Dirty Dancing Analysis

ASJ Blog Analyzes Opening Sequence

2009-01-03T20:48:00.007-05:00

ASJFoundationPortfolio, a blog written by Amie Wood, Samantha Tait and Jessica Daley in Hartlepool, UK, includes an interesting anaylysis of Dirty Dancing's opening sequence, the slow-motion dance with the title and main credits. Their article:

In the opening sequence of the film the director uses medium close ups to show the intimacy of the dancers, this is significant as the film is called Dirty Dancing. The camera focuses on the characters by using extreme close-ups so the audience can see their facial expressions. The camera then follows different characters; the camera movement is very steady.

The opening sequence gives the audience an idea of a later enigma, as the closeness of the dancers later relate to the intimacy of the two main characters in the film. The opening sequence is also a montage of the full film.

The costume design, hair and make up are all symbolic as it represents the period that the film is set in, which is the 1960’s. The female’s costumes are very revealing, which reflects the sexual relationship that the characters have.

The edits during this sequence are rather slow which refers to the pace of the song, which creates the impression that music is an important convention involved in this genre of film.

The use of black and white also gives the pink text more effect as it makes it stand out and look visually appealing. The style of the writing is very feminine suggesting that this film shows the life of a young girl.

Dean Winkelspecht Loved the Music

2009-01-03T19:55:00.009-05:00

DvdTown.com's reviewer Dean Winkelspecht remembers in a review, which he wrote in June 2007, that he always has loved the movie Dirty Dancing mostly because of its music.

.... I believe my first experience with this film was being taken with my older sister Cindy to see the film at a theater. .... This film was all about Patrick Swayze and dancing. I´m sure that was the primary reason that Cindy dragged myself and my nephew Don to go see Dirty Dancing. Don and I are the same age, as my sister is a good deal older, so we both had to suffer for this "date movie."

.... Truth be told, there is something I have always enjoyed about Dirty Dancing. It isn´t the humor. It isn´t the dancing and it certainly isn´t Patrick Swayze. Jennifer Grey was twenty seven when Dirty Dancing was released and she portrayed a teenage rich girl in the film. She was cute, but she wasn´t the reason I agreed to go along to see this film.

I was fifteen years old at the time and going to see Dirty Dancing with your sister wasn´t exactly the "cool" thing to do. What I enjoyed about Dirty Dancing was the music. I absolutely love some of the Oldies that appear in the film. "Be My Baby," "Big Girls Don´t Cry," "Where Are You Tonight," "Do You Love Me," "Love Man," "Stay," "Some Kind of Wonderful," "These Arms of Mine," and "Love is Strange" are just a few of the great songs contained on the film´s soundtrack. If anything, Dirty Dancing is one of the finest films based upon its soundtrack. ....

I don´t recall if the dancing depicted in the film was necessarily shocking and risky twenty years ago. It was all offensive to me at that time. Since then, I´ve certainly spent enough time on club dance floors to not find anything in Dirty Dancing to be offensive. This film had a decent story and decent performances, but it is a tribute to the music and the era in which the film is set. It is a journey back in time for many to enjoy, such as my older sister.

For younger audiences, it is a curiosity of the Eighties that looks at the Sixties. I´ve seen this film more times than I want to admit to. Oddly, I still find myself enjoying it.

Pete Croatto Credits Jennifer Grey for Success

2009-01-03T18:52:00.005-05:00

FilmCritic.com's Pete Croatto wrote a retrospective review of the movie in 2003. Here are some excerpts:

Dirty Dancing’s initial success in 1987 was probably a mixture of factors — Patrick Swayze’s anointment as a sensitive hunk, the fact that the movie’s sweetness was a change of pace from the loud, expensive blockbusters that dominated the landscape at the time and a pop soundtrack of golden oldies and then-current songs that flooded radio stations.

However, after watching the movie recently, the key to the movie’s limitless charm is revealed to be due to the presence of Jennifer Grey. Without her performance, the movie is a flop, Bill Medley isn’t cool again and, well, Swayze and Grey drift into irrelevance a year or two earlier.

Set at a posh Catskills resort in the summer of 1963, soon-to-be college freshman Baby (Grey) and her family are set to get some relaxation in. However, volleyball and lame dances don’t appeal to the worldly Baby. Out looking for some excitement, she stumbles upon the staff’s lodge, where much to her surprise, she sees a ton of young people set free of familial restraints. They’re grinding, they’re sweating, they’re dirty dancing.

The hero of this pack of well-toned hoofers is Johnny (Swayze), the resort dance instructor who plays by his own rules, but can’t get anyone else to play along. Baby falls instantly for him, and she sees her chance to get closer to him and that rebellion when his lifelong dance partner, Penny (Cynthia Rhodes), suffers an unwanted pregnancy and botched abortion.

Though Johnny is a two-step taskmaster, he and Baby quickly become close. She gives him courage and confidence; he gives her the strength to break free from her family ties. Despite the syrupy dramatics, Dirty Dancing is still immensely appealing and Grey is the reason. Yes, I know Swayze became huge because of this movie, but I think it was more because of his physical presence. We all know he’s good looking, that women will fall for him like lemmings off of a cliff. But he has to fall for Grey, who is adorable, but certainly not a beauty queen. Most importantly, the audience has to buy them as a couple.

Grey doesn’t drip with teen sensuality or flash a come hither stare. She giggles inappropriately, she curses herself for not getting dance steps right. By embodying every awkward young adult emotion about falling in love, she makes you want the romance to work. In the process, she also validates all the soap opera theatrics that revolve around her. Credit must also be given to the late Emile Ardolino, who directs the intimate scenes with Swayze and Grey with a seductive restraint that borders on the unbearable—check out the bedroom slow dance. The movie eschews sex and teenage tomfoolery for real emotions and comes out of the corner dancing up a storm. ...

"Doc" Daniel Says "Dirty Time Wasting"

2009-01-03T18:28:00.008-05:00

Dr. V. B. "Doc" Daniel is a general practitioner who runs a 24-hour medical clinic in a rural community known as Pelt Valley, about ten minutes as the crow flies north of Carver Point, Georgia. He "alleviates work-related stress through the appreciation and study of the greatest of all art forms: the cinema." Here are excerpts from his opinion of Dirty Dancing:

.... Dirty Dancing is, was, and will always be one of the stupidest movies to ever drip out of Hollywood's backside. It is, was, and always will be a soundtrack album in search of a movie. .... Let me show you how many ways this movie offends me and the precious artform we call "cinema".

* A period piece that features 80s music in it?

* The lead character in the movie is named "Baby." ....

* It tries to make a superfluous Pro-choice statement in a '50s flick. ...

* Why is Baby's father giving that dork money for med school? Where was he when I had my scholarship revoked for drinking tequila in Pathology class?

* In the heart-wrenching finale, Johnny says that he's created the dance moves for himself and Baby. So how do 40 other dancers fall in step to the entire routine when he prances into the aisle? ...

* Just when we thought they were gone ... pedal-pushers and Keds sneakers!

* Back to that finale - Johnny put a 45 rpm record on, and it plays for the next eight minutes. What gives, this the flipside of Inna-Gadda-Da Vita or American Pie?

* Newman.

Does it seem like I know way too much about this movie, for someone who despises it so much? Bullseye. Know why? 'Cause I was between wives in 1987, and I was dating. Anyone that was dating in 1987 went to see Dirty Dancing. And, I know I am not alone when I say that, if you were a dating guy in 1987, you got dragged to see Dirty Dancing way too many times, at the then-unheard of price of $3.50 per ticket.

And then it hit video, and everybody bought it and watched it over and over and over. And then it hit HBO, and, because it was rated PG-13, they could show it morning, noon, and night, 7-24-365. And they keep draggin' it back out when they have 90 minutes to burn. And so on and so on and so on. ....

The Love Lie in Dirty Dancing

2009-01-03T18:07:00.007-05:00

A kill-joy analysis of Dirty Dancing by David LeVine of Warm Wisdom Press.

If you remember, in Dirty Dancing, 17-year-old Baby Houseman is vacationing in the Catskills with her family. Bored to tears by the activities, she comes upon a dancing party and is immediately struck by Johnny Castle, the dance instructor. She ends up becoming the pinch hitter in a dance routine and as Johnny teaches her to dance, they "fall in love" and risk his job and her relationship with her family to, as one reviewer put it, "show that their love is worth fighting for."

This sounds wonderful. To find such a deep, meaningful relationship that within two weeks of dancing with each other you're ready to sacrifice so much for one another? Wow. Add to that the fact that he is a very handsome, talented and single man, while she's a perky and strong-willed 17-year-old. What could be bad? (Except the fact that he could've gotten thrown into jail because she was a minor!)

Welcome to the Hollywood Lie, what I call the Dirty Dancing Lie: Love just "happens."

The producers behind the movie would have us believe that in order to find a meaningful relationship, you don't have to have anything in common. No common background, no common goals, no common principles. You don't have to know anything about each other. Love is an exciting, thrilling experience that just comes along.

The only problem is that life doesn't work that way.

In order for a meaningful relationship to flourish, you need to have common goals. You need to know that the two of you are moving in the same direction if you want to truly share a happy life together. If you don't, you can both be wonderful people but it's not going to work. Love doesn't change the core being of a person. And even though it may sound romantic, you don't want the other person to sacrifice their goals for yours, because that's a recipe for big trouble down the line. You want your goals to be compatible so that you can work together towards something that's important to both of you.

Now, obviously, that doesn't mean that you have to be clones of each other. What it does mean, though, is that if his dream is of being a dancer, and hers is of joining the Peace Corps and changing the world, then that marriage can only work on the big screen, in make believe. Which is why in a survey done among fans of Dirty Dancing, one fan wrote that if there would have been a sequel in which Johnny and Baby would have gotten married, they would have also gotten divorced, because they were really so different.

Remember the theme song? "I've Had the Time of my Life"... The idea that you can have the time of your entire life with a person you just met is a very appealing one to us folks who have grown up in the "instant" generation. But in order for a lasting, loving relationship to flourish with a soul mate, you need to get to know each other well, and discover whether or not the two of you have similar ideals and worldviews.

If you really want to share a level of commitment in which the two of you are willing to sacrifice so much, it has to be based on a lot more than being able to gaze into each others' eyes. You have to be able to gaze in the same direction together. That's the true foundation of a relationship and a marriage in which you'll stand up for each other, no matter what, and be able to say, "Nobody puts my husband/my wife in a corner."

Now you know why that's the most famous line in the movie. Because deep in their hearts, that's what everyone wants - a relationship filled with such love and commitment that come what may, you're willing to stand by and support each other. And the truth is that you can have it. But contrary to the "love happens" lie, it's not going to be with someone you just looked at, had "Hungry Eyes" and fell in love with. It will be with someone you've gotten to know slowly, who wants the same things out of life as you do and wants to achieve them together with you. You know what that's called? It's called growing in love. And ultimately, that's the person with whom you're really going to have the time of your life.

And it'll last a lot longer than two weeks in the summer.

Vincent Canby About Dance Aspects

2009-01-03T17:18:00.015-05:00

When Dirty Dancing opened, The New York Times' movie reviewer Vincent Canby wrote a review , published on August 21, 1987, that was mostly favorable. He dismissed the story as silly, even "awful," but praised the movie as a good step forward in developing the genre of dance movies.

In their time, almost all forms of popular American music and dancing, from the foxtrot and the tango through rock-and-roll and all of its variations, have scandalized the members of an older generation, whose own sexuality had earlier been liberated by tamer means. As music, lyrics and dance steps have become more and more sexually explicit, fathers and mothers from coast to coast have felt alienated, and worried that pop music was leading their children straight to hell. …

This culture generation gap has produced its own Hollywood genre. Most of these films have been quickies on the order of Don't Knock the Rock (1957) and Twist Around the Clock (1962), but there have occasionally been more ambitious if not much better films (Herbert Ross's Footloose, 1984). Though music is the subject of each film, sex is the subtext. In the final reel, generations reconcile; initially stuffy oldsters end up rocking, rolling or twisting the night away, showing the young that, though creaky of joint and infirm of body, they can still do "it." ….

Johnny, a young man from the wrong side of the tracks, exemplifies the freedom expressed through a new and as yet socially unacceptable form of dancing. This "dirty dancing," a phrase used only in the film's title, features a lot of steamy body contact and pelvic thrusts, which unleash emotions supposedly left withered by mambos and cha-cha-chas.

Taking a formula that is itself creaky of joint and infirm of body, Eleanor Bergstein, the writer, and Emile Ardolino, the director, have made an engaging pop-movie romance of somewhat more substance than one usually finds in summer movies designed for the young.

I suspect that one's responses to Dirty Dancing, to its period details, even to its state of mind, will depend on the associations one brings into the theater. What is undeniable, however, is a basic decency of feeling, shaped, in part, by the film's obligations to its optimistic genre.

Baby, as written by Miss Bergstein and played by Miss Grey (Ferris Bueller's Day Off), is no bubble-brained teen-ager, but a bright, inquisitive young woman who's on her way to being her own person. .... Baby's liberation comes through her forbidden association with the womanizing Johnny Castle, after his partner, Penny (Cynthia Rhodes), becomes pregnant and Baby agrees to substitute for her in a mambo demonstration at another hotel.

There's a really quite awful subplot about Penny's abortion, financed by money that Baby has borrowed from her conventionally liberal doctor-father, and about the arrogant young Ivy League fellow who is responsible for Penny's condition.

Given the limitations of his role, that of a poor but handsome sex-object abused by the rich women at Kellerman's Mountain House, Mr. Swayze is also good. He's even convincing when he must admit, in one of the film's lesser moments, that ''the reason people treat me like nothing is because I am nothing.'' He's at his best - as is the movie - when he's dancing.

The movie makes a lot of good use of period music, to which some not very evocative new songs have been added. The dancing itself, especially the dirty dancing, choreographed by Kenny Ortega, looks very contemporary, or, at least, as contemporary as Saturday Night Fever, but it has a drive and a pulse that give the film real excitement.

Though the film takes place in 1963, just a year after the twist was all the rage, the twist itself seems already to have come and gone at Kellerman's Mountain House. …

These anachronisms aren't especially important, except that Miss Bergstein has been so specific about the film's period. She seems to want Dirty Dancing to be seen as a fond goodbye to a comfortable, liberal American way of life before the country was radicalized by the assassination of President Kennedy and by the increasingly bitter anti-Vietnam War movement. That's loading a small movie with rather more than it can carry without a lot of highly detailed program notes.

Dirty Dancing works best when it's most direct and unpretentious. It has the kind of sweet simplicity that somehow always eludes John Hughes (Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off). Mr. Ardolino, whose background is in theater and in television dance films, doesn't clutter the film with extraneous, sentimental detail, nor even with too much colorful (and familiar) detail about life in your usual Catskill resort hotel.

I don't know Canby's personal opinion about the legalization of abortion, but certainly most people who do oppose such legalization would agree with him that the abortion subplot was "awful." On the other hand, people who advocated such legalization would praise that same subplot as a brave social commentary.

Young people who watch the movie for the first time now perhaps do not realize that the people who watched the movie when it came out in 1987 were watching a story that took place 24 years previously, in 1963. American culture had changed enough in those 24 years that the movie already was perceived to be a "period piece" about a previous social era. The changes included greater public frankness about the issue of abortion.

On the other hand, the first audiences perceived the movie to be a celebration of the already somewhat forgotten music and dancing of that earlier era.

Curtis Sittenfeld About Sexual Mystery

2009-01-03T16:39:00.021-05:00

Curtis Sittenfeld has written two coming-of-age novels, Prep and The Man of My Dreams. She wrote a great Salon article, titled "Why Dirty Dancing is the best girl movie ever." Here are some excerpts:

I was 12 when ... I saw Dirty Dancing ... in 1987 and afterwards I wrote a rapturous, multi-page plot synopsis in a powder blue journal with a cat on the cover and a thin blue ribbon for place-marking. I loved Dirty Dancing because of the dancing, which is just so much fun to watch. I loved it because it tackles big subjects, like first love, parental tension, and class conflict, without neglecting the smaller subjects: Minor characters are well-developed (smarmy resort heir Neil, Baby's annoying sister Lisa), and there are so many terrific details and moments (the part where Johnny tries to soulfully run his hand down Baby's raised arm and the side of her torso, and she keeps laughing because it tickles). But most of all, of course, I loved Dirty Dancing because of Baby herself.

I couldn't have articulated this as a teenager, but the movie strikes a perfect balance between not taking itself too seriously while never being dismissive or mocking of Baby. She's smart and curious and good-hearted -- she's at her most confident when she's doing the right thing, whether it's warning jerk waiter Robbie to stay away from her sister or comforting dance instructor Penny about her impending abortion -- and she's also fidgety and hesitant and dorky. And, as she figures things out, she's looking forward -- toward adulthood. ...

Unlike many movie heroines whose goofiness is always, at base, supposed to be cute, Baby's awkwardness is authentic to an uncomfortable degree -- and she herself knows it. The first night at the resort, as Baby stands in the staff quarters in her prim sundress watching the employees getting freaky to Otis Redding's "Love Man," Johnny approaches to ask why she's there. She convinced Johnny's cousin to let her accompany him by helping lug food, so she says, "I carried a watermelon" -- and immediately realizes what a weird, dumb comment it was. Even more cringingly, after Johnny first dances with Baby in the same scene, there's a moment when she's finally cut loose, the song ends, she cheers gleefully, and then she realizes that Johnny has wandered off, indifferent to her.

That Baby is, in her gawkiness, so easy to identify with and that she eventually triumphs is, for many of us, a cinematic combo that's hard to beat. "That first dance demonstration when Baby dances with the old woman, and she's moving left where everyone else is moving right, is totally me," says Ellen Battistelli, 53, a director of membership and programs at a reproductive health association who lives in Silver Spring, Md. "And then all of a sudden she gets good, she gets great, she gets so drop-dead fabulous." Or, as a 29-year-old lawyer in Washington who didn't want her name used because she's not out of the Dirty Dancing closet said, Baby "has a big nose, like me, and [Johnny] still falls in love with her."

Johnny, meanwhile, is macho but not threatening but not unthreatening either. His ability to seem tough and rugged while wearing dance pants and tank tops for most of the movie is nothing short of miraculous. And the significance of the male lead who's more attractive than the female can't be underestimated -- it's so rare as to be, à la Something's Gotta Give with its older-man-who-dares-to-date-older-woman premise, subversive. (This is why Jennifer Grey's post-Dirty Dancing nose job felt like a personal betrayal; for those of us with a weak understanding of the difference between fact and fiction, it implied maybe Johnny didn't love Baby unconditionally after all.)

... Baby is the one who initiates the affair with Johnny. "It's like she decided that she's going to be a seductress even though she's an ugly duckling," says Susanna Daniel, 28, a writer in Madison, Wis. Or, as Baby herself puts it the night she goes to Johnny's cabin, in the most thrilling lines of the movie, "Me? I'm scared of everything ... Most of all, I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you." Then, giving legions of teenage girls the erroneous impression that a confession of love is usually a good idea leading to a positive outcome, Baby says, "Dance with me," and the next thing you know, as "Cry To Me" plays scratchily in the background, her peasant blouse is pressed to Johnny's bare tan chest, and his big tan hands are gripping her butt through her white jeans.

Yes, there are people who hate Dirty Dancing, or who find it cheesy. But the rest of us not only don't change the dial when "She's Like the Wind" comes on the radio -- we actually turn it up. Such is the excellence of the movie that discussing it reduces intelligent and mature women into effusive seventh graders. "Oh my gosh, it just sings to me," says Ellen. "The music is so fabulous, the romance is so fabulous. It's just such a great thing. I just love it." Says Susanna, an ardent feminist, "I thought it was so romantic that she became a dancer and at the end he came back and rescued her."

Those of us who were in junior high when the movie came out had already bought into notions of romance but weren't as sure about sex, which sounded, frankly, kind of repulsive. Dirty Dancing changed all that. Emily Donahoe, 28, an actor in New York, says that the aforementioned white jeans scene was "when I actually felt something go off in me -- like 'Whoa, what was that?' Dirty Dancing gave me a way into the whole world of sex and relationships and how normal the nerves and the goofiness were and how you could find someone who loved you and wanted you despite the fact that you were a jumpy mess."

The movie also served as a form of sex education for Susanna -- much to her chagrin. "My friends and I wanted to go see it, but my mom had heard things so she offered a compromise in which she took me to see it," Susanna remembers. "I really, really liked it, but there were parts where I was squirming in my seat. And then afterward my mom took me out for hot chocolate and she said, 'So did that turn you on? Did these parts make you aroused, because they did for me, and I think we should talk about it.' I denied any understanding of what she was saying." ...

The only real problem with "Dirty Dancing" -- the dark side of it, if you will -- is, as Susanna puts it, "It was the first of several movies that I thought were teaching me about love when actually they didn't teach me anything. I thought, That's the way it's going to happen. Somebody's going to see me and think I'm special and pursue me despite how weird I act and how unappealing I might be." But, as Susanna now laments, "Men don't have time to go finding gems in piles of coal."

Some of us, of course, haven't yet come to terms with that painful truth. When I first saw the movie, Baby was, at 18, six years older than I was. Now she's 10 years younger than I am, and I still haven't met the thuggy, chivalrous man who'll tell me I'm the one thing he can't get enough of.

If I'm deranged in my hopefulness, at least I'm in good company. "I want my life to be like the dance at the end," says Ellen who, as you may recall, is 53. "It's got it all: beauty, skill, love, passion, parents begging forgiveness. And she does the jump and he lifts her up, and all of a sudden everybody starts dancing -- the races and ages and classes come together. I want everybody in my life to all of a sudden dance together and to have grace and style and be smiling. Is that too much to ask?"

Jennifer Grey's performance in Dirty Dancing is delightful because of her many obvious moments of social awkwardness and physical gawkiness. Sittenfeld points out a hilarious example:

.... after Johnny first dances with Baby in the same [first dirty-dancing] scene, there's a moment when she's finally cut loose, the song ends, she cheers gleefully, and then she realizes that Johnny has wandered off, indifferent to her.

Although such moments are obvious, Baby's initial attitude toward sexual relations remains mysterious. She seems like the type of young woman who would be reluctant and fearful about sex. When the decisive moment arrived, she did say she was "scared of everything" but then she took the initiative quite boldly to involve herself with Johnny. As one woman remarked in Sittenfeld's article, "It's like she decided that she's going to be a seductress even though she's an ugly duckling." That really is a thought-provoking moment in the movie, because Baby's thinking at that moment is mysterious -- at least for me.

Roger Ebert Panned Dirty Dancing

2009-01-03T16:26:00.026-05:00

When the movie Dirty Dancing opened, critic Roger Ebert's review (August 21, 1987) was mostly negative.

... The movie makes some kind of a half-hearted attempt to rip off West Side Story by making the girl Jewish and the boy Italian - or Irish, I forget.

It doesn't much matter, since the movie itself never, ever uses the word "Jewish" or says out loud what obviously is the main point of the plot: the family's opposition to a Gentile boyfriend of low social status. I guess people who care about such things are supposed to be able to read between the lines, and the great unwashed masses of American moviegoers are condemned to think the old man doesn't like Swayze's dirty dancing.

This might have been a decent movie if it had allowed itself to be about anything. The performances are good. Swayze is a great dancer, and Grey, who is appealing, also is a great dancer. But the filmmakers rely so heavily on cliches, on stock characters in old situations, that it's as if they never really had any confidence in their performers.

This movie could have been about the subjects it pussyfoots around so coyly. It could have found a big scene a little more original than the heroine stepping in for the injured star. It could have made the obnoxious owner's son less of a one-dimensional s.o.b. But the movie plays like one long, sad, compromise; it places packaging ahead of ambition. Where did I get that idea? I dunno. Maybe from the title.

Ebert did like the performances of Grey and Swayze, especially their dancing, but he dismissed Dirty Dancing's story as a cliched variation of two types of previous stories:

Stories in which a young couple's love is hindered by ethnic taboos or parental conflicts. West Side Story, Romeo and Juliette and Fiddler on the Roof are examples of such stories.
Stories in which an ambitious understudy gets an opportunity to play the main role in a theater performance when the star cannot perform because of an illness, injury or other misfortune. This was the story in, for example, several Busby Berkley movies during the 1930s and in the popular Broadway play 42nd Street.

Ebert's did make an interesting observation about Dirty Dancing perhaps being inspired to some extent by previous stories of those two types but he was wrong to dismiss this movie as a cliched, trite failure. The story in Dirty Dancing is quite novel, contemporary and rich.

With regard to the West Side Story example, the Jewish taboo against falling in love with and marrying Gentiles indeed is part of the Dirty Dancing story, but this element is so subtle that probably most of the audience ramains completely unaware of its presence in the movie. Ebert criticizes that very subtlety, but in fact the taboo was subtle in a modern Jewish family such as the Housemans.

With regard to the 42nd Street example, Baby Houseman does substitute for an established star, but Baby has no aspirations to become a professional dancer. Baby's situation and motives are quite complicated. She even tries to keep her substitute performance secret from her own family, and the entire situation complicates her relationship with her father and sister.

Ebert's review of Dirty Dancing failed because he tried to fit this movie into patterns of many other movies he had seen instead of appreciating the stories many subtleties and novelties.

Robbie Gould's Philosophy

2008-12-29T00:23:00.022-05:00

The movie Dirty Dancing takes place during the 1963 summer vacation of the Houseman family at a Borscht Belt resort hotel that caters to Jewish families. The Houseman family consisted of the parents, Doctor Jake Houseman and Marjorie Houseman, and two daughters, Lisa and Baby (Frances).

The family regularly ate in the hotel dining room, where they were served by a waiter named Robbie Gould. He himself had grown up in a family that visited this resort hotel. Since he began to attend college, he has worked during his summer vacations as a waiter in this resort hotel. By the summer of 1963 he has been accepted into Yale Medical School.

When the movie’s story begins, the Housemans already are acquainted with Robbie Gould, although the reason is not explained. Perhaps Robbie’s father was a medical colleague of Doctor Houseman. Perhaps the two families had met at the resort hotel in a previous summer. Perhaps Robbie had served the Houseman family as a waiter during a previous summer.

During the first days of the Housemans’ stay at the resort hotel, Robbie began to court the older sister Lisa. The basic romance between Robbie and Lisa was not kept secret from the hotel resort’s owners or from the rest of the Houseman family. The hotel resort’s owner has encouraged the waiters – all of whom are Jewish and successful college students – to flirt with the Jewish families’ daughters of marriageable age.

In one of the very first days of the Housemans’ vacation, the Houseman mother Marjorie and her two daughters were participating together in a group activity of trying on wigs and cosmetics. Robbie approached Lisa, who was sitting near Marjorie and Baby, and joked to Lisa: “Ask not what your waiter can do for you, but what you can do for your waiter” – an allusion to President John Kennedy, who was in office during that summer of 1963. Robbie remarked also to Lisa that he was saving his tips to buy an Alfa Romero automobile, and Lisa immediately exclaimed: “That’s my favorite car.”

Robbie and Lisa were flirting publicly, and neither her mother Marjorie nor her sister Baby paid attention although the flirting was taking place in their presence. After Lisa and Robbie talked quietly some more, Lisa confided to Baby that she intended to go that night with Robbie to spend some time together secretly on the golf course. Lisa asked Baby to lie to their parents about her whereabouts if the parents asked. Baby agreed to tell a lie if asked.

Robbie’s public flirting and Lisa’s confidential request about their intended secret meeting that night were overheard by Penny Johnson, who was serving as an activity leader, helping the female guests try on wigs and cosmetics.

Penny Johnson’s main employment at the resort hotel was to dance. She and her dance partner Johnny Castle performed for the guests and taught the guests how to dance. Since Baby already had seen Penny dance and admired Penny’s beauty and dance skills, she approached Penny to compliment Penny during the moments when Penny was angrily watching Robbie flirt and plan with Lisa. Penny was so angry at Robbie that she responded to Baby’s compliments rudely.

That night, when Robbie and Lisa sneaked away to the golf course, Penny ran away into the woods and disappeared. Apparently Penny had become emotionally distraught when she saw Robbie and Lisa leave together, and so she ran away. In the movie’s original script, there was a rather long scene where Baby secretly organized several people to search for Penny in the woods, but this scene eventually was cut out of the movie’s final version.

The movie does show, however, that Baby noticed Robbie and Lisa walking together out of the woods. Lisa’s hair and clothing were disordered, and they were arguing because Robbie had become too aggressive in his seduction efforts and because Lisa had refused to submit completely.

Lisa: Robbie, I don’t hear an apology.

Robbie: Go back to Mommy and Daddy and listen. Maybe you’ll hear one [an apology] in your dreams.

Eventually Baby found Penny hiding and crying in the resort hotel’s kitchen. Baby then accompanied Penny to Penny’s cabin and learned that Penny had become pregnant by Robbie. The dialogue never reveals when the relationship between Robbie and Penny had begun. Robbie and Penny both have worked at the resort hotel in previous summers. Perhaps their relationship began in a previous summer, perhaps it began earlier this same summer. In any case, Penny had become sexually involved with Robbie because she really loved him and hoped to marry him.

Penny told Robbie about her pregnancy, but he refused to acknowledge any responsibility and he accused her of sleeping with lots of other men, any one of whom might be the father. In fact, Penny has been faithful to Robbie during their relationship and knows for sure that she became was impregnated by him. Robbie broke off his relationship with Penny and refused to help her with her pregnancy or an abortion. Penny decided to have an abortion, but did not have the $250 (1963 dollars) to pay for it.

When Baby Houseman was told about this situation, she immediately exclaimed: “But if it’s Robbie, there’s no problem. I know he has the money.”

In the next scene, Baby confronted Robbie in the resort hotel’s dining room and asked him to give Penny the $250 for the abortion. Robbie refused, saying “some people count and some people don’t.” Robbie then handed Baby an obviously much-read paperback copy of The Fountainhead and recommended that she read it: “Read it. I think you’ll enjoy it, but return it; I have notes in there.”

Baby was immediately offended by the suggestion that she read this novel. She refused to take the book, angrily poured a pitcher of water on his pants (he was dressed in his waiter’s uniform and preparing the dining room’s tables for a meal) and rebuked him: “You make me sick. Stay away from me, and stay away from my sister, or I’ll have you fired.” Then she walked out angrily.

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The novel The Fountainhead was written by Ayn Rand. She was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1905 and grew up as the eldest of three daughters in a family that was ethnically Jewish but agnostic and non-observant. Her father was a chemist who had developed a pharmacy business. After the Communists seized power in 1917, they nationalized her father’s business. Ayn attended the University of Petrograd (her native city’s new name) and graduated with a degree in Social Pedagogy (with emphases in history, philology and law) at the age of 19 in 1924. She then attended the State Institute for Cinema Arts until early 1926, when she obtained a visa to visit some relatives in the United States. She never returned to Russia from that trip, and eventually she became a US citizen.

Rand moved to Hollywood and worked in a variety of jobs in the movie industry. During the 1930s she wrote a variety of works – screenplays, plays, novellas – that had some, but not great success. Her first huge writing success was the novel The Fountainhead, which she published in 1943. More than six million copies of this novel have been sold, and about 100,000 copies are still sold every year.

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The Fountainhead’s major characters is a man named Howard Roark, who strove to work as an architect. Since his architectural designs were unconventional and creative, however, he suffered difficulties in developing a successful career. He was expelled from the school where he studied architecture, and so he apprenticed himself to another unconventional, creative architect who suffered various business problems.

Roark could not succeed professionally in this situation, so he quit and went to work instead as a stone cutter in a granite quarry. The quarry’s owner had a daughter named Dominique Francon, who became infatuated while watching Roark work in the quarry. She tried to arrange situations where she could be in Roark’s presence. Eventually she arranged for him to replace a broken stone in a fireplace in her home. Three days later Roark sneaked into Francon’s bedroom, raped her and left. As the rape was happening, she felt that Roark was “a master taking shameful, contemptuous possession of a slave.” The rape dismayed her, but she did not report the rape to anyone.

Later Roark was awarded a contract to design a monument. His design featured a huge statue of Dominique Francon nude.

This design caused a public outrage, and so contractor sued to cancel the contract. The dispute eventually was settled in a trial, in which Francon testified in Roark’s favor. Roark nevertheless lost the lawsuit, and so the contract was canceled and Roark again found himself impoverished.

After the trial, Dominique Francon married a mediocre architect who had testified against Howard Roark in the trial. As the mediocre architect’s wife, Francon persuaded a series of potential clients to hire her husband instead of Roark for various architectural projects. As part of these efforts to attract potential clients, Francon had sex with a wealthy man, who was so pleased with Francon that he paid her and her mediocre-architect husband to divorce so that he could marry her.

While married to the wealthy man, Francon secretly helped Roark to develop Roark’s own architectural business where he could exercise his own creativity fully and autonomously. Francon then divorced the wealthy man and married Roark, who after he has become a famous and successful architect. At the end of the novel, Roark was building a unique skyscraper with the wealthy man’s money but free from the wealthy man’s ideas or interference.

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The Fountainhead is a novel that praises the efforts of an extraordinary creative genius to conduct their lives focused completely on their own professional goals. If such a genius refuses to compromise professionally and personally, then eventually he might achieve extraordinary professional success and personal happiness.

Ayn Rand provides a female perspective on the lives of such creative geniuses through the novel’s main female character Dominique Francon. This character believed that she herself is unusually intelligent and capable and that practically all the men around her were mediocre and unworthy marriage partners. The one extraordinary male she ever found was Howard Roark, but he confounded her when he raped her. Still infatuated with Roark but unable to understand his attitude and impulsiveness, she resigned herself to marry two other men in turn who lacked Roark’s creative genius.

As Dominque Francon lived with her two husbands and continued to observe Howard Roark’s creative genius from afar, she continued to fall more deeply in love with him. When Roark designed a monument that featured a huge nude statue of her, she accepted this grand, creative gesture as an extraordinary compensation to her for the rape. She reasoned that an extraordinarily intelligent woman such as herself should grant a special understanding, appreciation and indulgence for the sexual desires of such an extraordinarily creative and superior man as Howard Roark.

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Ayn Rand wrote a second famous novel, Atlas Shrugged, which was published in 1957. Atlas Shrugged likewise praised the extraordinary contributions of extraordinary individuals to economic and social development.

Atlas Shrugged likewise elaborated Rand’s opinions about sexual morality, praising sex that expresses intellectual and spiritual compatibility. In the novel, the mediocre characters experience mediocre sex with other mediocre characters, and the extraordinary characters enjoy extraordinary sex with other extraordinary characters.

After writing Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand devoted herself to developing a philosophy that she called Objectivism. One of Objectivism’s major elements was its contempt for altruism. Rand argued that altruism is a misdirected and ineffective motivation for economic and social development. A much more effective motivation is the desire of geniuses to create innovative systems and technology for the sheer joy of creating and achieving. Altruistic people who try to help disadvantaged societies accomplish far less improvement than creative people who simply love to build and develop wherever they can.

With regard to sexual relations, Rand believed that men and women should be treated as intellectually and socially equal but also that their physiological differences caused significant psychological differences. Men act aggressively, and women respond. Rand taught that “the essence of femininity is hero-worship — the desire to look up to man." Rand said that no woman ever should serve as US President because any woman would be damaged psychologically in such a position.

Jenny Turner, a biographer of Rand, wrote:

The sex in Rand’s novels is extraordinarily violent and fetishistic. In The Fountainhead, the first coupling of the heroes, heralded by whips and rock drills and horseback riding and cracks in marble, is ‘an act of scorn ... not as love, but as defilement’ —- in other words, a rape... In Atlas Shrugged, erotic tension is cleverly increased by having one heroine bound into a plot with lots of spectacularly cruel and handsome men.

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A movie was made of The Fountainhead in 1949. The role of Howard Roark was played by Howard Roark, and the role of Dominique Francon was played by Patricia Neal – both of whom were famous stars. The movie was seen by millions of people during the 1950s who never read the book, so the story and its ideas were well known. The rape scene was not depicted explicitly in the movie, but the novel’s rape scene was notorious among the general public, even among people who had not read the novel.

By the early 1960s Ayn Rand had reached the apex of her fame and influence. After the social welfare programs of the Depression, the military teamwork of World War Two and the Korean War, and the social conformity of the Eisenhower Presidency, Rand’s praise of extraordinary, creative, nonconformist individuals struck a fresh chord among much of the population.

Men who read The Fountainhead imagined themselves to be like the heroic individualist Howard Roark who had to work as a stone cutter in quarry but who eventually designed and built the world’s greatest skyscraper. Male readers were intrigued that the female author depicted the main female character, the beautiful Dominique Francon, as tolerating a rape by Howard Roark and as nevertheless continuing to admire Roark as a hero, as being complimented when Roark proposed to create a huge nude statue of herself, and as eventually leaving a wealthy husband to marry Roark.

The Fountainhead was popular among female readers too. During an era when women were supposed to try or at least pretend to try to preserve their virginity until marriage, pre-marital sexual relations between an engaged couple often included a private drama in which heavy petting between the forceful male and reluctant female culminated in a quasi-rape. Thus the woman’s virginity itself was not preserved, but her principled intention and effort to preserve her virginity were preserved. In that era of supposed pre-marital virginity, the rape fantasy provoked by The Fountainhead struck a subconscious chord that was shocking but enjoyable among female as well as male readers.

In that era, the overwhelming majority of women also saw their lives as revolving primarily or even entirely around marriage and family and as dependent on their husbands’ professional success. During a marriage, the husband was supposed to achieve and earn in the economic world, and the wife was supposed to nurture the husband and the children in the domestic world. Ayn Rand’s thinking about sexual relations was rooted firmly in the first six decades of the twentieth century.

Attitudes about sexual relations began to change in the early 1960s. Betty Friedan’s book The Feminist Mystique was published in 1963, and the expression “women’s liberation” began to appear in public discourse in 1964. In the following decades, women in modern societies developed significantly new attitudes about their own life achievements and about their attitudes toward men.

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Dirty Dancing, which takes place in 1963, depicts two sisters with significantly different attitudes about their own future achievements and marriages.

The older sister Lisa Houseman is interested primarily in fashion, romance and marriage. She is frivolous and lacks any interest in global problems. For her performance in the talent show she is deciding whether to sing “I Feel Pretty” or “What Do the Simple Folk Do?” She eventually will sing a silly Hawaiian song.

The younger sister Baby Houseman intends to begin attending Mount Holyoke College, an excellent women’s college in Massachusetts. She intends to major in the economics of underdeveloped countries and after graduation intends to serve in the Peace Corps. She intends to defer her marriage until at least her mid-twenties and probably intends also to continue to develop an intellectual career during her marriage.

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Baby was insulted when Robbie recommended that she read The Fountainhead. Even if she never had read any of Rand’s writings, she as an educated and socially aware young woman in 1963 knew enough about Ayn Rand and this novel that she expected it’s message to be, as Robbie himself remarked to her, “some people count and some people don’t.” Baby perceived that the novel’s philosophy and Robbie’s philosophy excused supposedly extraordinary individuals from common concerns and morality. An extraordinary male should be excused even if he raped a woman, and the woman should be satisfied to hope that she still might marry him in the far future. And altruism was a bad motivation!

Baby refused to take the book that Robbie tried to lend her. She poured a pitcher of water onto Robbie and rebuked him: “You make me sick. Stay away from me. Stay away from my sister, or I’ll have you fired.”

Baby’s threat to have Robbie fired was an empty threat. She herself had heard the resort hotel’s owner tell the waiters to flirt with the young female guests. Furthermore, she herself had heard the owner tell the male dance instructor Johnny Castle not to become involved with the young female guests. Baby was in no position to try to have Robbie fired. If she tried to cause trouble, the employee most likely to be fired was Johnny.

Despite Baby’s threat, Robbie continued his involvement with Lisa. Even after Lisa told Baby she intended to have sex with Robbie, Baby did not take any action to have Robbie fired.

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When Baby confronted Robbie to provide the money for the abortion, Robbie was dressed in his waiter uniform and preparing tables for the next meal in the resort hotel’s dining room. As she talked with him about Penny’s situation, Baby walked alongside Robbie from table to table and poured ice water into the glasses as Robbie set the tables.

During this conversation, Robbie pulled his much-read paperback copy of The Fountainhead out of his uniform pocket and tried to give it to Baby to read. Why was Robbie carrying this novel in his uniform as he set the tables for the next meal? He could not have expected Baby to confront him in this situation, so he could not have brought the novel with the intention of giving it to Baby.

Apparently, Robbie had brought the novel into the dining room with the intention of giving it not to Baby, but rather to Lisa, whom he expected to serve as a waiter at the imminent meal. He and Lisa had quarreled the previous night when he had become sexually aggressive at the golf course. Lisa had refused to submit to him, and he had refused to apologize. Robbie had not given up in his efforts to seduce Lisa, however, and he intended to lend Lisa The Fountainhead as his next step.

If Lisa would only read The Fountainhead, then Lisa would understand and appreciate Robbie better. The novel was written by a famous female author with a female perspective that Lisa should share. Lisa should understand that Robbie Gould was similar to the novel’s hero Howard Roark. Robbie Gould was working now only as a waiter, but Howard Roark had worked for a long time only as a stone cutter in a quarry. Eventually, however, Robbie Gould would become the world’s greatest medical genius, just as Howard Roark became the world’s greatest architectural genius. And Lisa should identify with novel’s beautiful and intelligent heroine, Dominique Francon:

Lisa Houseman should adore the genius Robbie Gould just as Dominque Francon adored the genius Howard Roark.
Lisa Houseman should submit to and then forgive Robbie Gould’s sexual aggression just as Dominique Francon had done submitted to and forgiven Howard Roark’s rape.
Lisa Houseman should feel flattered that Robbie Gould would adore her nude body, just as Howard Roark had designed a huge monument to Dominique Francon’s nude body.
Lisa Houseman should be willing to wait patiently until Robbie Gould was ready to marry her, just as Dominque Francon had waited – even through two marriages to other, mediocre men – until Howard Roark was ready to marry.

We don’t know whether Lisa actually read The Fountainhead. It’s a long (750 pages) and high-minded novel. Perhaps she just started and then asked Robbie to tell her the story. Robbie certainly pointed out the sexy parts – the scene where Dominique was raped and the scene where the married Dominique had sex with the wealthy man who then was so pleased that he paid Dominique’s husband to agree to a divorce so that Dominique could marry the wealthy man and the scene where Dominique left the wealthy man and reunited with Howard Roark, who had raped her many years ago.

We do know, however, that by the end of the vacation stay Lisa had decided to have sex with Robbie. She intended to surprise Robbie. She made herself up as beautiful as she could, and she went to his cabin in the early evening. As it turned out, however, Lisa found Robbie having sex with Vivian Pressman, and so she left and did not have sex with him after all.

If, however, Lisa had found Robbie in the cabin alone, she certainly did not intend to declare abruptly that she had decided to have sex with him. I think she intended the consummation to happen in a different manner. She would engage him in some kissing and petting, and then as Robbie became more aggressive, she would make a show of resisting but eventually would submit to him. She would enable Robbie to experience his rape fantasy, and so he would fall in love with her and propose marriage. She would get pregnant, and Robbie would married her immediately, and then on their tenth anniversary they would come back to this resort hotel, which would let them stay for a vacation for free.

That’s how Lisa misunderstood The Fountainhead. She understood only that the hero raped the heroine but then they got married and lived happily ever after. Lisa did not understand that the hero did not marry until he achieved extraordinary professional success, because marriage impeded his professional efforts in the meantime. Lisa did not understand that the heroine was supposed to satisfy herself with a couple of marriages to other, mediocre men in the meantime. The hero had time to satisfy his own sexual desires only with an occasional rape in the meantime.

Perhaps Robbie Gould previously had used this same seduction technique – The Fountainhead – on Penny Johnson. If she was overpowered by Robbie when they had sex, then maybe that is why she was not able to prevent her pregnancy.

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A day or so before Lisa told Baby that she intended to have sex with Robbie, there was another confrontation between Robbie and Baby.

The situation is that Baby and Johnny had become sexually involved, but Baby still had not told her father that she even considered Johnny to be her boyfriend. Johnny felt insulted that Baby apparently was ashamed to admit that she was involved with such an uneducated, low-class man as Johnny. Baby and Johnny had quarreled about her reluctance to tell her father about Johnny, and so Baby had gone to the employees’ cabins to find Johnny to discuss their quarrel some more.

Baby found Johnny in Penny’s cabin, in a serious discussion. Johnny then left Penny in the cabin and walked out onto the cabin’s porch to talk with Baby. Before they began talking, Johnny and Baby embraced briefly on the porch.

At that moment, Robbie walked past the cabin porch and noticed Johnny and Baby embracing, and joked insultingly: “Looks like I picked the wrong sister. That’s okay, Baby, I went slumming too.”

The joke’s idea was that Robbie perceived that Baby was more on his intellectual and cultural level than Lisa was. Baby would have been a better sexual partner for Robbie. Lisa still was refusing to have sex with Robbie, but Baby apparently had begun already to have sex with Johnny.

Robbie had picked the wrong sister to seduce when the Housemans had arrived for their family vacation. Baby was the sister who read books and could understand The Fountainhead and understand the Objectivism philosophy. Baby was the sister who was willing to have sex without a marriage commitment. Instead of picking Baby for a brief sexual affair, Robbie had made a mistake and went slumming with the intellectually and culturally inferior sister Lisa.

Robbie told Baby that Baby had made a similar mistake. Baby actually was like Dominique Francon, but she had gone slumming with the intellectually and culturally inferior Johnny instead of submitting herself sexually to and spending her vacation time with Robbie the Roark-like genius.

As this confrontation turned out, though, Johnny jumped off the course and beat Robbie up. And then Johnny told Robbie, “Get out of here. You’re not worth it.”

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The role of Robbie Gould was played by an actor named Max Cantor. He was born in 1959, and so he was about 27 years old when Dirty Dancing was filmed. He grew up in a theatrical family (his father produced more than 100 plays) and graduated from Harvard University. He played the piano superbly, and he played classical music for Dirty Dancing’s cast during breaks in the filming.

Dirty Dancing was released in 1987 and four years later, in 1991, Cantor died of a heroin overdose.

Disconnected Women - Penny Johnson, Vivian Pressman and Marjorie Houseman

2008-12-29T00:17:00.017-05:00

The movie Dirty Dancing begins with a doctor’s younger daughter exclaiming: “I thought I’d never find a guy as great as my Dad!” In the story that follows, this younger daughter Baby lost much of her ability to communicate with her father and transfered her main affection to a young man who worked as a dance instructor. Meanwhile the older daughter Lisa, who had been infatuated with a young man who was a medical student, began to talk much more with the father and then broke off her relationship with her medical-student boyfriend.

For each of these two daughters, their father Dr. Jake Houseman was a safe harbor. Each daughter could transfer her own affection and communication from the father to a young man, but if the relationship with the young man failed, then the daughter eventually could return to her father as a safe emotional haven.

Besides these two daughters, the story features three female characters – 1) Penny Johnson, a dance instructor, 2) Vivian Pressman, an adulterous married woman and 3) Marjorie Houseman, the doctor’s wife and the daughters’ mother. The first two of these women are disconnected, frustrated and angry throughout the story. The third is disconnected and frustrated, but not apparently angry.

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Penny Johnson, the female dance instructor, was kicked out of her home when she was 16 years old by her mother. There is no mention of her father. We can speculate that Penny was the child of an unplanned pregnancy, and we can suppose that she was an extremely rebellious teenager, beyond the control of her unmarried mother.

Penny told Baby what happened after she had been kicked out of her home by her mother:

Penny: I’ve been dancing ever since. It’s the only thing I ever wanted to do anyway.

Baby: I envy you.

Of course, what Baby envied was Penny’s beauty and dancing. Baby was oblivious to Penny’s deprivations and insecurities.

In a conversation with Johnny Castle’s cousin Billy Kostecki, Baby learned that Penny and Johnny were only a platonic, dancing couple now, but that they had been a romantic couple long ago, when they were still “kids”.

Baby: They look great together.

Billy: Yeah. You’d think they were a couple, wouldn’t you.

Baby: Aren’t they?

Billy: No, not since we were kids.

The movie’s dialogue provides several clues about this previous romantic relationship. We already know that Penny had always wanted to dance, that she had been thrown out of her home when she was 16 years old, and that she began working as a professional dancer immediately after she was thrown out of her home. One business that employs dancers is the Arthur Murray company, which teaches ballroom dancing. The movie’s author Eleanor Bergstein worked her way through college by teaching dance in this business. It seems, therefore, that Bergstein created her character Penny Johnson as a young woman who likewise began earning her living, while still a teenager, as a dance instructor in an Arthur Murray business.

(With regard to Penny’s being kicked out of her home, remember that both of Eleanor Bergstein’s parents died when she was in early twenties and that she therefore had to leave her own family home and go live with another family.)

The movie does not describe how Penny Johnson began working as a professional dancer, but it does mention how Johnny Castle was recruited to work as a dance instructor for the Arthur Murray company. When Baby asked Johnny where he had learned to be a dancer, Johnny answered:

Well, this guy came into this luncheonette one day, and we were all sitting around doing nothing. And he said that Arthur Murray was giving a test for instructors. So, if you passed, they teach you different dances, show you how to break them down, teach them.

Apparently, Johnny had been sitting in a luncheonette with a group of people who already knew how to dance well. A recruiter for the Arthur Murray company came into the luncheonette to recruit dance instructors (not dance students). We therefore can speculate that Penny already was working as an Arthur Murray dance instructor and that she knew that Johnny (with whom she had been in a romantic couple when they were still “kids”) and his friends had the dancing ability to become instructors too, and so Penny recommended to her supervisors at Arthur Murray that they go to the luncheonette and recruit Johnny and his friends.

We know from the dialogue that Penny had worked for a while as a Rockette dancer at some time before the story, but apparently she still was working with Johnny as an Arthur Murray dance instructor when the movie’s story takes place.

Based on all these clues, we can speculate further that Penny was thrown out of her home by her mother because of Penny’s relationship with Johnny – when they were still “kids.” Apparently, this relationship was sexual, because a mother does not throw her 16-year-old daughter out of her home because of a puppy-love relationship.

By the time of the movie’s story, however, the relationship between Johnny and Penny had become only platonic. They still worked together as a couple, performing and teaching dance, in the resort hotel. Johnny now was extremely promiscuous, having brief sexual affairs with several of the resort hotel’s female guests every week. And Penny now had fallen in love with Robbie Gould, a medical student who worked as a summer waiter in the resort hotel’s restaurant. Furthermore, Penny has become pregnant from Robbie, and Robbie has abandoned her and has refused to pay for her abortion. Johnny knew about Penny’s predicament and tried to help her as a friend.

Throughout the movie, Penny Johnson usually spoke angrily. In her first conversations with Baby, when Baby was just trying to express her own admiration toward her or to offer helpful suggestions, Penny responded with sarcasm and hostility. At one point, Penny hissed:

Baby? Is that your name? You know what, Baby, you don’t know shit about my problems. …. Go back to your playpen, Baby.

Gradually, however, after Baby provided the money for the abortion and offered to substitute for Penny in a scheduled performance at the other, Sheldrake resort hotel, Penny became civil and then candid with Baby. Penny also helped Johnny teach Baby how to dance.

In one scene, Penny was helping Baby were alone in a locker room as Baby was trying on Penny’s dress that Baby would wear in the performance at the Sheldrake. Baby said was afraid that she would forget her dance moves and techniques during the performance, but Penny reassured her and reminded her to let Johnny lead her.

At that moment, Penny had a lot on her mind, because she would go to the abortionist later that day. Then she said:

Thanks, Baby. I just want you to know that I don’t sleep around, whatever Robbie might have told you. I thought that he loved me. I thought it was something special. Anyway, I just wanted to know that. …. I’m scared. I’m so scared, Baby.

Later, after Dr. Houseman has treated Penny for her abortion complications, Baby and Johnny came to visit Penny, who was lying in bed.

In this conversation Penny spoke nicely to Baby, and then Baby left the room, leaving Penny and Johnny to talk together alone. By this time, Penny has recognized that Johnny and Baby have begun to have a sexual relationship, and so Penny and Johnny said to each other:

Penny (angrily): What are you doing? How many times have you told me, never get mixed up with them?

Johnny: I know what I’m doing.

Penny (angrily): You listen to me. You’ve got to stop it now.

In this conversation, Penny and Johnny are talking about the resort hotel’s rule that employees of their status were forbidden to become involved in intimate relationships with the guests. As dance instructors, Penny and Johnny were the two employees most likely to become involved in such relationships, so the prohibition was especially significant to them. Johnny nevertheless did become involved very promiscuously. He felt he could get away with violating the rule, because “I know what I’m doing,” but he frequently nagged Penny to obey the rule.

This conversation raises two questions.

The first question is what possible relationships had provoked Johnny to nag Penny in the past. It is possible that Penny had involved herself intimately with guests, but the only relationship we know about from the story is Robbie Gould, who at the time of the story was a medical student who worked as a waiter in the resort hotel during that summer. Perhaps Penny and Robbie had begun their relationship in a previous summer when Robbie was still just a guest visiting the resort hotel with his family.

The second question is why Penny objected so strongly to Johnny’s intimate relationship with Baby, when Penny surely knew by now that Johnny promiscuously involved himself with brief affairs with many female guests. What was it about Johnny’s relationship with Baby that caused Penny to warn Johnny so sharply? Perhaps the reason was simply Baby’s young age, perhaps it was that the hotel owners’ attention eventually might be attracted to the situation because of Penny’s abortion or because Baby had replaced Penny at the Sheldrake performance.

In any case , Johnny initially agreed that Penny’s warning was right. Immediately after he left that conversation with Penny, he encountered Baby and indicated to her that he was ending their affair. That resolve did not last long, but it was real for a while.

At the end of the story, Penny was professionally and romantically alone. Her dance partner Johnny had been fired by the hotel’s owner because of Johnny’s relationship with Baby, and Johnny had fallen in love with Baby and had declared his love publicly. Penny’s own future employment was endangered, and even her platonic friendship with Johnny was endangered.

In the meantime, Baby was now Johnny’s dance partner and romantic. Baby would begin attending college in a few weeks, and perhaps she could earn some money by working in her free time as a dance instructor, with Johnny, for an Arthur Murray business near her college. And then in the summers she and Johnny could work as dance instructors at some other resort hotel in the Borscht Belt (as the movie’s author Eleanor Bergstein had worked during her own college years).

Penny herself soon would resume working full-time as a dance instructor for an Arthur Murray business. If there was a shortage of male instructors, then she could suggest some good place, perhaps a luncheonette, where an Arthur Murray recruiter might find some young men who danced well enough to learn how to teach dance. But Penny herself was not getting any younger.

Penny still wanted to get married and start a family. After Dr. Houseman had treated the complications from her abortion, she was very relieved when he told her she still would be able to have children. At the end of the movie, Penny was angry that she still had no prospective husband in sight.

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Vivian Pressman was a middle-aged married woman. The resort hotel’s owner Max Kellerman described her to Jake and Marjorie Houseman as follows:

That’s Vivian Pressman, one of the bungalow bunnies. That’s what we call the women who stay here all week. The husbands only come up on weekends. Moe Pressman’s a big card player; he’ll join our game. He’s away a lot, I know. It’s a hardship.

While staying at the resort hotel during the week, Vivian Pressman paid Johnny Castle for dance lessons and also paid extra for sexual sessions. Johnny said that he had sexual relations with many female guests. At one point Johnny even remarked to Baby that “women are stuffing diamonds in my pockets.”

On the second-to-last night, the night before the talent show, Vivian walked up to Johnny, who was preparing for the talent show, and whispered: “This is our last nig ht together, lover. I’ve got something worked out for us.”

A short time later, Johnny walked by a table where a group of men were playing cards. One of the men, Vivian’s husband Moe Pressman, gave Johnny $100 and said, “I’ve been playing cards all weekend, and I’ve got an all-night game tonight. Why don’t you give my wife some extra dance lessons?”

Obviously Vivian understood that her husband Moe preferred to play cards all night, so she had asked his to pay for dance lessons so that she could have some fun of her own. It’s not clear whether Moe knew and did not care that Vivian was having a sexual affair with Johnny or whether he simply was inattentive and oblivious about her adultery.

By this time, however, Johnny had decided that he wanted to stop hi s own sexual promiscuity and so he declined to take Moe’s money, saying: I’m sorry, Mr. Pressman, but I’m booked up for the whole weekend with the show. I won’t have time for anything else. I don’t think it’d be fair to take the money.”

Vivian was standing nearby and heard Johnny reject her husband’s money and indicate that he would be too busy preparing the talent show to give any dance lessons. Thus Vivian understood angrily that Johnny would not have another sexual session with her.

Vivian Pressman then arranged to have sex with Robbie Gould instead, and they were seen together in bed by Lisa Houseman when she herself went to Robbie’s cabin to have sex with him for the first time. Lisa was upset and left, leaving Robbie and Vivian alone in the cabin to continue their sexual session. This happened in the early evening. (Eleanor Bergstein mentioned in her running commentary that the scene was filmed “at dusk.”)

Early the next morning as Vivian Pressman was leaving Robbie Gould’s cabin, she saw Johnny Castle and Baby Houseman coming out of Johnny’s cabin. Johnny and Baby kissed, and so Vivian understood that Johnny had declined Vivian’s arrangements because he preferred to spend the night having sex with Baby.

Later that day, the resort hotel’s owner Max Kellerman fired Johnny for stealing Moe Pressman’s wallet. Kellerman explained that Moe’s wallet had disappeared while he had been playing cards all night. Moe was certain that he still had his wallet at 1:30 a.m., when the wallet was in his jacket that he hung from the back of his chair. Then at 3:45 a.m. Moe found that his wallet was missing from his jacket. Later, after Moe Pressman had reported the disappearance to Max Kellerman, Vivian Pressman told Kellerman that she had seen Johnny Castle walk close by the jacket during that night. Max Kellerman then accused Johnny Castle of the theft and fired him.

This sequence of events has some gaps that we can fill in. During the afternoon, Vivian Pressman had arranged for her husband to offer $100 to Johnny Castle for dance lessons, but Johnny refused the money and thus refused the sex session with Vivian. Then Lisa Houseman saw Vivian Pressman having sex with Robbie Gould in Robbie’s cabin at dusk, and so Lisa left. In the middle of the night, Vivian must have left Robbie’s cabin and gone to make a public appearance in the place where her husband Moe was playing cards.

Vivian would have made a public appearance at the gambling table for several reasons: 1) to make sure that Moe still intended to play cards all night, 2) to tell Moe that she was going to their hotel room to sleep, and 3) to get from Moe’s wallet the $100 that Johnny had rejected. Vivian then took the $100 back to Robbie’s room, gave him the money and spent the rest of the night in Robbie’s room. At dawn, she left Robbie’s room and saw Johnny and Baby kissing as they exited Johnny’s cabin.

Later that morning, when Moe told Vivian that his wallet was missing, Vivian responded that she had seen Johnny standing near the jacket, which was hanging from Moe’s chair. Therefore, Johnny was accused of the theft. This all happened before breakfast, because Max Kellerman told the Housemans during breakfast that he intended to fire Johnny for the theft.

Practically the entire audience of the movie assumes that Vivian incriminated Johnny in order to get revenge because Johnny had preferred to spend the night with Baby. I think, however, that a kinder explanation can be proposed. It’s hard for me to believe that Vivian really was so deliberately vindictive toward Johnny.

I think that when Vivian went to see Moe at the gambling table at 1:30 a .m., she did not steal the $100 from Moe’s wallet, but rather simply asked Moe openly for the money. Vivian told Moe that Johnny had found time after all, after the talent-show rehearsal, to give Vivian a dancing lesson after midnight. The lesson had just finished, and so she wanted to pay Johnny the promised $100 and then go alone to their hotel room to sleep. Vivian then returned to Robbie’s room and gave the money to Robbie.

Later, when Vivian was discussing the missing wallet with Moe, Vivian confirmed to him that she had seen the wallet in his possession at 1:30 a.m., when he had given her the $100 for Johnny. In order to strengthen her story, she even assured Moe that Johnny too had been with her right there near Moe’s chair, even though Moe had not noticed him. Later when Max Kellerman heard Vivian’s story, he concluded falsely that Johnny had stolen the wallet. But Vivian never had intended for anyone to blame Johnny. Vivian Pressman was not such an evil person. Rather she was a person whose dissatisfaction had led her into adulterous activities that eventually would cause problems for herself or for people around her.

The wallet was stolen by the Schumachers, an old couple who regularly visited resort hotels and stealing wallets from other guests. They must watched the card game very attentively and seen Moe Pressman give Vivian Pressman the $100, put his wallet into his jacket, and hang his jacket from his chair. Sometime after that time, 1:30 a.m., and 3:45 a.m., they stole the wallet from the jacket.

The Schumachers eventually were caught because Baby previously had noticed two wallets fall out of Ms. Schumacher’s purse and also had noticed the Schumachers at the Sheldrake resort hotel, where several wallets had been stolen. Based on this new information from Baby, Max Kellerman gave the police two drinking glasses that the Schumachers had used. The police took fingerprints from the drinking glasses and found that warrants had been issued for the arrest of the Schumachers for stealing from guests at resort hotels in Florida and Arizona.

We can suppose that Doctor Houseman pressured Max Kellerman to continue the investigation of the theft based on Baby’s new information. Max Kellerman already had made up his mind that Johnny Castle was guilty. Since, however, Doctor Houseman had saved Kellerman’s life when Kellerman had become sick with high blood pressure during a previous summer, Kellerman felt morally obligated to comply with Houseman’s insistence that Baby’s information be taken seriously. Doctor Houseman himself took Baby’s information seriously because he recognized how embarrassed she had been to admit to him, her father, that she had spent the night with Johnny.

Thus, toward the end of the movie, Vivian Pressman set dramatic, consequential events into motion when she asked her husband Moe Pressman for $100. At the beginning of the story, Baby Houseman had likewise set dramatic, consequential events into motion when she had asked her father Doctor Houseman for $250. These two incidents when women asked for money – once from a father and later from a husband – for secret, illegitimate activities provide a parallel and balanced structure to the story.

At the end of the movie, during the talent show, when Johnny took Baby up onto the stage to perform their dance, Vivian Pressman is seen in a front row sitting alone. Next to her is an empty chair, where her husband should be sitting. (Probably he has learned that she lied about Johnny Castle being at the gambling table and receiving the $100.) Vivian looks morose and angry, although all the surrounding audience, sitting as couples and families, looks happy.

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Marjorie Houseman, the wife of Dr. Jake Houseman and the mother of Lisa and Baby, plays a small role in the story. Jake Houseman keeps secret from her all the events and considerations involving Baby, the abortion money and the abortion complications. Jake even orders Baby to wipe the makeup off her face before her mother sees it. Marjorie also seems to be completely unaware of Baby’s romance with Johnny and of Lisa’s romance with Robbie.

Perhaps the original script included a larger role for Marjorie. Many scenes were cut because the movie was becoming too long. In addition, the actress who originally was supposed to play Marjorie became sick during the first week of filming after, so various changes had to be made unexpectedly. Kelly Bishop, the actress who was supposed to play Vivian Pressman was moved into the role of Marjorie Houseman, and Miranda Garrison, an assistant choreographer, replaced Bishop as Vivian Pressman. Perhaps some of Marjorie Houseman's role was diminished in these changes.

Marjorie Houseman is a homemaker who has raised two daughters. She always has hoped that her daughters will be able to fulfill themselves in ambitions careers. She named her younger daughter (Baby) Frances, after Frances Perkins, the first woman member of a Presidential Cabinet; the Secretary of Labor under President Franklin Roosevelt was Frances Perkins. (In the author 's own real family, Eleanor Bergstein was named after Eleanor Roosevelt and her sister Frances was named after Frances Perkins.)

In the movie's story, the oldest daughter already is attending college, and the younger daughter will enroll as a college freshman right after this summer vacation. Marjorie’s husband is a doctor who is wealthy enough to give his daughter $250 (1963 dollars) for no explained reason. Marjorie therefore will not have to get a job. Marjorie is entering a new period of her life in which she will have to re-define her own purposes and activities.

Perhaps Marjorie Houseman will become frustrated and angry. Perhaps her own marriage will become like the alienated hostile marriage between Vivian and Moe Pressman. Early in the movie, we see an entertainment show for the resort hotel’s guests. A male comedian tells a joke: “I finally met a girl, exactly like my mother – dresses like her, acts like her – so I brought her home. My father doesn’t like her!”

Later in the movie, Marjorie and Jake are putting golf balls, and Jake jokes to Baby: “If your mother ever leaves me, it’ll be for Arnold Palmer.” Apparently, Jake already senses some alienation and dissatisfaction in Marjorie.

In the original script, the scene was supposed to show Marjorie as the better golfer, and she was supposed to give Jake tips about improving his putting. Since, however, the actor playing Jake sank an amazing put, the scene was redone so that he gave her the tips. In that context Jake’s joke about Marjorie leaving him for Arnold Palmer made much more sense.

Perhaps the best expression of Marjorie Houseman's personality occurs in the last scene, when Johnny Castle has invaded the talent show and had grabbed Baby and was leading her to the stage to perform their dance. At that moment, Jake Houseman stood up to stop Baby, but Marjorie grabbed Jake and made him sit back down. Then when Baby began to dance brilliantly with Johnny on the stage, an admiring Marjorie says to Jake, "I think she gets this from me."

At this moment we can appreciate that Marjorie is much more relaxed than Jake about Baby's efforts. Marjorie is willing to watch Baby take some risks in her personal life. She seems to accept calmly the revelation that Baby has become personally involved with the dance instructor and become his dance partner. Marjorie genuinely admires Baby's dancing but feels that she herself possesses similar talents and spirit. When she sees Baby's accomplishment, she can honestly boast, "I think she gets this from me."

For Marjorie, the story ends very happily. She feels confident about her daughters' future accomplishments and probably also about her own.

The Houseman Family's Moral Concerns

2008-12-28T23:59:00.006-05:00

The movie Dirty Dancing begins with a view inside an automobile, as the Houseman family was traveling to a three-week summer vacation at a resort-hotel in the Borscht Belt. The father was driving, and the mother was sitting idle in the passenger seat. In the back, the younger daughter Baby was sitting behind the father and reading a book about the economics of peasant society, and the older daughter Lisa was sitting behind the mother and looking in a mirror and rearranging her hair style.

Then Baby put down her book and happily threw her arms around her father’s neck, causing her father to smile happily. Then Baby spoke as a narrator from the future:

That was the summer of 1963, when everybody still called me “Baby” and it didn’t occur to me to mind. That was before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatles came, when I couldn’t wait to join the Peace Corps, and I thought I’d never find a guy as great as my Dad.

The car radio played the song Big Girls Don’t Cry. The story that would follow was a family drama involving the father and his two daughters. Both daughters wanted to find a guy as great as their Dad, a medical doctor. As the daughters actually became involved intimately with young men, however, their relationships with their father were ruptured. The older daughter Lisa already had become so self-involved in her efforts to attract a young man that she and her father had difficulty with talking with each other seriously and candidly. The younger daughter Baby, however, intended to defer her romantic efforts until some still far future year, after she would graduate from college and then serve in the Peace Corps. Therefore Baby and her father still talked with each other seriously and candidly, uninhibited by any secrets involving sexual desires and activities with young men.

The story would not involve the mother significantly but would, as a minor theme, depict the exclusion, alienation and frustration of middle-age women.

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The revolves around the younger daughter falling in love with a young man and therefore losing her ability to talk seriously and candidly with her father. The rupture in communications between this daughter and father began with a moral conflict involving Baby’s request to her father for $250 to pay for an illegal abortion for a young woman who was a stranger to their family. Although this moral conflict was initiated by Baby, this conflict troubled mostly Dr. Houseman – as a doctor and as a father.

The story never addresses the questions of whether abortion itself is moral and should be legal, whether the fetus is a life that should be protected. Rather, the story depicts the problems caused by the secrecy surrounding abortion. The situation compelled Doctor Houseman to maintain several secrets for professional and family reasons, and this secrecy prevented him from asking questions that might clarify the situation, prevent misunderstandings and focus his moral judgments accurately.

For Doctor Houseman, the secrecy surrounding the unexpected abortion was a precursor to the secrecy surrounding his daughters’ new sexual desires and activities. All these secret situations crippled the father’s ability to communicate effectively with his daughters and wife. For Baby, this summer eventually would turn out to be a joyous time, celebrated by the movie’s theme song The Time of Your Life. For her father, however, the summer would be a time of continuous moral conflict, criticism and confusion.

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Baby asked her father for $250 (in 1963 that amount was much more significant than it is now) to pay for an illegal abortion for the dance instructor Penny Johnson. When he asked what the money was for and whether it was for something illegal, Baby responded only that she needed the money to help someone and that it was not for something illegal. He then gave her the money without asking any further questions.

Although Baby had been told that the abortion would be performed by a real doctor, she surely knew that it was illegal. As it turned out, the abortionist was not a real doctor, and he botched the abortion and caused Penny to suffer painful and dangerous complications. Therefore Baby had to ask her father to treat Penny, and so he learned the truth about how his money was used.

This situation posed several serious problems for Dr. Houseman. His money had been used to pay for an illegal abortion, which endangered the woman’s life. The woman then refused to go to a hospital because she was afraid the police would be notified. Therefore Dr. Houseman had to provide medical treatment to her secretly in her employee cabin at a resort hotel where she worked. Furthermore, Dr. Houseman was a friend of the resort hotel’s owner, who employed the woman and owned the cabin.

After Dr. Houseman finished treating Penny and left the cabin, Baby tried to apologize and explain. However, Dr. Houseman interrupted Baby’s explanation and forbade her to continue any more associations with the resort hotel’s employees. At this point, because he did refuse to hear Baby’s explanation, the moral fault in the developing situation shifts from Baby to Dr. Houseman.

In addition to preventing Baby’s explanation, Dr. Houseman decided not to tell his wife about the situation. He angrily told Baby: “I won't tell your mother about this. Right now I'm going to bed. And take that stuff [cosmetics] off your face before your mother sees you!”

Dr. Houseman returned to his hotel room, where his wife was sleeping. When his wife asked him, “Is everything all right, Jake?”, he responded, “It's all right, Marjorie. Go back to sleep.”

Later in the movie, several remarks in the dialogue indicated that Dr. Houseman gave Baby “the silent treatment” during the days following the abortion, refusing to talk with her about anything. His refusal enabled Baby to continue to conceal additional secrets – related to herself and to Lisa – that were related to the abortion. Even if Dr. Houseman had talked with Baby, she might have continued to reveal these family secrets, but now her father’s own refusal to talk gave Baby a convenient excuse to remain silent about them.

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Dr. Houseman believed mistakenly that Penny Johnson had been impregnated by her fellow dance instructor Johnny Castle, but Baby knew that the culprit was Robbie Gould, a medical student who worked as a waiter in the hotel resort during the summer. Furthermore, Baby knew that this same Robbie Gould and her older sister Lisa now were becoming involved in a romantic relationship that Lisa was concealing from her parents. During one of the first evenings of the family’s stay at the resort hotel, Lisa and Robbie had gone together to the golf course in order to make out, and Lisa had asked Baby to tell their parents a false story about Lisa’s whereabouts.

Later that night Baby saw Robbie and Lisa coming out of the woods. Lisa’s hair and dress were disordered, and her slip was showing. Lisa was demanding an apology from Robbie, who was telling Lisa to “go back to Mommy and Daddy” and joking that Lisa would hear an apology from him only in her dreams. Baby saw this incident before she learned that Penny had become pregnant and that Robbie was the culprit.

The movie’s author Eleanor Bergstein explained in her running commentary about the movie that a long scene was removed from this part of the movie. In the removed scene, Penny saw Lisa and Robbie coming out of the woods, and so she herself became upset at Robbie’s behavior and so she herself ran away into the woods. Baby saw all these events and so assembled a few people to go into the woods to find Penny. During this search, Baby used some navigation and orientation techniques that she learned in the Girl Scouts, thus depicting Baby’s intelligence and resourcefulness.

This search through the dark forest was filmed with great difficulty. Since, however, the scene lasted several minutes and because the film’s editors thought the movie was too long, the editors recommendation that this entire search scene be cut from the film. Bergstein resisted this recommendation but eventually relented. The scene was eliminated, and Bergstein eventually came to feel that this cut improved the movie. In the film’s final version, Baby simply found Penny hiding and crying in the resort hotel’s kitchen. Although Bergstein agreed to cut the search through the woods, we can suppose that she felt that this cut scene had given the audience some important understandings.

The cut scene helped the audience understand that Baby initially had focused her attention primarily on Penny Johnson, not on Johnny Castle. Before this search scene, Baby had seen Penny and Johnny dance twice –once in the resort hotel’s ballroom and once in a warehouse where the employees were dirty-dancing. Baby watched both dancers with obvious fascination. The audience might assume that Baby focused her fascination primarily on Johnny, but at first she was intimidated by him and focused her fascination primarily on Penny.

On the day following the dirty-dancing scene, Baby even approached Penny to flatter her, saying she admired her and envied her talent. Penny dismissed Baby’s remarks, and Baby’s feelings were hurt. Later, that night, Baby was dismayed to see that when Penny saw Robbie and Lisa came out of the woods together, Penny became upset and ran into the woods. Baby’s admiration and concern for Penny motivated her to organize a group effort to search for Penny in the woods.

Since the search scene was removed from the movie, the audience lost much of the author’s intended understanding that Baby at that time was focusing her attention primarily on Penny. Baby wanted to flatter and help Penny already before she knew anything at all about Penny’s pregnancy. The audience lost also much of the author’s intended understanding that this early situation caused Baby to develop anger toward her sister Lisa. Although Baby still did not understand that Penny was pregnant from Robbie, Baby did understand that something about the relationship between Robbie and Lisa upset Penny terribly.

When Doctor Houseman’s own anger caused him to stop talking with Baby, he prevented her from explaining Lisa’s secret involvement in the abortion situation – that Lisa was becoming involved romantically with Robbie, who had made Penny pregnant.

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Doctor Houseman’s refusal to talk with Baby prevented her also from explaining her own secret involvement with the abortion situation. Doctor Houseman concluded mistakenly that Penny had become pregnant from Johnny. By the time Doctor Houseman made this false conclusion, Baby already had spent a lot of time receiving dance instructions secretly from Johnny and even had performed a dance with him at the other resort hotel.

After Doctor Houseman finished treating Penny’s complications from the abortion, he ordered Baby to cease any further associations with any of the employees. However, on the very next day, Baby went to Johnny’s cabin to apologize for her father’s mistaken and insulting accusations against Johnny. During this visit, Baby and Johnny had sex for the first time, and so now Baby’s moral problems became even more serious. Now she had disobeyed her father’s order to cease associations with any of the employees, now she was having sex with the very employee who her father thought had caused Penny’s pregnancy, and now she herself was in danger of becoming pregnant and eventually needing an abortion.

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I speculate that Doctor Houseman’s fury at Baby for using his money to pay for an illegal abortion was compounded by his own feelings and experiences related to illegal abortions. When Baby had asked him for $250 to help someone but would not explain the circumstances, the thought must have occurred to him that the money might be for an illegal abortion. He asked Baby whether the money was for something illegal, and when she said it was not, he immediately apologized, saying: “That was a stupid thing to ask. Forgive me.”

Of course, his question whether his money would be used for something illegal was not “a stupid thing to ask.” If, however, he believed that abortions should be available to women even though abortions were illegal, then perhaps he indeed felt that he should not ask such aggressive questions if the money indeed was for an abortion.

Later, when Baby ran to tell her father that there was a problem caused by an abortion, his first question was whether the victim was Lisa. After Doctor Houseman learned that the victim was Penny and after he finished treating Penny, he expressed his anger to Baby with the words: “You're not the person I thought you were. I'm not sure who you are.”

I speculate that Doctor Houseman was making these two statements to a great extent about himself too. If he himself had performed illegal abortions, then perhaps those past experiences caused him to feel that he was not the person he thought he himself was and that he himself was not sure who he himself was.

Perhaps he was thinking also that if Baby had told him from the beginning that Penny needed an abortion, then he might have provided some advice or direction that would have avoided her complications. He might have recommended a real doctor who would have perform the abortion or might have performed the abortion himself.

Penny said she refused to go to a hospital because she feared that the hospital would inform the police. Since Dr. Houseman himself did not call the police after he learned about the situation, he apparently did not believe fully that all illegal abortions should be reported to the police.

All these considerations would have caused Dr. Houseman great moral conflict that impeded him from discussing the situation with Baby fully and candidly. With regard to abortions, he had various secrets of his own to conceal from his family, including from his wife.

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Doctor Houseman’s inability to talk effectively about the abortion decision involved also his attitude toward the ordinary employees of the resort hotel. He generally viewed them with benign condescension, which turned into contemptuous disgust at the particular employees he perceived to be directly involved with the illegitimate pregnancy and illegal abortion.

When Dr. Houseman came into the cabin to provide medical treatment to Penny, he asked who was responsible for Penny. Johnny Castle responded that he was responsible, meaning that he would pay for any further medical costs. Doctor Houseman misconstrued Johnny’s assumption of financial responsibility to mean instead, however, that Johnny had made Penny pregnant.

Afterwards, Dr. Houseman refused to talk with any of the ordinary employees, especially with Johnny, who tried several times to explain himself. The only non-management employee Dr. Houseman would talk with was the waiter Robbie Gould, the medical student who actually had made Penny Johnson pregnant.

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During one first nights that the Houseman family spent at the resort hotel, Lisa and Robbie went together to the golf course. Apparently they engaged in some heavy petting, but Lisa stopped Robbie from going too far, and so they quarreled and walked back through the woods to the resort hotel. Baby and Penny saw Lisa and Robbie coming out of the woods still arguing about Robbie’s seduction attempt. After Baby saw how much this incident upset Penny, Baby developed a growing anger toward Lisa.

Baby’s anger was compounded when she learned that Robbie had made Penny pregnant, abandoned Penny, and refused to pay for Penny’s abortion. Baby’s anger was compounded even more as she sat in the resort hotel’s dining room every day and saw Robbie, serving the family as a waiter, ingratiate himself with her parents. Furthermore, while Doctor Houseman stopped talking with Baby, he became more and more talkative with Lisa. Baby stopped talking with Lisa and so decided not to tell Lisa about Penny’s abortion and Robbie’s role.

Then on one of the last nights of the family’s stay at the resort hotel, however, Lisa and Baby were lying in their beds in their hotel room, and Lisa happily informed Baby that she had “decided to go all the way with Robbie.” Lisa expected that her decision eventually would result in a marriage and even wondered aloud whether the resort hotel might allow her and Robbie to stay for free if they returned for their ten-year anniversary.

The sisters’ conversation in the bedroom progressed as follows:

Lisa: I’ve decided to go all the way with Robbie.

Baby: No, not with someone like him.

Lisa: Do you think if we [Lisa and Robbie] came back for a ten-year anniversary, it [another stay in the resort hotel] would be free?

Baby: It's just wrong this way. It should be with someone, with someone that you sort of love.

Lisa: Come on. You don't care about me. You wouldn't care if I humped the entire army, as long as we were on the right side of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. What you care about is that you're not Daddy's girl anymore. He listens when I talk now. You hate that.

Lisa’s last statement expresses her own fury toward Baby. Lisa perceived that Baby was interested only in politics and that Baby considered Lisa to be promiscuous. Furthermore, Lisa pointedly mocked Baby for losing her, Baby’s, status as their father’s favorite daughter.

Since Baby continued to conceal her knowledge of Robbie’s bad character, Lisa later did go to Robbie’s cabin with the intention of having sex with him. She stopped at the most moment only because she saw that he already was having sex with an older female guest.

Later in the story, however, the two sisters reconciled. This happened after Lisa saw Robbie having sex with an older woman and after Johnny Castle was fired by the resort hotel’s owner. Only after both sisters had lost their boyfriends did the reconciliation become possible. The reconciliation was depicted toward the end of the movie, in short scene where the sisters were sitting together in their bedroom and Lisa offered to restyle Baby’s hair. Baby seemed to respond reluctantly to Lisa’s offer, but then in the final scene Baby appeared with a different hair style.

(As I described in a previous article, the movie’s author Eleanor Bergstein scrambled the roles that she and her real sister played in their real family. Her real sister Francis was more serious, becoming a mathematics professor who tried to remain faithful in her relationships, as she was depicted in Bergstein’s other movie It’s My Turn. When Eleanor Bergstein herself was a young woman, one of her own major activities was competing in dirty-dancing contests. Surely Eleanor was the much more sexually promiscuous of the two real sisters.)

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Late in the story, Baby attempted to reconcile also with her father. He was sitting sad and alone on a deck overlooking the lake behind the resort hotel. He had just learned that Baby has been sleeping with Johnny. Then Baby approached him on this deck, and they had their first conversation since he had treated Penny’s abortion complications. Baby too was unhappy, because she has just learned that Johnny has been fired and is preparing to leave. Therefore she herself now has lost any reasons to continue to conceal from her father any remaining secrets of her own.

Baby initiated this conversation with her father by apologizing for lying to him. Then immediately, however, she attacked her father for lying to her. He had pretended to be egalitarian, but the recent events had revealed how he looked down on the hotel’s ordinary employees, such as Johnny Castle. Baby’s concluding words in this conversation:

I'm not proud of myself, but I'm in this family too. You can't keep giving me the silent treatment. There are a lot of things about me that aren't what you thought, but if you love me, you have to love all the things about me. And I love you. I'm sorry I let you down. I'm so sorry, Daddy, but you let me down too.

Although Dr. Houseman and Baby at least resumed talking with each other again, this conversation did not end with a complete reconciliation and clarifying discussion of their conflict. He continued to believe mistakenly that Johnny Castle had made Penny Johnson pregnant. Doctor Houseman was still so angry that decided to punish Baby by making the family leave the resort hotel on the next day.

Since the family vacation was supposed to last several more days and conclude after the talent show on the final night, however, the family protested against the father’s rash decision to leave early. He relented and the family stayed. Fortunately, Dr. Houseman’s attendance at the talent show on the final evening provided an opportunity for him to clarify his essential misunderstanding of the abortion situation. When Doctor Houseman tried to give an envelope full of money to Robbie Gould as a final tip for his waiter service, Robbie Gould inadvertently revealed that he, not Johnny Caste, had made Penny Johnson pregnant. This fortuitous revelation of the key facts then enabled Doctor Houseman to recognize fully his own moral faults in this entire situation. And so he apologized to Johnny Castle for his false accusations and began to accept Johnny Castle as a social peer.

Eleanor Bergstein and Five Female Characters

2008-12-28T23:48:00.026-05:00

Eleanor Bergstein, the author of Dirty Dancing, based the story on her own experiences. Like the movie’s main character, she grew up in a family that visited resort hotels in the Borscht Belt regularly during summer vacations.

Bergstein was born in 1938 and therefore was 17 years old in about 1955. The movie’s main character was 17 years old in the year 1963 and so would have been born in about 1946. The movie was issued in 1987 and told a story that took place in 1963, so the initial audience was looking back about 24 years.

Why didn’t Bergstein set the movie’s time in about 1955, when she herself was about 17?

Bergstein did not address that question in her running commentary about the movie, but she did say that she worked at such a resort hotel in her summers during her college years and also that she worked as an Arthur Murray dance instructor during her college years. If we estimate that she attended college as an undergraduate from about 1956 through 1959 and further attended as a graduate student from about 1960 to 1963, then we can suppose that her last summer working at the camp might have been in about 1963, which is the summer when the story takes place.

This suggests that Bergstein based two of the movie’s characters on herself:

the 17-year-old girl visiting the resort hotel with her family
the 25-year-old woman teaching dance at the resort hotel.

The movie does not specify the two dance instructors’ ages, but I read somewhere that Patrick Swayze was 35 years old when he played the movie’s dance-instructor, who was supposed to be 25 years old. (Likewise Jennifer Grey was 27 years old when she played the 17-year-old girl.) If the male instructor indeed was supposed to be 25 years old, then we can suppose that the female dance instructor was about the same age.

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In the movie, the female dance instructor, named Penny Johnson, had a platonic friendship with the male instructor, named Johnny Castle. Meanwhile she had fallen in love and become pregnant with a college student, named Robbie Gould, who had just been accepted into medical school. We can suppose that he was finishing his undergraduate studies and therefore was about 21 years old.

When Penny Johnson learned that Robbie Gould does not want to marry her, she decided to have an abortion, which could be done only on one particular night when she was supposed to perform a dance with the Johnny Castle. Therefore, the 17-year-old female guest agreed to learn the dance and then pretend to be Penny Johnson on that night. The 17-year-old female guest thus became the 24-year-old dance instructor in the story. Therefore we should appreciate that Eleanor Bergstein in her story perceived herself as both female characters, the younger one eventually becoming the older one.

There is a scene in the movie where the dance instructor danced behind and guided the girl as the girl began to learn to dance. There is another scene where the dance instructor and the girl were mirroring each other's movements. In both scenes we might say that the girl became the dance instructor.

Since Eleanor Bergstein’s own father was a doctor and her family life was happy, we can suppose that she herself as a young woman would have idealized a husband who would have been a doctor. She therefore could have imagined herself as easily seduced by a medical student. Perhaps she even had such an experience.

The dance instructor’s name is Johnny Castle, and the father’s name is Jake Houseman. Both their first names – Johnny and Jake – are nicknames for the proper Biblical name Jonathan.

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Both of Eleanor Bergstein's parents died when she was in her early twenties. She was affected most profoundly by the death of her mother, about which she later wrote: “Losing my mother was so frightening. I had an almost total absence of hope, and I closed myself off, unable to face the grief and the pain.”

After both her parents died, Eleanor went to live with another family that had many relatives who had died in the Holocaust. This new family talked about these murdered relatives almost every day, which made Bergstein even more depressed.

She tried to continue making a living a dancer as a professional dancer but then gr1adually became a novelist and then a screenwriter. She married a man who became a professor of poetry at Princeton University. Many of her stories, novels and screenplays included dancing as a story element.

In 1980 a movie based on one of her screenplays was issued. The movie was titled It’s My Turn and starred Jill Clayburgh, who played a mathematics professor, and Michael Douglas, who played a former professional baseball player who had to retire early because of an injury. Each of these two characters had lost a parent through death, and the surviving parents fell in love and married. The two characters met at the wedding of their parents and then fell in love themselves, even though they now were step-sister and step-brother. The script included a scene where the two characters dance, which then leads to their first sexual experience together. The dance scene was removed from the movie’s final version, however, which dismayed Bergstein.

The removal of this dance scene from It’s My Turn decisively motivated Bergstein to write the movie Dirty Dancing, in which dancing is the main theme.

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Eleanor Bergstein was named after Eleanor Roosevelt, but she was called Baby by her family and friends through her teenage years. She had an older sister named Frances, who was named after Frances Perkins, who was President Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945.

In the movie Dirty Dancing, the central family’s name is Houseman, its older daughter is called Lisa, and its younger, 17-year-old daughter is called Baby. After Baby became intimate with Johnny Castle, he asked her what her real name was, and she told him that it was Frances, because her parents had named her after the first female member of the US Cabinet.

In the movie, the older sister Lisa was frivolous, and her main interest was beauty and fashion. She thought she might have a successful career in show business and she gladly participated in the resort hotel’s talent show. The audience sees her rehearsing for her talent-show performance, and it is obvious that she had no performance talent and would never succeed in show business.

In the movie, the younger sister Baby (Frances) was very serious and intended to major in international economic development when she began her studies soon at Mount Holyoke College, a prestigious women’s college. At the beginning of the movie, she was already reading a textbook about the economics of peasant societies. She had a plain appearance and she dressed drably (during the first half of the movie). On one occasion Lisa suggested to Baby that she restyle her (Baby’s) hair in a more attractive appearance, but Baby is not interested. When the hotel owner’s grandson flirted with Baby, she tried to avoid him.

In real life, the older sister Frances was the unemotional, serious, intellectually ambitious sister. Frances eventually became a mathematics professor and served as the basis for the character played by Jill Clayburgh in Bergstein’s movie It’s My Turn.

In real life, the younger sister Eleanor was the frivolous, entertaining sister, always called Baby by everyone who knew her. Eleanor worked as a professional dancer, married a poet, lived a Bohemian life, strove to break into show business, and eventually made a career as writer and producer of chick flicks.

Thus we should appreciate that Eleanor Bergman saw herself in three of the movie’s main female roles, as

Baby Houseman,
Penny Johnson,
Lisa Houseman.

The third role is an inside joke for people who know Eleanor Bergman’s real family and who recognize that the two sister’s names and personalities have been switched. Whenever the movie makes fun of the older sister Lisa as a frivolous nitwit who, for example, obviously never will achieve her fantasy of succeeding as a dancer in show business, the movie really is making fun of Eleanor Bergstein herself. And when the movie depicts Baby Houseman as a serious young intellectual, the movie is attributing the real older sister Frances’s most admirable characteristics to the real younger sister Eleanor.

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In general, the movie scrambles the two sisters Lisa and Baby and the female dance instructor Penny Johnson. As I have already pointed out, Baby eventually became Penny Johnson. Furthermore, Lisa and Penny fell in love and had sex with the same medical student Robbie Gould. Meanwhile Baby fell in love and has sex with the male dance instructor Johnny Castle, who initially seemed to be the lover and impregnator of Penny. While writing her script, the author Eleanor Bergstein apparently saw herself in each of these three female characters and in each of their situations.

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The family’s mother, Marjorie Houseman, plays a role in the film, but because of an unexpected fluke, her role was altered significantly. In real life, Eleanor Bergstein’s real mother, who was a doctor’s wife and a homemaker, had enough money and time to become a superb golfer. On the other hand, Eleanor Bergstein’s real father, who was a busy doctor, always remained a mediocre golfer. Therefore Eleanor Bergstein wrote into the script a scene where both parents are practicing on a putting green. The scene was supposed to display the mother’s competence and give her an opportunity to instruct her husband.

When the scene was filmed, however, the actor playing the father (Jerry Orbach) happened to sink two long puts in a nonchalant manner. Furthermore, the second put swirled around the hole three or four times before it fell in. Since the director Emile Ardonlino enforced a strict rule that all actors must continue to play their roles seriously, even if something unexpected happened, the actor maintained a straight face even though he was supposed to miss both puts.

This unexpected feat, all caught perfectly on film, was so hilarious that Eleanor Bergstein immediately rewrote the dialogue so that the father subsequently instructed the mother condescendingly about her golf technique. One dialogue line that did remain was the father’s remark that if he ever died, the mother probably would immediately marry Arnold Palmer (the most famous professional golfer of that time).

During her running commentary about the film, Eleanor Bergstein told this story about the change of dialogue in the putting scene and apologized to her deceased mother for demeaning her well-deserved reputation as a superb golfer.

Some of the mother’s dialogue might have been removed from the film because the actress who began to play the mother while the movie was being filmed became sick after several days and was replaced. (In one of the first scenes, when all the guests are arriving and unloading their cars, the mother is a blonde, but during the rest of the movie she is a brunette.)

In the scenes where we do see the mother acting, she is restraining the father’s angry reactions to Baby’s actions. For example, in the last scene when Johnny Castle barges into the talent show and grabs Baby and leads her toward the stage, the father rises from his chair to interfere, but the mother grabs the father and pulls him back into his chair.

Thus Eleanor Bergstein intended to present the mother as a strong and capable mother who encouraged her daughters to succeed as independent women. The movie states explicitly, for example, that the younger daughter had been named after the first woman to serve in the US Cabinet (although in the real family the older sister was so named) and was sending this daughter to attend a prestigious women’s college. Thus we should appreciate that the movie’s author Eleanor Bergstein intended to identify the mother with the daughter. This was a mother who wanted to realize her own frustrated professional ambitions through her intellectual, studious, ambitious daughter Frances (the older daughter in the real family).

Thus the author Eleanor Bergstein identifies herself with four of the movie’s female characters:

the younger daughter Baby Houseman,
the dance instructor Penny Johnson,
the older daughter Lisa Houseman,
the mother Marjorie Houseman,

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The movie features a fifth female character, named Vivian Pressman. She was a middle-aged female guest, married to a man who spent much of his time at the hotel resort gambling. She took dance lessons from Johnny Castle and had a sexual affair with him. Thus she resembled Baby Houseman, who likewise took dance lessons from and had a sexual affair with Johnny Castle.

(When the actress who was supposed to play the mother had to drop out of the movie because of an illness, she was replaced by the actress, Kelly Bishop, who was supposed originally to play Vivian Presssman. In turn, the role of Vivian Pressman was filled by an assistant choreographer, Miranda Garrison, who had helped train the female “dirty dancers” in the cast. The unexpected but perfect placement of dirty-dancer, sluttish Garrison into the Pressman role is irrefutable proof that the production of the movie Dirty Dancing was inspired, favored and guided miraculously by Mankind’s Loving and Omnipotent God.)

Another similarity is that both Vivian Pressman and Baby Houseman gave money to Johnny Castle for sexual reasons. Vivian Pressman arranged for her gambler husband to give $100 to Johnny Castle for dance lessons, although it is apparent that Vivian Pressman hoped that this monetary payment would enable her own sexual affair with Johnny Castle. On the other hand, Baby Houseman arranged for her father to give $250 to Johnny Castle for Penny Johnson’s abortion.

Eventually, Vivian Pressman was rejected by Johnny Castle and so had a sexual affair instead with the medical student Robbie Gould. The older sister Lisa Houseman intended to have a sexual affair with this same Robbie Gould, but this intention was interrupted when she found Gould and Pressman in the act of sexual intercourse.

Thus, we should appreciate that Eleanor Bergstein identified herself finally with this fifth female role too. This was an older, predatory female that the younger, idealistic females might become. Vivian Pressman competed with the younger sister Baby Houseman for a sexual affair with Johnny Castle and then competed with the older sister Lisa Houseman for a sexual affair with Robby Gould. Although Baby Houseman defeated Vivian Pressman in the competition for Johnny Castle, Pressman subsequently accused Castle of stealing money from her husband and so caused the hotel resort owner Max Kellerman to fire Castle, which seemed to ruin Baby Houseman’s relationships with Castle and with her father.

Vivian Pressman is the movie’s main villain, but the author Eleanor Bergstein identifies with her too. When Bergstein finished writing Dirty Dancing in about 1984, she herself was in her mid-forties, about the same age as the Vivian Pressman character. Vivian Pressman represents the middle-aged Eleanor Bergstein’s enduring, competitive, wicked lust for sexual adventures and experiences with attractive young men.

Thus we should appreciate that Eleanor Bergstein herself identified with the movie’s five main female characters:

the 17-year-old idealistic younger daughter Baby Houseman,
the 25-year-old talented dance instructor Penny Johnson,
the 19-year-old frivolous older daughter Lisa Houseman,
the admirable, faithful middle-aged wife and mother Marjorie Houseman,
the contemptible, adulterous middle-aged wife Vivian Pressman,

The Resort Hotel's Employees

2008-12-27T22:27:00.004-05:00

None of Dirty Dancing’s dialogue mentions that anyone is or is not Jewish or addresses any particular Jewish concern. The overwhelming majority of the people who have watched this movie have not perceived that it takes place in particular Jewish cultural institution or that it has anything at all to do with Jews or Jewish concerns.

In fact, that very absence of Jewish concern is a major reason that the Borscht Belt disappeared. By the mid-1960s the Jewish population of New York had assimilated and prospered into American society. They could go to any resort and enjoy real upper-class life, not just a Jewish imitation. Every Jewish family had a television and could watch successful Jewish performers every day. Even the families that still did visit the Borscht Belt did so more as a familiar, family tradition that had become devoid of Jewish consciousness. Jewish families still preferred that their children eventually marry other Jews, but they also preferred that their children finish their higher educations first, so the Jewish parents’ mingling of their Jewish teenage children during summer vacations had lost its urgency.

A major irony of the Dirty Dancing story is that the main character, a 17-year-old girl in a prosperous family that is visiting such a resort hotel, prefers to spend her time and energy socializing with the employees who live in cabins behind the hotel and who dance in a vulgar, “dirty” manner in a dilapidated warehouse or in a remote forest, meadow and even a lake. For this girl, the cultural enrichment she acquires during her vacation is her encounter not with upper-class WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant) society, but rather with a lower-class society comprising Irish (e.g. Johnny Castle), Puerto Rican, Negro and various mongrel dregs.

The resort hotel where the movie takes place is called Kellerman’s, and it is owned by a man named Max Kellerman, played by a 63-year-old actor (Jack Weston). He apparently owns two such hotels, the other one being called The Sheldrake. Max Kellerman is assisted by his grandson, Neil Kellerman, who intends to enroll soon in the Cornell School of Hotel Management and who appears to be about 20 years old. This grandson Neil indicates in a remark that he already considers himself to be the owner of the two hotels, foreseeing that his grandfather will retire when he himself graduates from Cornell.

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The hotel employs a big-band orchestra, which seems to comprise mostly Cubans of African ancestry. We can assume that this orchestra alternates evenings between the two hotels and that the orchestra members do not do any work at the hotels besides playing music.

When the producers were selecting a resort as a location for the movie, they looked for a resort with a swimming pool, because the movie was supposed to show that the swimming pool was racially integrated. The author Eleanor Bergstein in her running commentary mentioned that the Jewish-owned resorts racially integrated their swimming pools before the other resorts did so, so apparently her original script included a reference to that fact. However, the producers could not find an available resort with a swimming pool (we do see guests swimming in a lake). Therefore none of the movie’s dialogue refers to the racial integration of the swimming pool, although the dialogue refers several times to the Civil Rights movement that was developing in the South in the early 1960s. We can suppose that the African-Americans in the planned swimming-pool scene would have been the orchestra members, who were idle during the days.

Several of the employees who live in the cabins and who dirty-dance in the warehouse are African Americans, but they probably are not orchestra members, who are older and are busy playing their music in the evenings while the young employees are dirty-dancing.

The orchestra conductor is about Max Kellerman’s age, and Max Kellerman seems to treat him as a social peer. We should understand that the orchestra members are an upper and distinct social class of the hotel’s employees. The orchestra members are older and are professionally established, and they rest during the mornings and days and work during the evenings and nights.

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Another category of employees works in positions that interact directly with the guests. For example, the movie dialogue mentions explicitly that the restaurant waiters are college students who work in the hotel during their summer vacations. We can suppose that this employee category includes also receptionists, social-activity leaders, life guards, and so forth. Most such employees were former guests who had visited the resort in younger years with their families.

In a scene that follows soon afterward, Mr. Kellerman is instructing the restaurant waiters about their conduct rules during their employment. He tells them:

You waiters are all college guys, and I went to Harvard and Yale to hire you. And why did I do that? Why? I shouldn't have to remind you. This is a family place. That means you keep your fingers out of the water, hair out of the soup, and show the goddamn daughters a good time -- all the daughters, even the dogs. Schlepp 'em out to the terrace, romance 'em any way you want. Got that, guys?

Although these employees are only waiters at the hotel, they are university students and also (although not stated in the dialogue) Jews who might be appropriate marriage candidates for the young women among the guests. Furthermore, the Jewish parents might even welcome romantic interest from such employees toward their daughters. One of the waiters, named Robbie Gould, is a medical student, and so he is treated very warmly by the family father, who himself is a doctor. It is apparent that the father considers this medical student to be a good romantic prospect for either of his two daughters.

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As Mr. Kellerman is completing his instructions to his waiters, another group of male employees walks through the restaurant, and Mr. Kellerman instructs them differently:

Well, if it isn't the entertainment staff. Listen, wise ass, you got your own rules. Dance with the daughters. Teach 'em the mambo, the cha-cha, anything they pay for, but that's it, that's where it ends. No funny business, no conversations, and keep you hands off.

This second group of male employees is dressed in matching shirts and is carrying guitars in cases, so it is apparent that they are a musical band. One of this group is dressed differently than the others, and he is the one who Kellerman addresses as “wise ass” and instructs about how to conduct himself with the guest families’ daughters.

Mr. Kellerman addresses this second group as “the entertainment staff” but later in the movie we see some of them doing ordinary jobs on the hotel grounds. We can suppose that some of them cook and wash dishes in the kitchen, clean floors, mow the grass and do other such jobs. In fact, they might not be paid at all by the hotel for playing music as a band. They play in the band only for tips and for the opportunity to acquire some public exposure as a band. Probably they can use the stage on the evenings when the orchestra plays at the other hotel. Their exposure provides them with some possibilities that some families might hire them later to play at Bar Mitzvah, wedding and anniversary parties. Apparently there is also a shortage of male guests at the dance classes for the guests, and so these band members fill in only as needed to correct the male-female ratio for partner dancing but are not supposed to socialize further with the female guests.

(We never see this band play in the movie. The DVD’s commentaries and interviews inform us that the producers had great difficulty convincing Patrick Swayze to accept the role of Johnny Castle, and furthermore Swayze’s own agent advised him against accepting the role. Eleanor Bergstein, the movie’s author, in her running commentary, reminisces about how, before the filming began, Swayze gave her a tape recording of a song, titled She’s Like the Wind, that Swayze had written and performed with a band that he headed in his real life. Therefore I speculate that in order to convince Swayze to accept the role, the producers agreed to provisionally include a scene where Swayze would perform his song with his band. Apparently the scene was removed from the movie’s final version, but the earlier scene where the band encountered Mr. Kellerman remained. As a consolation to Swayze, his song was included in the soundtrack.)

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Such a hotel would hire also a lot of female employees to work as housekeepers to clean the rooms. We never see Mr. Kellerman address them, but we do see them hanging around in and around the cabins and dancing in the warehouse.

These ordinary male and female employees – who cook and wash dishes in the kitchen, who clean the floors and do repairs, who mow the grass, who clean the rooms, etc. – were not supposed to socialize with the guests. A major reason for this restriction is that these employees were not Jewish, a fact that is obvious from their appearances – many are African-American or Hispanics.

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Two of the employees – Johnny Castle and Penny Johnson – are professional dancers, and they comprise an employee category of their own. They work as professional dancers only during the summers at the resort hotel. Johnny Castle, for example, works primarily as a house painter during the rest of the year. Their employment at the resort hotel comprises several elements:

They performed special dances for the hotel guests while the orchestra played. They did so at both hotels.
Then they encouraged the hotel guests to dance while the orchestra played. They were available to give special dance lessons to guests who were willing to pay for such lessons.
They organized and conducted a talent show that was performed on the final night. Hotel employees were required to participate in the talent show and guests were encouraged to participate.
They taught the employees to do group dances that were part of the talent show.

An early scene shows Johnny Castle and Penny Johnson dancing together spectacularly during a ballroom dance on the new guests' first evening at the hotel. Neil Kellerman remarked (to Baby Houseman) that they should stop dancing with each other and start dancing with the guests, because they would not sell dance lessons if they danced only with each other. Thus it seems that the hotel received a cut from the dance lessons that the professional dance instructors sold.

Since these dance-instructor jobs involved much socialization with the guests, the hotel owners would have preferred to hire Jews for these positions, but there simply was a shortage of Jews who could dance so expertly. Therefore non-Jews were hired, but they were supervised closely.

The movie includes several instances of such close supervision by Max Kellerman or by his grandson Neil Kellerman. In one instance, Max Kellerman motioned angrily to the two professional dancers that they should stop their dance performance and begin encouraging the guests to dance. In another instance, Neil Kellerman intruded without knocking into a room where Johnny Castle was giving a private dance lesson to the 17-year-old female guest. Neil Kellerman remarked that the dance lesson must last exactly as long as the time that the guest has paid for and also insisted that the talent show’s group dance by the employees be done in a dance style that Johnny Castle had rejected.

The two dance instructors have non-Jewish names – Johnny Castle and Penny Johnson – and they have personal appearances that are far from Jewish stereotypes.

When Penny Johnson became pregnant after an affair with the waiter Robbie Gould, she and Johnny Castle feared that they might be fired by the Kellermans as a consequence. One reason, which is not stated, was that the Kellermans valued the Jewish medical student Robbie Gould more as an employee than they valued the non-Jewish professional dancer Penny Johnson. If the pregnancy became known, then there would not be enough room on the hotel staff for both Gould and Johnson, and so Johnson would have to go. Gould came from a Jewish family that had been regular customers of the hotel for many years, and now he was attractive to Jewish families who had daughters who were entering a marriageable age.

Another problem caused by Johnson’s pregnancy was that she would not be available to dance in the hotel’s special performances. The pregnancy itself eventually might have prevented such performances, but the problem that developed in the movie was that she decided to have an abortion that had to be performed on a particular night when such a performance was scheduled. This situation led to a decision that the 17-year-old guest would learn the dance sufficiently well to substitute for Johnson on that one night. Many employees were young females, but none of them are available to learn the dance because they all were too busy cleaning the rooms during the days and preparing for the talent show during the evenings.

Since Penny Johnson was a couple months pregnant and since the story took place at the end of the summer, she apparently became romantically involved with Robbie Gould at the beginning of the summer or even during a previous summer while they were both working at the hotel. Penny Johnson sincerely loved Robbie Gould and expected to marry him, especially after she became pregnant. She was an extraordinarily beautiful and talented woman, but Robbie Gould could not consider marrying her, because she had not even graduated from high school and (although not stated) she was not Jewish.

Although Penny Johnson's status on the hotel resort's staff was much higher than the status of the female employees who worked as housekeepers and other such ordinary positions, she was subject to the same sexual rules probably applied to her and to all such female employees. They were forbidden to involve themselves in personal relationships with the male guests or20even with the Jewish male college students who worked as waiters, and any scandals were grounds for immediate firing.

The producers originally had selected an Italian-American actor to play the role of the male professional dancer. The producers soon decided that this first actor would not be able to dance as well as they expected, so they eventually replaced that actor with Patrick Swayze. The author Eleanor Bergstein indicated in her running commentary that this character thus ceased being an Italian-American character and instead became an Irish-American character. None of the dialogue indicates that this character is Irish-American, and the name Johnny Castle is not distinctively Irish, but perhaps this point was made by some dialogue that did not survive into the movie’s final version.

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One of the movie’s characters is Johnny Castle’s young cousin, Billy Kostecki, whose name is Polish (indicating the employees’ mongrel pedigrees). In some previous summer, Johnny Castle had convinced Max Kellerman to hire Castle’s cousin Billy Kostecki to do odd jobs at the hotel. Kostecki was about the same age as the 17-year-old female guest and apparently had began a platonic friendship with her during a previous summer when they both were quite young.

Billy Kostecki plays what the author Eleanor Bergstein describes as an "expository role" in the screenplay. At various moments, he explained the developing situation to the young female guest and thus to the audience. In particular, he told her that Penny Johnson had become pregnant and then later that the pregnancy was caused by an affair with the medical student Robbie Gould. In some other moments, Kostecki's explanations advanced and clarified the story conveniently for the audience.

Billy Kostecki also serves as a means to bring the young female guest into the employees' secret world. Kostecki was supposed to carry three watermelons from the kitchen to the remote warehouse where the employees were supposed to be practicing dances for the talent show. He was not able to carry all three watermelons safely, however, so when he noticed the young female guest, he asked her to help him by carrying one of the watermelons. Thus she accompanied him to the warehouse, where she saw and joined the employees, who have been doing their own dirty dancing instead of practicing for the talent show. Without Kostecki's role, the young female guest never would have gone into that warehouse and become involved with the other employees.

The Borscht Belt

2008-12-27T17:47:00.008-05:00

Every time I have watched Dirty Dancing, I have enjoyed its depiction of a subculture that has practically disappeared. In the Catskill Mountains, in the counties north of New York City, there was a large number of vacation resorts that were visited regularly by the city’s citizens. Some of these resorts attracted particular ethnic groups.

In particular, there was a group of resorts, called The Borscht Belt, that attracted Jewish Americans who lived in New York City. This Jewish clientele also called this area The Jewish Alps and Solomon County (a comic mispronunciation of Sullivan County).

In the first half of the 20th Century, there was a lot of discrimination and resistance against Jewish encroachments into WASP society, especially into the upper classes. Fancy hotels and resorts did not welcome Jewish guests and sometimes even refused to rent rooms to people who had obviously Jewish names and accents. Therefore there was a real demand for resorts where Jews felt they were welcomed and treated with dignity.

In addition, the resorts offered entertainment programs in the evenings. A good resort would employ an orchestra that would play live music for ballroom dancing. The Jewish guests enjoyed these entertainment programs all the more if they included the singing of Yiddish songs, the dancing of Jewish dances, and the telling of Jewish jokes. Many Jewish-American singers and comedians performed in these resorts before they became famous. Such comedians include Joey Adams, Woody Allen, Morey Amsterdam, Milton Berle, Shelley Berman, Mel Brooks, Lenny Bruce, George Burns, Red Buttons, Sid Caesar, Bill Dana, Rodney Dangerfield, Phyllis Diller, Totie Fields, George Gobel, Shecky Greene, Buddy Hackett, Danny Kaye, Alan King, Robert Klein, Jerry Lewis, Jackie Mason, Carl Reiner, Don Rickles, Joan Rivers, Allan Sherman, Jonathan Winters, and Henny Youngman.

Families would visit the resorts for a couple of weeks every summer for cultured activities. They would learn to play golf and volleyball, to do ballroom dancing and other such activities that socially upwardly mobile people should learn how to do. Dirty Dancing has one interesting scene where female guests learn how to put on cosmetics and style their hair.

During that scene there is an announcement over a loudspeaker, saying that a rabbi will give a lecture about the psychology of insult comedians. This is perhaps the movie's only explicit reference to the Jewish character of the resort hotel's guests.

There was a kind of dress code that included semi-formal clothing for evening activities, which included performances by comedians, singers and other entertainers from New York nightclubs. At the end of the stay, the guests and temporary employees were encouraged to participate in a talent show.

When the children of such families reached college age, many of them got summer jobs in these same resorts that they had visited as guests. They worked as waiters, life guards, activity leaders, and so forth. They were hired because they were familiar with the resort’s relationships and interactions with the guests. One of the key characters in Dirty Dancing is a college student who has been accepted into medical school and who is working as a waiter in the resort’s dining room during his summer vacation.

The adolescent guests commonly became involved in brief romances during these stays. Of course, that was natural and fun for the adolescent guests, but the hotel managements strictly prohibited the staff members, in particular the college-age, temporary workers, from engaging in such romances with the younger, high-school-age guests. This situation is a central element in Dirty Dancing’s plot.

These Catskill resorts blossomed during the years from about 1950 to 1965. Afterwards, they gradually became unprofitable and went out of business. One major reason is explained in the last scene by the resort owner, who owns two such resorts. In a conversation with the resort’s band leader, the owner explains that travel to Europe was becoming so cheap and convenient that more and more families were deciding to spend their summer vacation weeks visiting Europe. The families’ teenage children were becoming bored with the annual visits to the same resorts, and so they begged their parents to go to Europe instead. The parents themselves found that such travel provided a much more educational and cultural experience for their children, and so they agreed. Once a family broke its annual habit of visiting its summer resort, the family usually did not return to its resort in subsequent years.

After the decision to make the movie Dirty Dancing had been made, the producers traveled around in the Catskills Mountains looking for such a resort that they could rent for a summer in order to make the movie. To their dismay, they found that only a couple such resorts -- catering mostly to unassimilated Orthodox Jews -- were still in business. None of those still functional resorts was willing to risk losing its still regular summer clientele forever by renting itself for a movie production. The producers found several former resorts, but the all the buildings and grounds were in bad repair after years of abandonment. Since the film’s production budget was only $5 million, the producers could not afford to do the necessary re-construction, painting and landscaping that would have been necessary to restore one of these abandoned resorts to its former glory.

Another consideration was that the leaves in northern New York beginning turning colors already in the late summer. The producers feared that in some scenes the background trees would be totally green and in other scenes the trees would be turning yellow. Likewise, the grass on the resort lawns would be lush green and then browning.

Baby: It's just wrong this way. It should be with someone -- with someone that you sort of love.

Lisa: Come on. You don't care about me. You wouldn't care if I humped the entire army, as long as we were on the right side of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. What you care about is that you're not Daddy's girl anymore. He listens when I talk now. You hate that.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 34 - Rainy Day in Johnny's Cabin

2008-12-27T13:34:00.005-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Baby: Have you had many women?

Johnny: What?

Baby: Have you had many women?

Johnny: Baby, come on.

Baby: Tell me. I want to know.

Johnny: No, no. Look, you gotta understand what it's like. Before, you come from the streets, and suddenly you're up here, and then women are throwing themselves at you and they smell so good. They really take care of themselves. I never knew women could be like that. They're so goddamn rich you think they must know about everything. They're slippin' their room keys in my hand two and three times a day -- different women -- so, here I think I'm scorin' big, right? You think, "They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't care about me, right?"

Baby: That's all right. I understand. You were just using them, that's all.

Johnny: No, no, that's not it. That's the thing, Baby. You see, it wasn't like that. They were using me.

What's your real name, Baby?

Baby: Frances, for the first woman in the Cabinet.

Johnny: Frances. That's a real grownup name.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 33 - Rainy Day in Family's Room

2008-12-27T13:33:00.001-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Activity Director: It's rainy day game time. Pin the tail on the guest. Win ten boxes of Kleenex or a billy goat!

Lisa: God, I am so sick of this rain. Remind me not to take my honeymoon at Niagara Falls.

Marge: So, you go to Acapulco. It'll be fine.

Lisa: Where is my beige iridescent lipstick? I know I put it in this drawer.

Marge: Baby, where are you going in this weather?

Baby: Uh, they're having charades in the west lobby.

Lisa: Quite the little joiner, aren't we?

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 32 - Penny's Recovery

2008-12-27T13:32:00.001-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Baby: You look much better.

Penny: You just missed your father. He's such a wonderful man.

Baby: I'm sorry. I didn't realize ...

Penny: You couldn't have. It's okay.

Johnny: So, how you doin'?

Penny: I'm okay. Dr. Houseman says I'm going to be fine. I can still have children.

Johnny: Oh, Penny, that's really great.

Penny: So, how did it go last night?

Johnny: Good.

Baby: Fine. I didn't do the lifts, but it was good. Well, I guess I gonna go. See ya.

Johnny: So, he says you're going to be fine?

Penny: What are you doing?

Johnny: I'll tell Max your grandmother died.

Penny: How many times have you told me: never get mixed-up with them?

Johnny: I know what I'm doing.

Penny: You listen to me. You've got to stop it now.

Johnny: Look, I gotta run. I got a lesson with the Kramers. They'll kill each other if I'm not there.

Baby: Well, sure. You've gotta go.

Johnny: I'll see ya.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 31 - Tense Family Breakfast

2008-12-27T13:31:00.002-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Activity Director: Singers, dancers, actors, this is your lucky day! Auditions for the annual Kellerman end-of-the-season talent show, beginning in the playhouse.

Neil: So, everyone gonna be in the show?

Jake: We're leaving tomorrow. Miss the weekend traffic.

Marge: But, Jake, we're paid up 'til Sunday.

Lisa: Daddy, and miss the show?

Jake: I said we're leaving tomorrow.

Lisa: But, Daddy, I was going to sing in the show.

Neil: It's the big event. People bring their own arrangements. You don't want to miss it. Oh, Baby, I need you for props.

Marge: Jake, why would you want to leave early?

Jake: It was just an idea. We can stay if you want to. So, Lisa, what were you planning to sing?

Lisa: "I Feel Pretty" or "What Do the Simple Folk Do?" or "I Feel Pretty." What do you think, Daddy?

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 30 - Dirty Dance in Johnny's Cabin

2008-12-27T13:30:00.001-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Baby: Can I come in?

Johnny: I got a -- I guess it's not a great room. You probably got a great room.

Baby: No. It's a great room! No, leave it on. I'm sorry about the way my father treated you.

Johnny: No. Your father was great. He was great. The way he took care of Penny.

Baby: Yes, but I mean the way he was with you. It's really me it has to do with. Johnny, I came here because my father ....

Johnny: No. The way he saved her -- I could never do anything like that. That was something. The reason people treat me like I'm nothing because I’m nothing.

Baby: That's not true! You, you're everything!

Johnny: You don't understand the way it is for somebody like me. Last month I'm eating jellybeans to stay alive. This month, women are stuffing diamonds in my pockets. I'm balancing on shit and, quick as that, I can be down there again.

Baby: No, it's not the way it is! It doesn't have to be that way!

Johnny: I've never known anybody like you. You look at the world, and you think you can make the world better. Somebody's lost, you find them. Somebody's bleeding ....

Baby: I go get my daddy. That's really brave, like you said.

Johnny: That took a lot of guts to go to him! You are not scared of anything.

Baby: Me? I'm scared of everything! I'm scared of what I saw. I'm scared of what I did, of who I am. But most of all, I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling for the rest of my life... the way I feel when I'm with you! Dance with me.

Johnny: What, here?

Baby: Here.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 29 - Doctor Houseman Treats Penny

2008-12-27T13:29:00.005-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Jake: What? What is it, Baby? Is it Lisa?

Baby: No.

Jake: Excuse me. Excuse me! Everybody clear out, please. OK. Yes, I know that hurts. We're gonna take care of that. Who's responsible for this girl?

Johnny: I am. Please, is she ...?

Billy: Doc, thanks a lot.

Johnny: I don't know how to thank you.

Jake: Was that what my money paid for?

Baby: I'm sorry. I never meant to lie to you.

Jake: You're not the person I thought you were, Baby. I'm not sure who you are. I don't want you to have anything to do with those people again.

Baby: But can’t I just explain?

Jake: Nothing! You're to have nothing to do with them ever again! I won't tell your mother about this. Right now I'm going to bed. And take that stuff off your face before your mother sees you!

Marge: Is everything all right, Jake?

Jake: It's all right, Marge. Go back to sleep.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 28 - Botched Abortion

2008-12-27T13:28:00.002-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Baby: Thanks [for opening the car door].

Billy: Johnny! Come on. It's Penny. She wouldn't go until you returned.

Johnny: Did you call an ambulance?

Billy: She said the hospital would call the police. She made me promise. He didn't use no ether, nothing.

Johnny: I thought you said he was a real M.D.?

Billy: The guy had a dirty knife and a folding table. I could hear her screaming in the hallway. I swear to God, I tried to get in. [??????]

Johnny: It's all right. Johnny's here.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 27 - Driving Back from Sheldrake

2008-12-27T13:27:00.001-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Disk Jocky: ...because wherever you are now, I want you to look at the sky. Look at those stars. What a show. Here are The Drifters.

Johnny: You did good. You worked hard.

Baby: I saw that old couple from Kellerman's and I thought that was it.

Johnny: Oh, me too. Me too. You know, by the second turn you really had it.

Baby: But I didn't do the lift.

Johnny: You did real good.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 26 - Sheldrake Performance

2008-12-27T13:26:00.001-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Activity Director: The Sheldrake Hotel is proud to present Johnny Castle and partner in Mambo Magic.

Johnny: Relax. Now spot a lead. Wrong way! Over here. Ready for the lift? Come on. Keep going. Keep going.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 25 - Excuse for Absence

2008-12-27T13:25:00.003-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Activity Director: Bingo! Bingo! Bingo! That's right. It's Thursday night at Kellerman's. That's bingo night.

Robbie: Hey, how about a dance later?

Lisa: Could be. Who knows?

Baby: Lisa, you’ve just got to do something for me.

Lisa: I don't just got to do anything.

Baby: Just tell Mommy and Daddy I have a terrible headache and I'm in bed, and you’ll check on me once, okay? Bye.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 24 - Dressing for Performance

2008-12-27T13:24:00.002-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Baby: I'll just keep my shoulders down, my head up... my frame locked, stay on my toes... What if I forget the steps?

Penny: Pull up, watch your frame. And remember, let him lead you.

Baby: I'm afraid I'm gonna forget to spike, get dizzy and fall on my face. No. Don't look at my feet, keep my head up, my eyes open. Tension in my arms, my frame locked, seat pulled up.

Penny: Thanks, Baby. Look, I just want you to know that I don't sleep around, whatever Robbie might have told you. And I thought that he loved me. I thought it was something special. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that.

Baby: So, how does it look?

Penny: I'm scared. I'm so scared, Baby.

Baby: Don't worry. You'll be fine.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 23 - Dropped Wallets

2008-12-27T13:23:00.002-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Baby: I can't believe it's tonight.

Penny: The Sheldrake's 20 minutes away. You'll change in the car.

Baby: Mrs. Schumacher. Hey, wait, we'll help you.

Mrs. Schumacher: Such junk. Such junk. Benny Bernstein's Dancing School, that's where I went. George Burns was a teacher. Thank you.

Baby: You're welcome.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 22 - Dance Lessons (Lifts)

2008-12-27T13:22:00.002-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Johnny: Now, the most important thing to remember in lifts is balance. Whoa! Whoa!

Baby: I got it now. So where'd you learn to be a dancer?

Johnny: Well, this guy came into this luncheonette one day, and we were all sitting around doing nothing. And he said that Arthur Murray was giving a test for instructors. So, if you passed, they teach you all the different kinds of dances, show you how to break them down, teach them.

Baby: What?

Johnny: No. Good. Don't look down. Look here. Good. And... Now, bend your knees and go up. Go, go. Good try. Now, you'll hurt me if you don't trust me, all right? Now, go, go. Go. Good. Now, I'm gonna go up. You know, the best place to practice lifts is in the water. Just bend your knees. And... go. Good. Good. Good. Now hold the position. Hold it. Good. Don't break! Don't break! Let's do it again. All right. One, two, three.

Baby: Oh, sorry.

Johnny: Good. Keep ... No, don't. It's not too bad. One more time. Okay. Over my head. Go.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 21 - Drive to the Country

2008-12-27T13:21:00.002-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Johnny: Shit! I locked the keys in the car! You're getting wet, right?

Baby: You're wild.

Johnny: What?

Johnny: You're wild!

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 20 - Dance Lessons (Hey Baby)

2008-12-27T13:20:00.000-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 19 - Dance Lessons (Overload)

2008-12-27T13:19:00.000-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 18 - Dance Lessons (Hungry Eyes)

2008-12-27T13:18:00.000-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 17 - Dance Lessons (Wipeout)

2008-12-27T13:17:00.003-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Johnny: No!

Baby: Oh, sorry. Sorry.

Johnny: You don't step on the one. You gotta start on the two. Find the two. You understand?

Baby: I told you, I never did any of these dances before.

Johnny: Now, it's one, two, three, four! One, two, three, four!

Now, when the music starts, you don't dance until the two. Got it?

Relax, relax. Breathe. Frame. Nope. Again. Ow. Two, three, four. Two, three, four. Don't lean back. Lifting up. Two, three, four. Shoulders down. Again. Concentrate. And... Don't put your heel down. Don't put your heel down.

Baby: I didn't ...

Johnny: Stay on the toe. Just listen to me. The steps aren't enough. Feel the music. It's not on the one. It's not the mambo. It's a feeling, a heartbeat. Don't try so hard. Close your eyes. Two, three, four. Two, three, four. Breathe. Head up. Lock your frame. Lock it. Look, spaghetti arm. This is my dance space. This is your dance space. I don't go into yours. You don't go into mine. You gotta hold the frame. Again. Frame.

Back. Easy. Back. Easy. And turn, turn. Down. And lift. You'll learn that later. And come on. Down. Twist. And the bow.

Baby: Sorry. Sorry.

Johnny: You trying to kill me? You gotta concentrate! Is that your idea of fun?

Baby: Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. We’re supposed to do the show in two days, you won't show me lifts, I'm not sure of turns. I'm doing all this to save your ass, but what I'd really like to do is drop you on it!

Johnny: Let's get out of here.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 16 - Agreement for Substitute Dancer

2008-12-27T13:16:00.003-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Baby [to Penny]: Here's the money.

Penny: You mean Robbie?

Baby: No. You were right about him?

Penny: Then where'd you get it?

Baby: You said you needed it.

Penny: Is this kid for real?

Johnny: Yeah it takes a real saint to ask Daddy.

Penny: Thanks, Baby, but I can't use it.

Johnny: What? What's the matter with you? You should take the money.

Billy [to Baby]: I can only get her an appointment for Thursday. They do their act at the Sheldrake on Thursday night. If they cancel, they lose this season's salary and next year's gig.

Baby: What's the Sheldrake?

Billy: It's another hotel where they do their mambo act.

Baby: Can't someone else fill in?

Johnny: No, Miss Fix-it. Somebody else can't fill in. Maria has to work all day. She can't learn the routines. And Janet has to fill in for Penny. Everybody works here. What do you wanna do it? Take time out from Simon Says?

Billy: It's not a bad idea.

Johnny: It was a joke, Billy.

Penny: She can move.

Johnny: No, it's the dumbest idea I ever heard of.

Baby: I can't even do the merengue.

Johnny: See?

Penny: Johnny, you're a strong partner. You can lead anybody.

Johnny: But you heard her. She can't even do the merengue. She can’t do it. She cannot do it.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 15 - Money from Father

2008-12-27T13:15:00.001-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Marge: What am I doing wrong?

Jake: You're lining it up a little wrong, Marge.

[to Baby] If your mother ever leaves me, it'll be for Arnold Palmer.

Baby: Daddy, someone's in trouble.

Jake [to Baby]: Besides your mother? [to Marge] Now you're overcorrecting, Marge.

Baby: And you always told me if someone was in trouble, I should try to help. Could you lend me $250?

Jake: Are you all right, Baby? Are you in some kind of trouble?

Baby: No, no, it's not me. Could you loan it to me?

Jake: That's a lot of money, Baby. What's it for?

Marge: Baby, stand up straight.

Baby: I can't tell you. It's hard for me to say that to you, but I can't. You always said you could tell me anything. I can't tell you this.

Jake: It's not illegal, is it?

Baby: No, Daddy.

Jake: That was a stupid thing to ask. Forgive me. I'll have it for you before dinner.

Marge: Is everything all right?

Jake: Fine.

Baby: Thanks, Daddy.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 14 - Fountainhead

2008-12-27T13:14:00.001-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Robbie: Just where do you get off you telling me what's right?

Baby: You can't just leave her.

Robbie: I didn't blow a summer hauling toasted bagels just to bail out some little chick who probably balled every guy in the place. A little precision, please. Some people count and some people don't. Read it. I think it’s a book you'll enjoy, but make sure you return it. I have notes in the margin.

Baby: You make me sick. Stay away from me. Stay away from my sister or I'll have you fired.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 13 - Abortion Discussed

2008-12-27T13:13:00.004-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Johnny: What do you think you're doing? You're in trouble, you talk to me.

Penny: I'll take care of it.

Johnny: You should've come to me in the first place.

Penny: Forget it, Johnny. I'm not taking what's left of your salary.

Johnny: Penny, that's my business.

Pennny: Besides, it wouldn't be enough. Oh, God, it's hopeless!

Baby: Don't say that. There's gotta be a way to work it out.

Penny: Baby? Is that your name? You know what, Baby? You don't know shit about my problems.

Billy: I told her.

Penny: Jesus, Billy! Now she's gonna run and tell her little management boyfriend and then we'll all get fired. Why not skywrite it? -- "Penny got knocked up by Robbie, the creep."

Baby: Robbie?

Johnny: Look ...

Billy: No, Baby. One of the counselors knows a doctor, a real M.D., just traveling through New Paltz one day next week. We can get her an appointment, but it costs $250.

Baby: But if it's Robbie, there's no problem. I know he has the money. I'm sure if you tell him ...

Penny: He knows. Go back to your playpen, Baby.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 12 - Pregnancy Revealed

2008-12-27T13:12:00.003-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Johnny: Why's she here?

Billy: I brought her in case Neil comes back.

Johnny: Penny just doesn't think.

Billy: She wouldn't do anything stupid, would she?

Baby: So, what's wrong? What's the matter with her?

Billy: She's knocked up, Baby.

Johnny: Billy!

Baby: What's he gonna do about it?

Johnny: What's he gonna do about it? Oh, it's mine, right? Right away you think it's mine.

Baby: But I thought ...

Johnny: It's okay. Johnny's here. I'm never gonna let anything happen to you. We got to go. Just hold on. Just hold on. Good girl. Good girl.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 11 - Discovery in Kitchen

2008-12-27T13:11:00.004-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Neil: So, Baby, what do you want? You can have anything you want -- a brownie, some milk leftover rice pudding, beets, cabbage roll, fruit salad, sweet gherkins?

Baby: Oh, Neil, look, I'm sorry. I better go check on Lisa.

Neil: Yeah?

Baby: Yeah.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 10 - Conversations By Woods

2008-12-27T13:10:00.007-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Neil: I love to watch your hair blowing in the breeze.

Baby: Maybe my parents are looking for me.

Neil: Baby, don't worry. If they think you're with me, they'll be the happiest parents at Kellerman's. I have to say it: I'm known as the catch of the county.

Baby: I'm sure you are.

Neil: Last week I took a girl away from Jamie, the lifeguard. And he said to her, right in front of me: "What does he have that I don't have?" And she said, "Two hotels."

Lisa: Robbie, I don't hear an apology.

Robbie: Go back to Mommy and Daddy and keep listening. Maybe you'll hear one in your dreams.

Neil: I'm sorry you had to see that, Baby. Sometimes in this world, you see things you don't wanna see. You hungry? Come on.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 09 - Gazebo Dance

2008-12-27T13:09:00.005-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Max: Aren't you dancing, Doc?

Marge: We're waiting for a waltz.

Vivian: Hi, Max. Aren't my dance lessons starting to pay off?

Max: You look great, Vivian! Terrific!

(To Jake and Marge) That's Vivian Pressman, one of the bungalow bunnies. That's what we call the women who stay here all week long. The husbands only come up on weekends. Moe Pressman's a big card player. He'll join our game.

(To Vivian) Moe coming up on Friday?

Vivian: Friday.

Max (to Vivian): He's away a lot. I know. It's a hardship.

Neil (to Johnny): Where's Penny? Everybody's been asking for her.

Johnny: What do you mean, where's Penny? She's taking a break. She needs a break.

Neil: As long as it's not an all-night break.

(To Baby) Come on, doll. Let's take a walk.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 08 - Activities By Lake

2008-12-27T13:08:00.006-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Activities Director: Ladies, join our hair-raising wig show. Try your Sandra Dee, Jackie Kennedy. or Elizabeth Taylor-Cleopatra wig.

Card Player 1: I'll knock with three.

Card Player 2: Look at that cute fella.

Card Player 3: Look at these hands. They're golden hands.

Activities Director: My God, it's Cleopatra! I feel like such an "asp".

You look ten years younger.

At 10:15 by the pool, we have calisthenics. Then on the west porch, we have a symposium by Rabbi Maurice Sherman. on the psychology of insult comedians.

Robbie (to Lisa): So I say, "Ask not what your waiter can do for you. but what you can do for your waiter." If tips keep up, I'll have enough for my Alfa Romeo.

Lisa: That's my favorite car.

Johnny: Ladies, you look very lovely.

Lisa: Baby, would you cover for me tonight? Tell Mom and Dad I went to lie down.

Baby: Where are you going?

Lisa: To the golf course. There's a pretty view from the first tee. Good. Thanks.

Baby (to Penny): So you were really a Rockette? I think you're a wonderful dancer.

Penny: Yeah? Well, my mother kicked me out when I was. I've been dancing ever since. It's the only thing I ever wanted to do anyway.

Baby: I envy you.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 07 - First Dirty Dance

2008-12-27T13:07:00.008-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Baby (to Billy): Hi.

Billy: How'd you get here?

Baby: I was taking a walk.

Billy: Go back.

Baby: Let me help you. What's up there?

Billy: No guests allowed. House rules. Why don't you go back to the playhouse? I saw you dancing with little boss man. Can you keep a secret? Your parents would kill you. Max would kill me.

Baby: Where'd they learn to do that? Where?

Billy: I don't know. Kids are doing it in their basements back home.

Wanna try it? Come on, Baby. Can you imagine dancing like this on the main floor. home of the family fox-trot? Max would close the place down first. That's my cousin, Johnny Castle. He got me the job here.

They look great together.

Baby: Yeah.

Billy: You'd think they were a couple, wouldn't you?

Baby: Aren't they?

Billy: No, not since we were kids.

Johnny: Do you love me?

Yo, cousin, what's she doing here?

Billy: She came with me. She's with me.

Baby: I carried a watermelon. I carried a watermelon?

Johnny: Bend your knees. Down. Watch. Watch my eyes. Good. That's better. Good. Now roll this way. Now watch. Look.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 06 - Magician and Comedian

2008-12-27T13:06:00.004-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Magician: This'll only hurt for a minute. You've got Blue Cross, right?

Comedian (giving Baby a duck): And for being such a good sport, here you go!

(Telling joke to audience): You know, I finally met a girl exactly like my mother. Dresses like her, acts like her. So I brought her home. My father doesn't like her! Go figure.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 05 - Ballroom Dance

2008-12-27T13:05:00.004-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Neil: Are you going to major in English?

Baby: No. Economics of underdeveloped countries. I'm going into the Peace Corps.

Neil: After the final show, I'm going to Mississippi with a couple of busboys, freedom ride.

Max: This is our own Tito Suarez.

Neil: Mambo! Yeah! Come on!

Baby: Who's that?

Neil: Oh, them. They're the dance people. They're here to keep the guests happy. They shouldn't show off with each other. That's not gonna sell lessons.

Jake: Hi, kids. Having fun?

Neil (answering to Jake): Yeah. Actually, I've gotta excuse myself. I'm in charge of the games tonight. (to Baby) Say, would you like to help me get things started?

Jake: Sure she would.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 04 - First Evening Dinner

2008-12-27T13:04:00.007-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Max: Sit down and I'll get you some wine.

Jake: Thank you, Max.

Max (to Robbie): This is Dr. and Mrs. Houseman. (to Baby and Lisa) Baby, Lisa, this is your waiter, Robbie Gould.

Robbie: Yale medical school.

Max (to Robbie): Robbie, these people are my special guests. Give them anything they want. (to all the Housemans) Enjoy.

Jake: Thanks, Max.

Marge: Look at all this leftover food. Are there still starving children in Europe?

Baby: Try Southeast Asia, Ma.

Marge: Right.

Jake (to Robbie): Robbie, Baby wants to send her leftover pot roast to Southeast Asia, so anything we don't finish, wrap up. (to Max) Max, our Baby's gonna change the world.

Max (to Lisa): And what are you gonna do, Missy?

Baby: Lisa's gonna decorate it.

Robbie (smiling at Lisa): She already does.

Max (to Jake): Doc, I want you to meet someone. My grandson Neil. Goes to the Cornell School of Hotel Management.

Jake: Baby's starting Mount Holyoke in the fall.

Neil: Oh, great.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 03 - Instructions to Male Employees

2008-12-27T13:03:00.005-05:00

Scene Description

Dialogue

Baby: Mom, Dad, I'm going up to the main house to look around.

Max: There are two kinds of help here. You waiters are all college guys,.and I went to Harvard and Yale to hire you.. And why did I do that? Why? I shouldn't have to remind you. This is a family place. That means you keep your fingers out of the water, hair out of the soup...and show the goddamn daughters a good time. All the daughters. Even the dogs. Schlepp 'em out to the terrace, show 'em the stars. - Romance 'em any way you want. - Got that, guys?

Hey, hold it! Hold it.

Well, if it isn't the entertainment staff. Listen, wise ass, you got your own rules. Dance with the daughters. Teach 'em the mambo... the cha-cha, anything they pay for.That's it. That's where it ends. No funny business, no conversations, and keep you hands off!

Johnny: It's the same at all these places. Some ass in the woods, maybe, but no conversation.

Max: Watch it, Rodriguez.

Robbie: Do you think you can you keep that straight, Johnny? What you can and can't lay your hands on?

Johnny: Just put your pickle on everybody's plate, and leave the hard stuff to me.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

Bit 02 - Arrival at Resort

2008-12-27T13:02:00.017-05:00

Scene Description

The Housemans' car approaches the Kellermans' Resort, and we see the large, main building and a huge lawn. Guests who already have arrived are participating in various activities on the lawn. An activity director with a hand-held loudspeaker announces the various activities that are available.

The Housmans' car parks in front of the main building, and the Housemans get out of their car and begin unloading their luggage.

The resort owner, Max Kellerman, approaches and welcomes the family. He already is acquainted with Jake Houseman, who has provided him medical treatment in the past.

Max Kellerman orders a young male worker, Billy Kostecki, to help unload the Housemans' luggage. Billy and Baby become acqainted in the process.

The Houseman family goes to a dance lesson that is being conducted by Penny Johnson in a gazebo.

Dialogue

Activity Director: Ping-Pong in the west arcade, softball in the east diamond. All you Sandy Koufaxes, get out there! Complimentary dance lessons in the gazebo.

Lisa: Oh, my God. Look at that! Mom, I should've brought the coral shoes. You said I was taking too much.

Marge: Well, sweetheart, you brought ten pairs.

Lisa: But the coral shoes matched that dress.

Jake: This is not a tragedy. A tragedy is three men trapped in a mine or police dogs used in Birmingham.

Baby: Monks burning themselves in protest.

Lisa: Butt out, Baby.

Activity Director: Okay, we got horse shoes on the south lawn in 15 minutes! We've got Splish-Splash, the water class, down by the lake. We have the still-life art class. We got volleyball and croquet. And for you older folks, we got sacks!

Max: Doc! Doc!

Jake: Max!

Max: Well, Doc, after all these years I finally got you up on my mountain.

Jake: How's the blood pressure?

Max: I want you girls to know, if it were not for this man, I'd be standing here dead.

Billy, get the bags.

Billy: Right away, Doc. I kept the best cabin for you and your beautiful girls.

Jake: Hey, thanks a lot.

Billy: You want a job here?

Max:There's a merengue class in the gazebo in the next few minutes. The greatest teacher. Used to be a Rockette.

Marge:It's his first real vacation in six years, Max. Take it easy.

Max: Three weeks here, it'll feel like a year.

Penny: One, two, three, four! Stomp those grapes and stomp some more! One, two, three, four! Listen to the music!

Baby (bumping into Mrs. Schumacher):Sorry.

Penny: One, two three, four! Move your caboose and shake it loose! One, two, three, four! Start the train! Come on, men! Follow me into a round robin! Ladies, the inner circle! Come on, ladies!

(Penny shakes her bosum.) God wouldn't have given you maracas if he didn't want you to shake them!

Okay now, ladies, when I say "stop" you're gonna find the man of your dreams. Stop! Now, remember, he's the boss on the dance floor, if nowhere else.

Song Lyrics

Remarks

This scene shows various activities available to the resort guests. The activity director lists ping-pong, softball, dance lessons, horse shoes, swimming lessons, waterpainting lessons, volleyball and croquet. The activity director also mentions "sacks" for older folks, but I don't know that this is.

The activity director mentions that these dance lessons in the gazebo are "complementary," meaning that they don't cost anything. Normally the guests had to pay for dance lessons.

When the activity director mentions softball, he calls on "all you Sandy Koufaxes" to participate. Sandy Koufax was a professional baseball player who was Jewish.

Although the Housemans were unloading all their luggage in front of the main building, they subsequently stayed in a smaller building that was distant from the main building. According to Max Kellerman, this is the best cabin.

The conversation about the shoes begins when Lisa notices that some of the other arriving guests have brought huge amounts of clothing. This conversation indicates Lisa's obsession with fashion and beauty, but it informs the audience also that the guests dress up formally for many of the resort's activities.

Mocking Lisa's sorrow about her shoes, Jake and Baby mention a few "real" tragedies. Jake mentions "police dogs used in Birmingham," refering to the violent suppression of peaceful Civil Rights protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963. Baby mentions "monks burning themselves in protest," referring to Buddhist monks in South Vietnam who burned themselves to death in protest against the South Vietnamese Government in June 1963.

The conversation between Jake and Max informs the audience that Jake is a medical doctor. Jake has treated Max in the past, although the circumstances will not be explained.

Billy and Baby must become acquainted early in the story, because he soon will take her to the warehouse where the staff employees dance. As Baby continues to unload luggage from the car, Billy asks jokingly whether she wants a job at the hotel. In fact, many young people whose families visited the resorts did eventually get jobs at the resorts.

Max mentions in the conversation that the Houseman family will spend three weeks at the resort.

Marge mentions in the conversation that Jake has not had "a real vacation" for six years." Marge and the daughters might have enjoyed vacations at a Borscht Belt resort within the past six years, however. A later conversation mentions that some resort guests are wives, so-called bungaloo bunnies," who spend continual weeks at the resort and who are visited there by their husbands only on weekends. In any case, this is Jake's first stay at this particular resort.

Max mentions that Penny Johnson, the teacher at the dance lesson in the gazebo, used to be a Rockette, meaning that she is a professional dancer. Baby participates in the class and thus comes to know that Penny is a professional dancer. Baby still does not know anything about Johnny Castle, the male dance instructor.

During the dancing lesson, Baby stands next to Mrs. Shumacher and even bumps into her. The audience thus begins to recognize her.

Baby looks uncomfortable, clumsy, inhibited and unhappy while dancing.

Penny tells her students that when she says "stop" the women are supposed to "find the man of your dreams." Penny subsequently says "stop" and grabs Jake Houseman. This reinforces Baby's remark in the previous scene (riding in the car) that she dreamed of marrying a man like her father. Later in the movie, we learn that Penny has fallen in love with a medical student, who will become a doctor, like Jake. Penny will come to admire Jake very much.

When Penny yells "stop," Baby ends up dancing with Mr. Schumacher. Thus the audience begins to recognize him.

Bit 01 - Drive to Resort

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Scene Description

The credits continue into this scene, but the introductory music fades.

The Houseman family is driving through the country-side, toward the resort where they will spend the next three weeks on a vacation. The father, Jake, is driving, and the mother, Marge, is riding in the passenger seat. The two daughters, Baby and Lisa, are sitting in the rear seat.

Baby, sitting behind the father, is reading a book titled The Plight of the Peasant. Lisa, sitting behind the mother, is applying cosmetics.

Dialogue

Radio Disk Jockey: Hi, everybody. This is your cousin Brucie. Whoa! Our summer romances are in full bloom, and everybody's in love! So cousins, here's a great song from The Four Seasons.

[The radio plays the song Big Girls Don't Cry by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.]

Baby (narrating): That was the summer of 1963, when everybody called me "Baby" and it didn't occur to me to mind. That was before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatles came, when I couldn't wait to join the Peace Corps, and I thought I'd never find a guy as great as my dad. That was the summer we went to Kellerman's.

Song Lyrics

Big girls don’t cry

Big girls don’t cry-yi-yi (they don’t cry)

Big girls don’t cry (who said they don’t cry?)

My girl said goodbye-yi-yi (my oh my)

My girl didn’t cry (I wonder why)

(Silly boy) [I] told my girl we had to break up

(Silly boy) [I] hoped that she would call my bluff

(Silly boy) Then she said to my surprise

“Big girls don’t cry?"

Big girls don’t cry-yi-yi (they don’t cry)

Big girls don’t cry (who said they don’t cry?)

(Maybe) I was cru-u-uel (I was cruel)

Baby I’m a fool (I’m such a fool)

(Silly girl) “Shame on you?" your mama said.

(Silly girl) “Shame on you, you’re crying in bed? (Silly girl)

“Shame on you, you told me lies? Big girls do cry

Big girls don’t cry-yi-yi (they don’t cry)

Big girls don’t cry (that’s just an alibi)

Big girls don’t cry

Remarks

Highway signs indicate that the location is in New York state. An advertising sign along the highway indicates that Kellerman's is a resort.

The DJ's words indicate that the movie will be about a summer romance.

The song Big Girls Don't Cry is a "clean-teen" song, not a "dirty-dancing" song. The song's title and lyrics indicate that this movie will have a coming-of-age theme.

The daughters' positions in the car -- Baby behind Dad, Lisa behind Mom -- indicate their respective role models. In her narration, Baby says explicitly that she would prefer to marry a man like her father. In the subsequent events, however, she will fall in love with someone very different from her father.

Baby's words indicate that the author Eleanor Bergstein considers the assassination of President Kennedy and the arrival of the Beatles to mark a cultural watershed in American culture. This movie takes place near the end of one cultural era and right before the beginning of another social era. In her DVD commentary, Bergstein called this time "the last summer of liberalism."

Although Baby has just graduated from high school and still has not begun attending college, she is reading a college textbook during her summer vacation. Her reading choice indicates her intelligence and idealism.

Bit 00 - Opening Credits

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We in the audience see only glimpses of couples doing "dirty dancing." The motion is slow and jerky. We see mostly only the couples' heads, not their entire bodies, and the movements are mostly straight up and down. We do not see full color.

The opening credits are colored bright pink. This is a movie about a girl and mostly for girls.

The credits inform us the movie is titled Dirty Dancing, and these slow-motion, jerky, dully-colored images give us only an initial, slight image of such dancing.

We do not see actual "dirty dancing" yet, because we are supposed to share Baby Houseman's surprise later in the movie when she (with us) sees "dirty dancing" for the first time.

Introduction

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I saw the movie Dirty Dancing when it came out in 1987. I was on a date with Mary Pat, who later became my second wife. We liked the movie so much that we soon saw it a second time. In the following years I saw the movie another time or two.

In September 2008, I was in a DVD-rental store with the woman who is my third and current wife. Her name is Zosia. We each were choosing a couple of DVDs to watch, and one that she chose was the 20th-anniversary DVD of Dirty Dancing. Zosia chose it because the cover picture showed Patrick Swayze, an actor she likes because she had seen and liked the movie Ghosts. Zosia immigrated from Lithuania 15 years ago, so there are a lot of famous American movies she had never seen, including Dirty Dancing. I promised Zosia she would love Dirty Dancing, and so we rented the DVD and took it home and watched it. She did like it.

Before we returned the DVD to the rental store, I watched all the extra features and re-watched the movie twice with all the commentaries.

Afterwards I was inspired to write a series of articles about the movie. I sent the articles around to my relatives. I still have some more articles in mind to write.

Now I have decided to use my articles as the basis for my first attempt to start this blog, Dirty Dancing Analysis. I am doing this just for my own interest and fun.

I look forward to reading comments and corrections from other people who read my articles and share my love for the movie Dirty Dancing.

Anybody who ever has written an essay analyzing the movie Dirty Dancing and wants to immortalize it and get some feedback may send it to me at MikeSylwester@gmail.com. If it's decent, I will post it here as a guest post.

Sometimes I will post a few articles about other movie subjects. I already have written a few such articles, and so I will post them. I intend, however, to limit this blog mostly to just the movie Dirty Dancing.