Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 24

Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey

Continued from Part 1,  Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8,  Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22 and Part 23

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Chapter 22, titled "Unbridled", tells about events into 2021, when she and her husband Clark Gregg divorced.

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Grey's book is not much about the movie Dirty Dancing. Rather, the book mainly tells about growing up in a family of actors, about her effort to become a successful actress, about her romantic experiences with men, about her addictions to intoxicating substances, about her physical and mental disorders and about her joy in being a married mother. That movie did play an important part in her life, but now that she is in her sixties and looks back, that movie was only a minor part.

In her book's final chapter, she shares some of the wisdom that she acquired during her 60+ years. She ponders particular problems of being a woman.

I came from a long line of women who became mothers and wives at the expense or the career they'd wanted. The story my mother's mother told was "I didn't get to be a pianist." And my mom knew she didn't want to be like her depressed mother, so she was going to do it all differently, but then gave up her career to be a mother and a wife to my Father.

There was something imprinted on me by my foremothers that I was resolved to outfox. I thought I'd be able to override the system. I decided I'd be like my dad and not my mom and would somehow not fall prey to her undesirable epigenetics, and yet, there I was. A domestic goddess/mother superior. There'd never been a woman in my family lineage who got out from under that destiny I didn't know how to get from under, either, and began to doubt it could be done.

Women have an uncanny ability to adapt to please others, to refrain from privileging themselves out of fear of what might ensue. It takes a certain fortitude to tolerate the risk involved in stressing an established relationship to see if it can handle accommodating some much-needed change.

And if in time we become angry or depressed or just feel like we're somehow slowly withering on the vine from adapting so much to the lives of others, we are promptly shamed, either from within or from without. To give voice to our desire to free ourselves from our habituated reflexive over-adaptability to others might render us unlovable to our mates or bad mothers, right? That's what we think. So we disappear into servicing and raising our young, muting our dissatisfaction, because it feels shameful to be ungrateful when you're being taken care of. ...

I'm struck by how many married women I intimately, especially mothers of small children, are right now feeling hopelessly stuck in their lives. They don't dare let themselves consider what they might wish for or what they would want their lives to look like if they could make a change. ...

And I have become willing to tell the truth in the second half of my life like I never had before. There's an exhilarating relief in my willingness to face my fear of the unknown. I've relinquished the dollhouse as destination, as container of the dream, and it's really all the unknown all the time now. ...

... when I look in the mirror today — a softer, wiser, albeit perhaps not quite as sharp version of myself, due to the natural aging process -- can I just hold on to myself, my inherent value, and accept myself even now?

Even in the face of these turbulent times: When I feel tossed about, struggling to get my bearings in this changeable landscape, where change is the only constant? The inevitable impermanence of everything. Career peaks and valleys, other people's opinions of me, marital status, financial ebbs and flows, body image, aging. With every new chapter, we are faced with fresh challenges to our sense of identity and self. Every phase. As far as I can tell, every age is rife with struggle as well as with incomparable delight, and every end is pregnant With a new beginning.

Although Jennifer Grey played the movie role of Baby Houseman, those two lives are different. Houseman would attend college and study some subject like international relations. Maybe she would spend a couple years in the Peace Corps. Then she would develop a life-long professional career in academics or government. Houseman would not become addicted to intoxicating substances.

Perhaps Houseman, like Grey, would marry late in life, become the mother of one child, and eventually divorce her husband. In that regard, the two women's lives might become similar, in their forties.

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The book does not say anything about any sequel to the movie Dirty Dancing.

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I enjoyed reading the book. I recommend it to anyone who loves the movie.

Readers of the book have rated it on the Amazon website as follows:

This is the end of my series of blog articles about Grey's autobiography.

Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 23

Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey

Continued from Part 1,  Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8,  Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21 and Part 22.

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Chapter 22, titled "Unbridled", tells about events into 2021, when she and her husband Clark Gregg divorced.

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The chapter title "Unbridled" is a pun on the two words "bride" and "bridle". 1) Since she has divorced, she no longer is a bride. 2) She was freed like a horse whose bridle has been removed.

In her book she writes only positively about Gregg. He had not pressured her to marry him -- to become his bride. On the contrary, she had become pregnant deliberately and then pressured him to marry her. She does not insinuate that he "bridled" her -- in the sense of controlling her. She does not tell the cause of the divorce.

Marrying Clark gave me the opportunity to experience what it is to start a family of my own. Because of him, I got to become a mother to a child who is now a woman, an experience that has far exceeded my wildest dreams.

Clark and I were together for twenty years, married for nineteen, and are partners in raising our incredible daughter. Pretty extraordinary for two people who had been rolling solo for the first thirty-eight and forty years of our lives, respectively.

The good news is our marriage was something we both had needed to let go of. We knew that it had served its purpose. The three of us will always be a family.

I perceived some clues, however, that Grey left her marriage in order to live in a romantic relationship with a woman named Tracy, who has been her "best friend for decades".

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In her book's Chapter 7, titled "Gypsies, Tramps and Sleaze", Grey told how she became friends separately with two high-school girls, Maggie Wheeler and Tracy. (Grey writes Maggie's full name and even Maggie's parents' full names, but never writes Tracey's last name.) 

The Grey family had moved from California to New York in late 1974, when Jennifer was 14, because Joel Grey had been hired to star in the Broadway musical Goodtime Charley. Jennifer attended Manhattan's Dalton High School. Very soon, she became friends with Maggie, who had transferred from Dalton to another school but still hung around Dalton.

Maggie and Jennifer misbehaved together. They smoked cigarettes and marijuana, frequented a bar that served alcohol to minors, and watched adults-only movies. 

Grey writes that they snuck into a movie theater to watch the soft-porn movie Emmanuelle, which featured a lot of lesbian scenes.

The actresses were all small-breasted European beauties. The film made quite an impression on us. Emmanuelle was hot, and women from all over the city were lining up around the block, snaking around Bergdorf Goodman to get into The Paris movie theater for their fix of something they might be turned on by. ...

After getting our first taste of sexy magic, Maggie dragged me along to check out one of those hard-core porn movies in Times Square ....

We were two uptown teenagers who had gone to great lengths to try to pass for grown women, but could've just as easily been mistaken for young prostitutes. ...

That time we found ourselves in that seedy porn house, she lost one of her diamond earrings, dropped down the drain of the grimy bathroom sink. Was it The Devil and Miss Jones or Behind the Green Door?

Once we took our seats and our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we were shocked to realize we were the only females in the sparsely attended showing. We had crashed a party that clearly had not been thrown with us in mind. It was tailored to suit the needs of these shadowy men with overcoats covering their laps. As the opening credits rolled, all I could think was, "This is not where my parents would want me to be," and I wanted out. Maggie made me stay a bit longer, but I eventually got us the fuck outta there.

Right after writing about that incident, Grey writes her attraction toward homosexual men.

When I was fourteen, I developed a killer crush on Mark Baker, the twenty-five-year-old playing the title role of Candide on Broadway. .... I got to go backstage with my dad to meet the cast. ... Meeting Mark Baker in his dressing room triggered this phenomenon of craving, whetting my whistle for more. I repurposed that access and returned repeatedly to see the show with Maggie. ...

For me, my aggressive pursuit had a built-in safety net. There was no risk because there was no chance of anything happening between us. I was much more powerfully drawn to him than to any straight boy my age. ... Were gay men what I was programmed to be attracted to for some unconscious reason?

Maggie was my partner in crime for all things intense, dark and gay. She and I were like two stage-door Jennies, basically stalkers, inviting ourselves to join in whatever after-show festivities Mark Baker was up to. As it turned out, this charismatic young actor was up to all kinds of underground shenanigans. ...

Maggie and I followed him everywhere he went, to every skanky venue, and more than once to the sketchy Bowery neighborhood to see his good pal from back in Baltimore, Divine, in Women Behind Bars. At fifteen and fourteen, Maggie and I were more than willing to cavort with drag queens, fascinated and feeling very grown-up to be able to hold our own in this particularly adult underbelly of New York in the seventies. ....

I would introduce Maggie to the Broadway gay boys so I could share with her the torment of crushing on on the impossible-to-attain but super charismatic who felt infinitely more interesting and somehow safer than the heterosexual rich boys we had easy access to. And Maggie, more than game, gave me courage. ....

Because I felt distinctly different from girls my age, more highly awake sexually, I identified with the way openly gay guys expressed their sexual feelings and horny crushes. The soundtrack of my budding sexuality was in tune with their anthem. ... My erotic feelings didn't necessarily go hand in hand with having a boyfriend or being in love. ....

In "girl sexuality" as I saw it ... the goal seemed to be to get a boyfriend. ... For other girls, randiness begat getting a boyfriend. .... I felt alone and perplexed about why my relationship to desire felt so different.

Beyond that point of the book, Grey does not write any more about Maggie. I assume that they broke up. I speculate that Jennifer wanted that friendship to become a lesbian affair, but Maggie refused to go that way.

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Jennifer's friendship with Tracy likewise involved alcohol:

.... she was without question one of the prettiest girls in the school. .... This angel ... and I sat nursing our Heinekens on the front porch, laughing our asses off. ....

They told each other that they did not want boyfriends.

.... in all the heavy-petting action currently in full swing, we were the only two outcasts left standing in this high school make-out game of musical chairs. ... There wasn't anyone [male] there that either of us were into. Or at least that's what we told ourselves. I remember the palpable shift in perspective, that fortuitous moment when I knew I was not alone. ....

Like me, Tracy wanted to be an actress, and we shared a similar sense of humor, liked the same food, and were both Jewish.

Her family conveniently lived in a Park Avenue apartment building down the block from school, so we went there for our free periods or after school to study and do homework. ... Tracy became my best friend at Dalton [high school], like a sister to me.

Jennifer and Tracy in high school

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The above descriptions of Jennifer's adolescent friendships with Maggie and Tracy were in the book's Chapter 7. Now I will return to its Chapter 22, which ultimately addresses the divorce in 2021, when Grey was 61 years old.

Grey begins Chapter 22 by writing that, from a young age, she was obsessed secretly with erotic female beauty.

I was a weird kid, knew I wasn't typical, and that was how I liked it.

I had a secret file, a manila envelope, where I kept a stash of photographs, slyly excised from my mother's Vogue magazines. Avedon's black-and-white editorial closeup of a soaking wet form of a woman on the beach .... Her back arched, head thrown back, in a fully unbuttoned black bodysuit, with one bared breast, mit nipple, the sunlight bouncing off her shiny goose bumps. This was the kind of artsy, feminine erotica that fascinated me. I collected images of sexy women not because I wanted to date one or one day marry one, but because I wanted to feel the way they looked. That was what resonated with me. ...

It appealed to me to be doing something subversive and forbidden, something considered grown-up and somehow naughty, and I took a certain guilty pride in my secret stash of sexy. I'd sequester myself inside a fort I'd fashioned by stretching an Indian print bedspread between my high brass bed and built-in Formica countertop desk. In the light filtered through the colorful pattern. I'd take out my oversized manila envelope, the color of muddy sunshine, from its hiding-in-plain-sight spot inside one of the desk cupboards, and I'd pore over these gorgeous images, appreciating my keen, curatorial eye, like a nerd gazing in wonderment at their glorious stamp collection.

Jennifer and Tracy developed a petting "routine", which they continued into their adult years.

When I was in high school, my best friend. Tracy, and I had a routine we probably started when we were in ninth grade, and even though we might have looked like we were too old for such childish games , we continued it well into adulthood.

It was a form of prayer, or wish fulfillment .... Usually when just hanging around, maybe bored, one of us would instigate with a request, "Fantasize me?" ...

The physical piece that accompanied this fantasizing hobby involved the age-old girls' pastime of arm tickling. The one receiving the fantasy would lie back, after making sure her sleeve was rolled, or pushed up well above the crease of the inner elbow, exposing the soft underside of her inner arm ... She'd close her eyes, completely relax, and submit, as one donates blood.

The other one, all business, settling into a comfortable seated position at her friend's side, would begin tracing the softest possible tracks with her fingertips, maybe a hint of fingernails, rhythmically dragging up and down the tarmac of this most vulnerable of real estate ...

Tracy and I were able to conjure and make believe far bigger, wilder happily-ever-afters for each other than for ourselves, freed from whatever sensible constraints kept the lid on our own dreams, which were somehow kept in obeyance, more muted, humble, and mindful to never be too outlandish. The highlights of the friend's offering would always involve a very exciting and robust career as an actress, a vision that never failed to quickly, almost immediately shift gears into marriage and family. ....

It seemed that once we were. married off and had begun the business of bearing children, it would be our husbands who would continue with thrilling, artistically rewarding careers. We would be happy and content to have finally found what we were looking for, having landed in frothy and sumptuous domestic bliss. The end.

During these petting routines, they foretold heterosexual relationships to each other -- not lesbian relationships.

I was "boy crazy". ... From the moment my brain could figure out how to obsess over some boy, that's exactly what I did. My body was made to be with boy bodies. ... we want to have a baby ...

Motherhood did -- astonishingly -- happen for me. The aftershocks of that are what this episode is about.

I interpret that last remark to mean that after Grey's motherhood years had passed -- after her daughter turned twenty -- her "boy crazy" years also had passed. The later passing caused "the aftershocks" that caused her divorce -- which she calls "this episode".

Chapter 22 contains only one photograph, which I assume shows Tracy and Jennifer walking arm-in-arm during their young years. The photograph -- on the chapter's third page -- is not explained. The photograph is placed right before the passage that describes their petting ritual.

Tracy and Jennifer

Grey writes about her divorce only in two of the chapter's last three paragraphs. I quoted most of that passage above ("Marrying Clark gave me the opportunity ...")

In the chapter's last three sentences, she describes her post-divorce life as wild and as fulfilling her fantasies:

It's the Wild West, baby! With no illusion of "the known, the plan the way it's supposed to look, or be." And my excitement about the adventure, along with my limitless ability to "fantasize myself", is now officially unbridled.

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Continued in Part 24

Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 22

Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey

Continued from Part 1,  Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8,  Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20 and Part 21

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Chapter 21, titled "Dancing With the Scars", tells about events in 2010, culminating in November, when she won the Dancing With the Stars competition.

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During the years from 2002-2009, Grey was happy and busy raising her daughter Stella.

Every single day, every month, every year, I woke up when Stella woke up. .... Made breakfast and the dreaded school lunch, did school drop-off and marketing, then school pickup, snack, homework, dinner, dishes, bath time, and limping toward the finish line, through that stickiest of wickets, the bedtime ritual.

I was in charge of arranging all of Stella's after-school activities -- swim class, dance class, art class, playdates -- and her dentist and doctor appointments. ...

I looked after our beloved dogs. .... I went to Pilates a few times a week after drop-off and before grocery shopping, and I never stopped going to my regular [Alcoholic Anonymous] meetings.

During those years she was diagnosed as suffering from an anxiety disorder, which was treated with a regime of anti-depressant medicine.

She did occasional acting jobs, but the opportunities and offers declined as her career drive waned and as she became an older woman.

Meanwhile, Grey never watched the Dancing With the Stars television show. She sometimes received suggestions and even invitations to participate, but she did not have the time or interest. She had not danced seriously since filming Dirty Dancing in 1986.

In 2008, her close friend Marlee Matlin, the deaf actress, participated in Dancing With the Stars and felt: "It's one of the most powerful experiences I've every had. It's life-changing." Matlin subsequently pushed the show's producers and Grey toward Grey's participation in the show. In 2009, the producers invited Grey to watch the live show, which convinced Grey to participate.

That decision triggered Grey's anxiety, although she continued to take her anti-depressant medicine. As an additional treatment of her anxiety, she began to visit a professional hypnotist. Grey tape-recorded her hypnosis sessions and then listened to them twice a day.

Because of her occasional neck pain following her 1987 car accident, Grey's husband suggested that she Grey get her neck examined by a neurological spinal surgeon before she did the show. The surgeon studied the MRI and then told her, "You may have one of the worst necks I've ever seen."

Grey's spinal canal should have been about one-and-a-half centimeters long, but it had been crushed to just a few millimeters.

He warned her:

If you're dancing and you get jolted pretty good -- not to mention if you were driving and got rear-ended -- you'd be permanently paralyzed from the neck down.

You shouldn't even be in a car, in my opinion.

I would do this [neck surgery] yesterday. To get out of danger, I need to fuse levels C4 and C5. Once I've jockeyed bck C4, the vertebra that's slipped forward, I'd stabilize the two levels with a titanium plate and four screws. That alone should alleviate a lot of your pain. ...

The ballistic impact from the whiplash years ago tore the interspinous ligament and facet capsule. This created instability at C4 and C5. And where there's supposed to be a natural curve to the neck, your neck not only lost the curve and became straight-up-and-down, but over time, has progressed to the point where it's bending in the other direction.

Grey got the surgery and then did the physical therapy, which lasted six months. The treatment was successful, and she ultimately felt much better. The surgeon cleared her to dance on the show.

The neck MRI revealed that her thyroid gland was enlarged and perhaps cancerous. A biopsy revealed that the gland indeed was cancerous, and so she had it removed. Grey figures that her decisions to participate in the show and then to get her neck examined saved her from thyroid cancer.

Eventually Grey did begin to participate in the show, with professional dancer Derek Hough. Now she had to wear high heels, which she had not worn for many years, and suffered much pain. She was taken to a podiatrist, who diagnosed her with Morton's neuroma, a trapped nerve on the ball of her foot, between her third and fourth toe. During her participation in the show, that problem was treated with cortisone shots. (After the show ended, the podiatrist removed the neuroma surgically.)

Because of her anxiety and physical problems, Grey almost dropped out of the show, but her husband and daughter persuaded her to continue.

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Grey's telling of her participation in the show is quite interesting, especially if you have watched the show a lot, which I have done. She tells about the show's routine and about its backstage activities. She tells how she and Hough rehearsed and how they progressed through the competition, week by week, as the other contestants were eliminated, couple by couple. Eventually she and Hough won the competition.

The experience was physically difficult and exhausting for Grey. Despite the cortisone shots, her foot continued to hurt. On the very last day, she began to suffer a hip pain that was so bad that went to a hospital emergency ward. An MRI revealed that she had ruptured a lumbar disk in her spine. She was able to participate in the show's final night only because the hospital doctors injected steroids into her spine.

The challenge of Dancing With the Stars requires an inordinate of courage for anyone. For me? It took everything I had. ...

Doing the show rewired me. I had spent so much of my life not advocating for myself, refusing the call. But taking on this adventure put me in the center of my story.

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Derek Hough is engaged!

Lots more videos of Derek and his fiancée, Hayley Erbert

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Continued in Part 23

Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 21

Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey

Continued from Part 1,  Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8,  Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19 and Part 20

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This blog article does not summarize any part of Grey's book.

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Despite the huge success of her movie Dirty Dancing, Grey failed to develop a successful movie career. One reason for Grey's failure is that Vestron -- the movie-production company that made millions of dollars from Dirty Dancing -- failed to use Grey in further Vestron movies.

In a previous blog article titled "My 1,500th Post in this Blog -- Part 5" my list of my blog articles about Vestron included the following. 

Vestron Video and Dirty Dancing

Vestron to produce movies for video

Vestron's Gamble

Dirty Dancing was structured as a negative pickup

Selling Dirty Dancing II

The Collapse of Video Prices and Vestron's Collapse

Dirty Dancing -- Vestron's First Production

The Vestron Test

Dirty Dancing struts its stuff on videotape

The Cross-Promotion of Vestron and Nestle

The Dirty Dancing Sequel and Security Pacific National Bank

Vestron bites the dust

Video's Bonanza for the Entertainment Industry

The Acquisition of Vestron by Live Entertainment

How People Watched Old Movies Before VCRs

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 1

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 2

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 3

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 4

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 5

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 6

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 7

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 8

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 9

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Continued in Part 22

Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 20

Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey

Continued from Part 1,  Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8,  Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18 and Part 19

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Chapter 20, titled "Baby Love", tells about events from February 1990 until about 2004.

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Grey's career did not take off, but she gradually came to accept that disappointment. She blames -- I think excessively -- her changed nose.

(In my opinion, she was born to star in the movie Dirty Dancing, but she was born to play only minor character roles in all other movies. Her career was handicapped perhaps more by her short height -- 5'3" -- than by her nose's length.)

I started working with an inspiring acting coach who reminded me why I wanted to be an actor in the first place, and I took every workshop she offered. I took acting jobs that were not great, one after another, and applied what I'd been working on in class to make each experience more meaningful for me. ....

I focused on my sobriety. ....

Whenever I was in the grips of self-centered fear over losing what I had or not getting what I wanted, I tried to help someone else. And just hung in there.

I had to sell my house and my car, put all my stuff in storage, and move to a tiny apartment in New York.

I got hired to do an HBO show, but I was replaced after the pilot. Soon after that, my agents at CAA [Creative Artists Agency] "let me go."

So much for sobriety making my life better. Except that my life was better, just not in the old ways I would've defined as better before everything went haywire. I started to feel less crazy, less like I was at the mercy of outside forces. ... My life had become more fluid and interesting as opposed to fixed and narrow.

During some of the 1990s she had a boyfriend who was 15 years younger than her. She calls him "wonderful" but her book does not name him or tell how that relationship ended.

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When she turned 40 in the year 2000, she very much wanted to have a baby, and she did not have much time left. In her search for the father of her future child, she was influenced by a book titled Getting to "I Do": The Secret to Doing Relationships Right!, written by Dr. Pat Allen.

I wonder what Baby Houseman would have thought about Dr. Allen's advice!

During the 1990s, Grey had happened to meet occasionally with Clark Gregg, an actor, director and screenwriter. After Grey read Allen's book, she grew her acquaintanceship with Gregg into a dating relationship and then gradually into a sexual relationship. (Gregg looks like the Dirty Dancing character Neil Kellerman.)

On her 41st birthday -- March 26, 2001 -- Grey informed Gregg that she was pregnant. A few weeks later they moved together into a new home. In the summer they got married (the book does not specify their wedding date).

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Grey's pregnancy was extremely stressful, because prenatal testing indicated that the baby would be born with a serious birth defect. Grey's initial doctor recommended an abortion, but Grey switched to a different doctor who monitored the pregnancy more patiently. Later prenatal tests indicated that the baby would be normal. The birth too was very stressful, but ultimately the baby, named Stella, was born normal. Grey brags that "she was perfect". Grey writes a lot about the pregnancy and birth.

After much stress during the pregnancy and
birth, the infant Stella was born perfect!

This chapter ends when Stella was attending pre-school, so I figure this was about 2004.

Stella, the perfect daughter!

Grey loves being a mother, and she writes about her happiness with strong, genuine, touching emotion. Her writing about her happiness being a mother made me happy as a reader. It's one of the best parts of the book.

Grey's husband achieved much success in the movie business. Grey was content to be his helpmeet and the mother of their child. She compares herself appreciatively with her own mother Jo Grey, the supportive wife of the successful actor Joel Grey.

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Continued in Part 21

Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 19

Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey

Continued from Part 1,  Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8,  Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17 and Part 18

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Chapter 19, titled "Heeeere's Johnny", tells about an event in February 1990.

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Sometime during 1989, participated in the filming of a television docudrama called Murder in Mississippi. She played the role of Rita Schwerner, the wife of Michael Schwerner, (played by the actor Tom Hulce) who was murdered in June 1964 while helping Negroes to vote in Mississippi.

Tom Hulce and Jennifer Grey
in the movie 1990 movie
Murder in Mississippi

You can watch the entire movie on YouTube. If you just want to see Grey, then skip forward to about 10:30.

Grey does not write anything, however, about her experience of acting in that movie. (In her movie Dirty Dancing, the character Neil Kellerman mentioned to Baby Houseman that he intended to travel to Mississippi to participate in the Civil Rights movement.)

Grey mentioned this docudrama only in relation to her appearance on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show on February 2, 1990, in order to promote that docudrama, which would be broadcast on February 5.

Grey's appearance on this show seems to be unremarkable, but it traumatized her emotionally.

Her recounting of this situation is not clear, but I understood that she stopped drinking alcohol immediately after she broke up with Johnny Depp in March 1989. She even attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Some months later, however, she learned that Depp was romantically involved with the actress Winona Ryder. At that time, Ryder was only about 17 years old and happened to live next door to Grey. Ryder and Grey had talked with each other frequently about their lives, including their love lives. When Grey discovered that Ryder was dating Depp, Grey began drinking again. (That is my understanding of this meandering, confusing chapter of the book, but I am not sure.)

Wynona Ryder dating Johnny Depp

Now on February 2, 1990, right before Grey walked out onto the stage to talk with Carson, she downed a couple glasses of wine. Early in the interview (at 0:45 in the above video), she reached over and touched Carson's chest. Although Carson did not object visibly, Grey regretted immediately that her unexpected touch had angered him.

As she left the studio, she drank more wine, straight out of the bottle, although she felt she now had ruined her career because she was intoxicated (also with drugs?) during her appearance on the show.

In the following days, Grey decided that she needed to stop consuming alcohol, Xanax, Valium, marijuana and any other mood-altering drugs (cocaine?). I got the impression that she resumed attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. She has maintained her sobriety since 1990. (She admits she has continued to smoke cigarettes.)

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I think that her nose size had been reduced before she filmed Murder in Mississippi, but I cannot say for sure. I think she looked fine with either nose. I cannot always even tell the difference.

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Continued in Part 20.

Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 18

Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey

Continued from Part 1,  Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8,  Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, and Part 17

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Chapter 18, titled "Mrs. Broderdepp", tells about events from August 1987 into March 1989. 

==========

Right after her Dirty Dancing premiere, Grey flew back to Belfast to keep Matthew Broderick company in the hospital there. Eventually they returned to the USA and moved back into the Manhattan apartment that they still shared with Meg Burnie.

Once we got home after the accident, my resolve to break it [their relationship] off vanished. We were living together in my apartment, along with my roommate, Meg. Matthew was gaunt, still on crutches, at the start of months of physical therapy to rehabilitate his leg.

I couldn't help but fall into a deeply ingrained mindset. I loved him.

Whatever Matthew's needs were, especially if they posed a serious threat to his health or work, they would have to take precedence. His grave injuries, the sudden question mark that loomed over his career, the public flaying that ensued, and the fallout that continued to swirl around him -- all of this rendered my needs, my life, my injuries, my career, inconsequential to me.

Their relationship continued to be troubled. Grey writes that when they ate out together in a restaurant, she would drink an entire bottle of wine and would weep at the table.

In January 1988, she was nominated for the Golden Globe award for Best Actress. Broderick flew with her to Los Angeles, where the awards show would take place. Instead of going to the show with her, however, he went to a restaurant to eat a meal with his agent. Meanwhile, Grey went to the awards show with her own agent.

I didn't see how much I needed help. I obviously had enormous ambivalence about going after what I wanted, though I didn't know it at the time. Ambition had a strangely distasteful and negative connotation to me; it smacked of self-involvement, entitlement, soullessness, being cutthroat and driven. I had never been a big fan of competition and was quick to avoid conflicts -- with Patrick, with Matthew, with my dad.

If there was going to be a tussle over who should stand in the limelight, I was out. Still, it didn't feel good that Matthew wouldn't be next to me, holding my hand at the Globes that January.

Broderick continued to earn a lot of money from his own movie career. He starred in the 1987 movie Project X, in the 1988 movies Biloxi Blues and Torch Song Trilogy, in the 1989 movies Family Business and Glory and in the 1990 movie The Freshman.

At about the end of February 1988, Broderick moved out of Grey's apartment into an apartment he had bought for himself. He did not invite her to move in with him. They broke up.

In spite of everything I knew, I still loved him.

We don't know Broderick's side in the story of their breakup. We do know, however, that he was a rich, successful movie star who attracted young women easily. He did not have to put up with Grey's addictions and emotions. Her own movie career seemed to be finished, but she was postponing motherhood indefinitely, in the futile hope that she too would become a movie star. If he ever married her, he might lose half of his wealth if they ever divorced.

Broderick does know how to be married. He has been married to Sarah Jessica Parker for 25 years, and they have three children. Back in 1988, though, he decided that a marriage with Jennifer Grey would be a bad risk.

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In 1986, Grey had earned $50,000 for Dirty Dancing. That amount would be about $135,000 in 2022 dollars. She did not earn any further money, such as a share of the movie's profits.

That $50,000 did not last long. I suppose she had to pay off her school loans and other debts. She had continued to work as a waitress until August 1987, the month when the movie opened in the theaters. After the movie made her famous, she felt too embarrassed to be seen working as a waitress.

She writes: "I was broke".

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She switched to a new agent, Sam Cohn, who had represented her father Joel Grey for many years. Joel Grey, however, had become dissatisfied with Cohn and therefore was angry about Jennifer's decision.

Cohn sent her a lot of scripts and arranged for some auditions, but her career did not take off. She was considered for roles in some feature movies -- she names Cocktail and Working Girl -- but ultimately was not selected.

In the months after Dirty Dancing came out, it seemed like everyone wanted to see me for their project, but something was off, out of alignment. Even though I was hurting for cash, I was turning down the jobs I was being offered. Out of fear -- fear of not being a good enough actress to overcome subpar material. And when I had an exciting audition for something A-list, I either didn't prepare adequately or got super close to getting it, which happened a lot, but for some reason ... didn't make the cut.

In late 1987 she was selected to play a leading role in the movie Bloodhounds of Broadway, which was filmed in January and February 1988 (eighty-eight) and was released in November 1989 (eighty-nine). That movie bombed. Its budget was $4 million, but its box office earnings were just $43,671.

Grey co-starred in the movie with Madonna, who was going through a divorce. Grey and Madonna became close and lasting friends. In her book, Grey writes a lot about their friendship. 

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Madonna arranged for Grey to date Alec Baldwin, who introduced Grey to his brother Billy Baldwin, who then became Grey's boyfriend for a while. 

Jennifer Grey dating Billy Baldwin

Grey describes this time of her life as follows:

I'd been drinking and smoking -- cigarettes and weed -- pretty much on the regular for more than a decade. I also found it necessary to pop a Xanax or Valium whenever anxiety threatened to flood my system -- and around this particular time there was some pretty serious flooding going on.

It had never ever occurred to me that these coping mechanisms might be having a deleterious effect on my life. I had come to rely on them as helpful and necessary, to rescue me from "feeling too much." I couldn't see that while these habits were effectively turning down the volume on my overloaded nervous system, they were also muting the intuitive voices that were trying to save me from myself.

Silencing the voices saying, "Get out! Get the fuck out! What is wrong with you? Stop the madness!"

In June 1988, Broderick returned to Grey, begging her to marry him after all. She agreed to marry him, but they broke up again before the end of July. One of the reasons was that she thought he was continuing an affair with the actress Helen Hunt. 

In the summer of 1988, Grey began a romance with the actor Johnny Depp. On their first date, they realized that they both loved to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. After two weeks, he proposed to her. Their engagement lasted for about nine months. Her book's description of those months is interesting.

Jennifer Grey dating Johnny Depp

In March 1989, Grey flew to Hollywood to spend some time with Depp, who was meeting with a movie director to discuss a future movie. Depp left their hotel room in the morning to attend that meeting, promising to return to the hotel in a few hours. In the evening, he still had not contacted her, and she could not contact him, and she still was alone in the hotel room. She wrote a breakup note, left the note on the hotel room's bed, and walked out of Depp's life. I suppose they both, separately, were drunk during much of that day.

In a following days she also fired her agent and switched to Madonna's agent, Jane Berliner. These days were also when Grey got her nose surgery.

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Continued in Part 19

Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 17

Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey

Continued from Part 1,  Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8,  Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, and Part 16

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Chapter 16, titled "Ireland", and Chapter 17, titled The Premiere", tell about events in August 1987. 

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There was a ten-month interval between the end of filming on October 27, 1986, and the movie's premiere on August 21, 1987. During most of those months, Grey felt pessimistic and depressed about her movie. By the beginning of August 1987, however, she perceived indications that the movie might be successful. The movie had been praised by an audience that had watched it a film festival in Cannes, France, in May 1987.

As the premiere approached, Grey told her boyfriend Matthew Broderick that she looked forward to attending the premiere together with him. He responded that he disdained such events and would not go with her. Since he already had appeared in six movies, I assume that he always had refused also to attend the premiers of his own movies (Grey's book does not clarify that point). He refused to make an exception even for Dirty Dancing, the star of which was his own girlfriend. Grey thinks he got this disdain about movie premiers from his mother, Patsy Broderick. (Keep in mind that Matthew's mother recently had exposed the homosexuality of Jennifer's father.)

He said he already had watched the movie in a special screening for the cast and crew, and he never wanted to watch it again, because of the movie's romantic scenes between her and Patrick Swayze.

This situation indicates that Broderick was an unreasonable, inflexible, weird person. In an earlier chapter, she described him as "a twenty-four-year-old who could easily slip into the personal of a cranky old guy when it suited him".

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Matthew's father, James Broderick, was of Irish descent and so had bought a cottage in Kilcar, Ireland, when Matthew was eight years old. Since then, the family vacationed there often. When James Broderick had died in 1982, his ashes were buried there.

In late July 1987, Matthew Broderick insisted that Grey go with him to Kilcar. She did not want to go but felt she had not choice. While there, they argued some more about his refusal to attend her movie's premiere. (I wonder if Broderick intended to keep her in Ireland through that premiere, although Grey does not say so in her book.) 

When we'd get into these circular arguments, the isolation of the remote Irish countryside and being unable to get some distance or call a girlfriend for a reality check seemed to render me more vulnerable to feeling confused, questioning the validity of my point of view.

Was the movie opening as inconsequential as he insisted it was? Or was it possible that my boyfriend was not supportive of my career?

He would've vehemently denied that assumption as preposterous and offensive. And it was impossible for me to fathom that someone who loved me, which he certainly seemed to, wouldn't be my biggest cheerleader.

In the first days of August, his mother called to declare that she had decided to fly to Ireland in a few days to join them in the cottage. Grey resented this impending intrusion and decided that she would fly back to the USA as soon as Patsy arrived in Ireland. Grey did not want to spend any more time with either Broderick.

Furthermore, Jennifer decided she would break up Matthew as soon as he returned to the USA.

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On August 5, Jennifer and Matthew were driving from Kilcar to Dublin (about 160 miles) to meet Patricia at the airport. The plan was that the Brodericks would drive back to Kilcar, and Grey would fly from Dublin to New York.

About 60 miles into the trip, however, Matthew apparently fell asleep at the wheel, drifted into the wrong lane, and crashed head-on into another car. Exactly what happened is unknown. Matthew has no memory of the accident. Jennifer was looking down at some cassette tapes when the accident occurred. The two women in the other car were killed in the collision.

The collision broke one of Broderick's legs horribly, collapsed a lung and caused other injuries. Grey suffered severe whiplash. They were transported to a hospital in Belfast. Grey describes the accident and its aftermath in excruciating detail.

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Grey was able to leave the hospital, but she felt morally obligated to stay in Belfast to keep Broderick company. She thought she should stay there through her movie's premiere.

I had been trying to quit smoking on and off for years. I'd successfully quit for some time before the accident, but after the accident I immediately began chain-smoking, as if I had to make up for all the cigarettes I'd missed.

I was unable to eat. By day, I'd keep Matthew company in his hospital room. In the evenings, or for lunch, I'd cross the street to the Crown Liquor Saloon, Belfast's most famous bar .... I drank and smoked, picked at the pub food.

I started taking Valium before bed t try to get some sleep. One of my first nights in Belfast, I had an extremely vivid nightmare in which I was visited by the Grim Reaper. He looked just like you'd imagine, scythe toting, dressed in a billowing black robe. He was coming for me, and I told him to fuck off. ....

My mother arrived in Belfast a day or two after Patsy, and we all took shifts being with Matthew at the hospital. My mother was wonderful with Matthew.

But when we were alone, I could tell she was concerned about my fervent allegiance to him. She seemed to see then what I see now: that I was struggling to maintain any sense of my life separate from his. Once it became clear that he was coning to be recovering for the next month in the Belfast hospital, my mother was insistent that I return to the States for the premiere.

Broderick's entertainment lawyer flew to Belfast to persuade Grey not to go to the USA -- or at least not to talk to the press in the USA if she did go there. Apparently, Broderick and his lawyer were concerned that Broderick's reputation might be spoiled if she talked to the press about the fatal accident -- which apparently had been caused by Broderick.

In this situation, Grey felt guilty about her recent intention to break up with Broderick. She felt guilty for wanting to attend her movie's premiere. She felt guilty that she might say something to a reporter that might spoil Broderick's reputation. She felt she should fall back in love with him..

I had always been pretty fierce when fighting on behalf of others, but less so for myself. I was designed to be that girl. And what could be more enticing to this personality kink of mine than someone who was injured, who had nearly died. and was facing an uncertain future.

I had no internalized fight for myself. I was punch-drunk and vulnerable, exhausted, and traumatized.

My mom was that coach for me that no one ever was for her. She showed up big-time. She said: "There's nothing more you can do for Matthew at this point. The [Dirty Dancing] producers are flying you back on the Concorde. This is too important. This is about about your career. You have to go. .... I understand this is hard for you, but you need to go. Matthew will be fine. You can come right back, but you cannot miss this."

... He [Matthew] begged me not to go. There were a lot of tears. ....

I cried the whole way to the airport. I cried and smoked all the way across the Atlantic .... I arrived at JFK [Airport in New York] in a fucked-up haze of nicotine, alcohol, and jet lag.

Flying home for the premiere of my first big movie meant only one thing: that I was not a good person.

Grey's emotional distress continued through the premiere. Now she barely remembers any of that event. She felt uncomfortable as she watched the movie, sitting between her parents. At the after-party, she drank champagne out of a bottle and fell asleep in a restaurant chair.

Jennifer Grey asleep at the afterparty of her movie's premiere

On the following day, she flew back to Belfast. In the hospital, she began to read to Broderick a newspaper review that praised her movie. He interrupted her: "I really don't want to hear this." She felt guilty that she seemed to be bragging to him about her movie's success.

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This chapter of the book was captivating from beginning to end. This time of Grey's life should have been happy and exhilarating, but it turned out to be sad and depressing. Just reading this chapter was an intensely emotional experience for me. So far, this has been the book's best part.

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Continued in Part 18.