Petula Clark TV Special
In 1968, Binder was working at NBC. Its executives invited Petula Clark—who had appeared on Hullabaloo—to host her own special. While singing a duet of "On the Path of Glory" with guest Harry Belafonte, she touched his arm, to the dismay of Chrysler, the show's sponsor. The car giant feared the brief moment would offend Southern viewers at a time when racial mixing was still a major issue of controversy in the US. Chrysler insisted "the touch" (as it became known) should be edited and substituted with a different take. However, director Binder, Clark and her husband/producer refused, destroyed all other takes of the song, and delivered the finished program to NBC with "the touch" intact. It aired on April 8, 1968 to high ratings and critical acclaim, and marked the first time a man and woman of different races exchanged physical contact on American television.
Read more about this topic: Steve Binder
Famous quotes containing the words clark and/or special:
“The measure of your quality as a public person, as a citizen, is the gap between what you do and what you say.”
—Ramsey Clark (b. 1927)
“When we walk the streets at night in safety, it does not strike us that this might be otherwise. This habit of feeling safe has become second nature, and we do not reflect on just how this is due solely to the working of special institutions. Commonplace thinking often has the impression that force holds the state together, but in fact its only bond is the fundamental sense of order which everybody possesses.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)