stopped feeling so strange.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day, Dick,” sandy-haired Joan began. “I guess there must be lots of jobs that even I could handle. But how do I find out where they are?”

“Anybody have any ideas?” I asked.

“My school has a placement office,” said blonde Pat, “and I bet yours does too.”

“There are the want-ads in the newspapers,” Jack offered.

“And the employment agencies,” said Chuck. “Most of them charge a fee, but there’s also the State employment offices. They’re for free and they know about lots of jobs.”

“Let me tell all of you,” Carole said, “that it really pays to advertise. Tell everybody you know you want a job and you’ll be surprised what sort of jobs people have heard about.”

“Another thing not to miss up on are the personnel offices of the larger companies,” Stan said.

“Stan’s got a good point there,” I put in. “It’s a good idea to think first about the kind of work you want to do and are suited for and then look up all the different places that might be able to use you. For instance, if you gals have had any typing or steno at school, you ought to get a list of different business firms, banks, libraries, hospitals and so on.”

Joan reached across the desk for another little pack of peanut-butter cookies. Then, as she was unwrapping them, she said, “But I don’t know how to type.”

“Oh, you could still get a job in an office if you wanted one,” Carole said. “You could be a receptionist or operate a switchboard or file or clip papers or almost anything.”

“No office for me,” Chuck said. “Come summer I want to be out under that sun.”

“Me, too,” Pat piped. “A girl I know is going to work this summer as a fishing guide. I’d like to do something different like that.”

“Gee, that sounds great,” Chuck said. “I’ve got applications in with the Y and with the department of parks. If things work out, I’ll have me a job as a recreation assistant. Imagine getting paid for playing baseball! And, Pat, they take girls, too, to teach the younger kids how to swim or dance or make all sorts of things.”

“Another kind of job you can get,” Jack said, “is like the one I had last summer, waiting on tables. The great thing about that is that people have to eat wherever they are. That means you can be a waiter or waitress in the city or at a resort area. I even heard of a guy who wrote to the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., and got back a booklet called ‘Employment by Concessioners in National Park Areas.’ It tells all about jobs you can get at real exciting places, like Yellowstone National Park and . . . Say, what happened to all the peanut-butter cookies?” He looked accusingly at Joan.

“I ate them all,’ she confessed. “I guess I was just trying to prove that waitressing is not for me. If I were around all that food, it’d just destroy my diet.”

“What about applying for these jobs?” I asked, meanwhile hoping Joan wouldn’t see as I slipped the one last peanut-butter cookie to Jack.

“Oh, I know all about that,” Carole said. “Wear a hat and gloves on all interviews and a simple, unfussy dress.”

“And try to talk in a soft voice,” Pat added, “and be very polite.”

“It’s those applications that get me,” Stan moaned. “They’ve got to be neat and with a handwriting like mine, that isn’t easy. And all those little lines and all those things to fill out, like ‘Experience. What do you put down if you’ve never worked before?”

“Try making up for it,” I suggested, “when you get to where they want to know about special skills. List everything that could possibly apply. And when they ask about special interests and extracurricular activities, list everything there, too. It’ll show you’re a live-wire and get along with people and like lots of things.”

“I sure hope so,” Stan said.

We’ve been talking about just jobs,” I said. “But, you know, while you’re looking for part-time or summer work you really ought to be thinking about what you’ll want to do when you’re out of school, too. Let’s take you, Joan. You’re in your junior year at high school. What sort of career plans do you have?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” she said. “I want to be an airline stewardess.”

“Sounds exciting,” I said. “What are you doing about it?”

Joan paused, a paper container halfway to her lips. “Why nothing.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I’m still in school. I’ve plenty of time.”

“A headstart never hurt,” I said. “What do you think, Pat? What could Joan do now to get started on her career?”

“Well,” Pat said, “for one thing, maybe she should go to the library and read up on it. See if she needs any special training.”

“Wait a minute,” Jack interrupted. “I think the first thing she ought to do is find out if she’s suited to that. I had a session with the vocational counsellor at school last week and, man, what a revelation!”

“That makes sense,” I said. “What do you think, Stan?”

“I’m with Jack,” Stan grinned “But there’s still another thing Joan can do, and that’s to try to find a summer job or a part-time job in the field she likes.”

“That’s so right,” Carole said. “Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be an airline stewardess, too. Well, last summer I got myself a job at the local airport—serving coffee and sandwiches at the lunch counter. Now I’m surer than ever that that’s what I want. I got to meet the girls who already are stewardesses. The uniforms, the travelling, I know I’ll love all that and I found out that the pilots and the stewardesses were the kind of people I like. But I also learned about the long hours, the passenger who can get sick or grouchy, the need to be cheerful all the time. I was able to take a look at the drawbacks, at the training I’ll need and then evaluate it all and come to a decision based on the facts.”

Chuck, a tall, thin boy whom I’d only seen once or twice at “Bandstand,” had been sitting quietly through all the talk. Now he ran a hand through his crew cut and spoke up. “Joan’s lucky, she knows what she wants. But what do you do when you just can’t make up your mind?”

“See the same vocational counsellor Joan’s going to,” said Jack.

“And experiment,” Suzie added. “For instance, why not take a job clerking in a store, to see if you like seeing and meeting people all day long?”

“Then you can look for a job where you work quietly and mostly by yourself,” said Carole, “and see which one you like better. Then at least you have a clue.”

“Gosh,” Joan sighed, “you sure are going to keep me busy.”

“And me, too,” Chuck laughed.

Oh, and that’s only the beginning,” I warned them. “But the kids are giving you good advice. Whether you want to be a singer or a schoolteacher, a doctor, lawyer or fire chief, you’d better start thinking about that future job just as early as possible.

“Once the decision is made, and you’re sure of what you want to do, then you’ve got to make up your mind it takes work to become good at your work. Patti Page certainly qualifies in my book as a successful star, and so do Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, Perry Como. No matter who you name, you’ll find that they started at the bottom of the ladder and worked and worked and worked till they hit the top. And you can guess why they stay there. They are still working hard.”

“Gosh, Dick,” said Pat, “getting a job is serious business, and so is keeping one, I guess. But I don’t really know how much of that applies to me. I’ll let you in on a secret. My steady and I, we’ll probably get married soon as both of us have graduated. My job will be being a wife and then someday a mother.”

“That’s about the greatest job there is,” I said. “But let’s look at it this way. What if you don’t get married until, say, a year after graduation? Why spend eight hours of every day of that year doing something you don’t particularly care about when, with a little thought, you can be doing something you really like?

“And dig these census figures I saw in the paper—ah, here’s the clipping: There are one and a half million more women than men working today and by 1980 there’ll be three million more. I’ll bet an awful lot of ’em are married, too. If your husband’s just starting out in his career, you’d probably welcome an extra paycheck, especially when you’re newly-married and in the middle of buying all that furniture. Your paycheck might be the difference between buying that little house or scrimping by in a tiny rented apartment, between having a car or doing without wheels. In that case, you might as well get a kick out of what you do to earn the paycheck.”

“Well, my steady and I do have a big yen for a T-bird built for two,” Pat admitted. “Maybe it is off to work I go.”

I looked at my watch. “I don’t know where the time went to,” I said, “but it has really gone. It’s off to work I go and that’s for sure. Why don’t you all come along to the show? I’ll use my influence and see if I can’t get you in.”

I’ll see you right here next month.

—BY DICK CLARK

DON’T MISS DICK ON ABC-TV, ON “AMERICAN BANDSTAND,” MON.-FRI., 4 TO 5:30 P.M. EST, AND “THE DICK CLARK SHOW,” SAT., 7:30 P.M. EST.

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE APRIL 1959