If You Give a Dance, You Gotta Pay the Band

If You Give a Dance You Gotta Pay the Band is a 1972 American TV movie. It was the first program shown under the umbrella ABC Theater.^[1][2]

If You Give a Dance, You Gotta Pay the Band
Genre	Drama
Written by	Stanley L. Gray
Directed by	Fred Coe
Starring	Donna M. Bryan James Broderick Georgia Burke
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
Production
Producer	David Susskind
Cinematography	Mike Liberman Jake Ostroff
Editor	Arline Garson
Running time	73 minutes
Original release
Release	December 19, 1972 (1972-12-19)

The production (at the time referred to as a "dramatic special" or "teleplay" rather than a made-for-TV movie) was the first screen credit for Laurence Fishburne and led to him getting a role later on in the soap opera One Life to Live.^[3][4][5]

The teleplay first aired on ABC at 8:30pm ET on Tuesday, December 19, 1972^[3] and was rerun on Wednesday, June 6, 1973 at 9:00pm ET.^[5] In TV listings of the era, the title was generally given as If You Give a Dance You Gotta Pay the Band without a comma.

Plot

The story of ghetto boy and girl trying to raise money for the girl to visit her father in prison. It was shot on videotape in November 1972.^[6]