Springsteen Dances (In The Dark) With Courteney Cox

1984

After a failed attempt shooting a studio video for "Dancing In The Dark," Bruce Springsteen does it live at his concert in St. Paul, Minnesota. During Clarence Clemons' sax solo, he brings a doe-eyed, 19-year-old Courteney Cox on stage to dance with him.

The song is already climbing the charts, released in advance of the Born In The U.S.A. album. MTV, based in his stronghold of New York City, is clamoring for a video, so Springsteen summons director Brian De Palma to the show, who sets up cameras and plants the unknown actress Courteney Cox up front, where she looks adoringly at Bruce before he calls her up to do some not-so-dirty dancing. Her bit is the only part that is staged - the crowd is real, and so is the performance. Videos like this are commonplace in the '80s, but typically done by shooting the band at soundcheck, then mixing it with footage from the actual show. This one is all shot midway through the concert, which helps capture Springsteen and the E Street Band in their groove. The crowd doesn't know a video is being shot, but realizes something is going on when Springsteen plays the song again so De Palma can get more footage (and again, Cox comes up to dance). MTV puts the video in rotation as soon as they can, and Springsteen soon becomes a star on the network. The song climbs to #2 on the Hot 100, and the next six songs from the album all reach the Top 10. Springsteen's next video is for the title track, and it contains lots of American flag imagery to coincide with the album art. It's wildly successful, but obscures the message of the song, which is about Vietnam veterans and their struggles after returning home. Courteney Cox gets a few bit parts before landing a role on the TV series Family Ties, where she plays Michael J. Fox's girlfriend the last two seasons the show is on the air. In 1994, she stars in Friends, which runs for ten years and is one of the ten highest-rated shows every season.