However, Bergstein had many other dancing experiences that could have provided the basis for a dance movie. For example, one newspaper article reported the following experience:
Growing up in Brooklyn, she [Bergstein] moved effortlessly from tutoring inner-city students in the afternoon to shimmying in ''dirty dancing'' contests at night.It's easy to imagine how Bergstein might have turned that experience into a dance movie.
For a while, Bergstein worked as a dance instructor at an Arthur Murray studio. That experience did become the basis for a Bergstein movie, Let It Be Me, that was released in 1995, eight years after the release of Dirty Dancing.
The movie Dirty Dancing was the successful result of Bergstein's experience, but it was only one of many possible movies that could have been made from her many, various experiences.
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In this article, I speculate about the decisions Bergstein made during the years 1980-1986 to develop the story that did become Dirty Dancing. My speculation is based on only a few, scattered bits of evidence and on my deductive reasoning.
I might be compared to a paleontologist constructing an entire dinosaur's appearance from just a few teeth and bones.
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| My collection of evidence |
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| All my evidence |
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| My construction from my evidence |
As a young woman, Bergstein decided to become a novelist, and she published her first novel, Advancing Paul Newman, in 1973 when she was about 35 years old. A film-maker, Claudia Weill, liked the novel and therefore asked Bergstein to write a screenplay, which became the movie It's My Turn, released in 1980. In that year, Bergstein was about 42 years old.
Therefore during the years 1973-1980, when Bergstein was 35-42 years old, she transitioned from writing novels to writing screenplays. Rolling Stone magazine, in an article published in 1980, quoted Bergstein's comparison of writing novels and writing screenplays:
My hierarchy is clear, I think. The greatest novel is greater than any film. A great film, like, say, a Godard film, is better than a pretty good novel. Most fairly good novels are better than most films.In other words, a novel that describes dancing is much more troublesome than a movie that shows dancing.
Nevertheless, all that being said and established, there are things you can do in films, materials you can use, that you just can't use in a novel. I can spend six or seven pages of prose describing how the coffee cup goes this way instead of that way [she tilts her cup ever so slightly], but even if I got it, it simply would not have earned that prose.
I cannot really describe parents and children dancing together or the way higher mathematics looks. You can do it in words, but you won't have earned the reader's efforts.
As long as Bergstein was just a novelist, it was not practical for her to write a story that was largely about dancing. Only after Bergstein became a screenwriter at the end of the 1970s did such an effort become practical.
When the movie It's My Turn was released in 1980, Bergstein was dismayed to see that a sexy dance scene had been eliminated from the final movie. The scene took place in a hotel room right before the two main characters (played by Jill Clayburgh and Michael Douglas) had sex with each other for the first time.
The elimination of that scene from that 1980 movie motivated Bergstein to write a screenplay for a future movie that would revolve around sexy dancing. Now, because she had written a screenplay that had become a real movie, such an effort was worthwhile and practical.
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Bergstein had to select a story from many possibilities. Based on her own experience, she might select a story about an Arthur Murray dance instructor or about a tutor of inner-city students. She might set her story in Brooklyn, where she grew up, or at a Catskills resort, where her family vacationed. Her story's possible characters, settings and situations were as varied as her experience or her imagination.
I speculate that, beginning in 1980, her construction of the Dirty Dancing story progressed through the following stages.
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The movie will revolve around sexy dancing.
A man and a woman will be in a situation where they do sexy dancing with each other. The dancing will lead them into a sexual relationship, which will lead in to their falling in love.
This was the idea of the scene that was eliminated from the 1980 movie It's My Turn. When he invited her into his hotel room, she was ambivalent about his obvious intention to seduce her. The sexy dance persuaded her to succumb. Subsequently, they fell in love with each other.
Although the sexy dance was eliminated from the movie, it remained in Bergstein's mind. A sexy dance is a good plot element when it facilitates romance, sex and love. The more sexy dances she could put into her next movie, the better.
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The movie will be about two women -- a professional dancer and an amateur dancer.
In her 1973 novel and 1980 movie, Bergstein portrayed the dilemma that young women face when they choose between a marriage or a professional career. Marriage limits a woman's professional development. Especially in the 1973 novel, she compared two girlfriends, one of whom married and the other of whom remained single and devoted herself to an artistic career.
I think that Bergstein wanted to portray this dilemma yet again in her second movie. Two women aspire to become professional dancers, but one of them decides to marry. At the story's end, the two women envy each other. That was essentially the ending of Bergstein's 1973 novel.
The professional dancer gets an abortion.
In the 1973 novel, the married woman gives birth to one child but when she becomes pregnant a second time, she has an abortion because she wants to begin a professional career.
In Bergstein's 1980 movie, there is no abortion or even a pregnancy, but there are abortions in her 1987 movie (Dirty Dancing) and in her 1995 movie (Let It Be Me). In the latter movie, a 17-year-old aspiring dancer becomes pregnant and gets an abortion.
Abortion is a theme that Bergstein repeats in her stories, and so she decided to make abortion a major issue in her second movie.
The movie will portray the consequences of laws that prohibit abortion.
At the beginning of 1981, Ronald Reagan became the US President. Pro-choice women such as Bergstein feared that the new administration would begin to reverse the US Supreme Court's 1973 decision to legalize abortion. Therefore, Bergstein decided that the abortion element in her new story would depict the consequences of laws prohibiting abortion.
The story will take place before 1973.
In order to depict the consequences of laws prohibiting abortion, Bergstein's new story would take place before the Supreme Court's 1973 decision.
Perhaps Bergstein decided to set her story in 1963 simply because that year was one decade -- a nice, round number -- before that 1973 decision.
In 1963, Bergstein herself, born in 1938, was about 25 years old. This is an age when a young woman who wants to pursue a professional career -- especially a dancing career -- might feel that she is in a crucial moment, experiencing momentum and success and earning important promotions. It's also an age where she still feels she can become pregnant easily again if she has an abortion now.
The two women will be Penny Johnson and Vivian Pressman.
In Bergstein's story, one woman would be a professional dancer who remained single in order to pursue a professional career. This woman became pregnant, however, and so got an illegal abortion, which had various consequences. This was the character who evolved ultimately into Penny Johnson in the movie Dirty Dancing.
The other woman -- who had aspired to become a professional dancer but ended her aspiration by marrying -- was the character who evolved ultimately into Vivian Pressman in the movie Dirty Dancing.
The evolution of the unmarried character into Penny Johnson is rather straightforward, but the evolution of the married character into Vivian Pressman is rather obscure.
The story's character contrast would be:
* Penny is able to devote herself to her professional career full-time, seven days a week
* Vivian is able to dance professionally only occasionally, on weekends.
Vivian has not stopped dancing completely, but her professional development has been stunted since she married. The movie would depict this dance-career contrast, so the movie would show Vivian still dancing sometimes after her marriage.
That simple contrast between Penny and Vivian would be complicated, however, by Penny's pregnancy and then further complicated by Penny's abortion.
Vivian would become involved in helping Penny get an illegal abortion and in helping Penny to deal with the consequences.
Penny became pregnant from a non-dancer.
If Penny had become pregnant from a fellow dancer, then they might have simply married. With a professional-dancer husband, she might have been able to continue working somehow in the business of professional dance.
If Penny's lover were completely outside the dance business, however, then her decision to marry him was likely to remove her from the dance business completely. In order to aggravate Penny's pregnancy problems, therefore, Penny's lover had to be someone outside of her dance career.
A clue to the occupation of Penny's lover is provided by an article published five days before the movie Dirty Dancing opened. The article mentions that a man named Bruce Morrow was considered to play several roles, which included a gynecologist, a dentist and a carpenter. Thus the article indicates thus that Bergstein's story must have included such characters while the movie was being cast.
I assume that a gynecologist had been in the story only to pontificate about the medical consequences of abortion. If so, the gynecologist can be eliminated as Penny's lover -- leaving the dentist or the carpenter as two possibilities.
I think that Penny's lover was the dentist and that the story's situation included the following elements.
* Vivian had aspired to become a professional dancer, but instead she married a doctor. Vivian continued to work part-time, however, as a dance instructor.
* In Vivian's part-time dance job, she partnered with another part-time dancer whose main occupation was carpentry. (This partner evolved ultimately into the Johnny Castle character).
* Vivian's doctor husband had a dentist colleague who, through Vivian, became introduced to Penny and got Penny pregnant.
* Vivian felt guilty for introducing Penny to the dentist and therefore felt obligated to help Penny get an abortion.
I speculate that Bergstein's story was constructed thus during the early 1980s.
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In 1983, Emile Ardolino's movie He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' was released. That movie was about a ballet dancer who teaches children how to dance. Perhaps in late 1983 Bergstein was developing her story along those lines and already was considering Ardolino as the director of her future movie.
If so, then Vivian might have worked part-time teaching children how to dance. As mentioned above, Bergstein herself, living in Brooklyn, had worked as a tutor of children during her afternoons and participated in dance contests during her evenings. Who better to direct such a movie than Ardolino?
In 1983, Bergstein was developing a story that featured sexy dancing and perhaps portrayed some of her own personal experiences, but at that time the story might have been very different from our movie Dirty Dancing.
The story will take place at a Catskill resort.
Bergstein visited Grossinger's resort to interview people in the summer of 1985. Therefore, I deduce, her decision to decided to set her story there was made not long before then -- maybe in about 1984.
By moving the setting far from New York City, however, she caused problems in her story. As long as the story took place in, say New York City, it was plausible that Vivian had an arrangement with her husband that allowed her to work part-time in a dance business. After the story was moved far away to the Catskill Mountains, however, such an arrangement in Vivian's marriage became implausible.
After the story was moved to the Catskill Mountains, Vivian remained in the story but her role was changed and diminished. Vivian's presence in Dirty Dancing is essentially just an artifact from an earlier stage of the story's development, when she and Penny were the two main characters.
In Dirty Dancing, two relationships are somewhat mysterious.
* Penny's and Johnny's dance partnership and platonic friendship are mysterious. In the story's earlier stages, Johnny was a part-time dancer who partnered with married part-time dancer Vivian. Johnny and Penny were not dance partners.
* Vivian's and Johnny's sexual relationship is mysterious. In the story's earlier stages, however, Vivian and Johnny were dance partners, and there might have been a lot of sexual tension between them, even though Vivian was married.
Vivian is in Dirty Dancing as an artifact from earlier stages of the story. Vivian could have been removed completely from the movie with just a few, small script changes. The main reason why Vivian remained in the movie is that she had been in Bergstein's story from the very beginning. Bergstein was willing to change and diminish Vivian, but could not bring herself to eliminate Vivian completely.
The Houseman family enters the story.
After Bergstein set her story in the 1963 Catskills, she made her most important change in her story. Bergstein introduced the Houseman family into her story and made 17-year-old Baby Houseman the main character. This arrangement of characters seems fundamental now, but other arrangements were more likely.
In 1963, Bergstein herself was about 25 years old. If Bergstein imagined a story about sexy dancers at a Catskills resort in 1963, she was most likely to imagine a story mostly about two 25-year-old female dancers -- about career-minded Penny and marriage-minded Vivian.
Bergstein herself was 17 years old in 1955. Re-imagining her family and her 17-year-old self into the 1963 story was not so obvious as it seems to all of us now. Bergstein had to rethink drastically her story that was mostly about 25-year-old Penny and Vivian. At some moment, though, Bergstein did make that big, brilliant change.
After the Houseman family was inserted into the story, the contrast between the career-minded woman and the marriage-minded woman became Baby and Lisa Houseman (instead of Penny and Vivian).
Dr. Jake Houseman replace the gynecologist as the character who declared the consequences of illegal abortion.
Baby (instead of Vivian) became the character who facilitated Penny's abortion. Thus Baby (instead of Vivian and Penny) became the story's central character and the Baby-Johnny relationship became the story's central drama.
In this final stage, a quite new story formed but it retained the main characters -- Penny, Vivian and Johnny -- from the previous stages. The main characters Penny and Vivian were reduced to supporting characters, whereas the supporting Johnny was elevated to a main character.
The Houseman family brought into the story new relationships -- a sister-sister relationship and a father-daughter relationship -- that enriched the story.
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Bergstein traveled to Grossinger's resort in the Catskill Mountains and interviewed people there in the summer of 1985. Visiting there surely reminded her of her own experiences vacationing there as a teenager in the mid-1950s. Base on those memories and on her interviews, she came to imagine a teenage girl playing a role more and more in her story.
By the end of 1985, Bergstein's story had passed through all the stages that I described above. Still, though, her story differed significantly from the final story in the finished movie.
In a previous article, I speculated how Bergstein's story was changed by Patrick and Lisa Swayze and by Cynthia Rhodes (Penny).
In a future article, I will continue to speculate about how Bergstein's story was changed further.
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