My Review of the Stage Musical -- Romance

This post is the third in a series, following:

1) My Review of the Stage Musical -- General

2) My Review of the Stage Musical -- Race

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In this post I will write about a series of romantic relationships, in which the movie and stage musical differ.

1) Billy Kostecki and Elizabeth

2) Jake and Marjorie Houseman

3) Neil Kellerman and Baby Houseman

4) Johnny Castle and Baby Houseman

Other relationships -- involving Lisa Houseman, Penny Johnson, Robbie Gould, Lisa Houseman and Vivian Pressman -- are essentially similar in the movie and musical.

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Billy Kostecki and Elizabeth

In my previous article about the musical's race aspect, I pointed out that Billy frequently sings with a Negro female co-worker. I perceived that he looks at her longingly, but I did not notice his saying anything romantic to her. According to the musical's program, the character is called Elizabeth.

In an earlier post titled The Resort Hotel's Employees, I reported -- based on Eleanor Bergstein's commentary in a DVD -- that the an early draft of the movie's story was supposed to include a scene showing that Negroes were allowed to use the resort's swimming pool along with Caucasians.

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.

Based on the stage musical, I now speculate further that the swimming pool scene was supposed to introduce a subplot about a romantic relationship between Caucasian Billy and Negro Elizabeth.

(In 1963 the polite words were Caucasian and Negro, and so I use them here.)

If there was some relationship between Billy and Elizabeth, then perhaps Elizabeth was involved somehow in Billy helping Penny getting an abortion. Below is my list of speculations.

* Elizabeth told Billy about the abortionist in New Paltz.

* Elizabeth herself or a close relative or friend had had an abortion.

* Elizabeth remarked that Negroes were disadvantaged in getting legal abortions.

* Elizabeth helped cover for Billy or Penny while they were gone from work for an entire day.

The Billy-Elizabeth subplot was eliminated, however, as clutter around the time that the producers failed to find a resort with a swimming pool.

Years later, when Bergstein had the opportunity to retell her story as a musical, she restored Elizabeth into the story. Elizabeth sings with Billy, and he seems to be attracted to her, but their relationship is not elaborated further in the musical.

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Jake and Marjorie Houseman

Marjorie Houseman is much more prominent in the musical than in the movie.

They have a long conversation while they are playing golf. Unfortunately, I did not grasp that conversation's essence. I perceived that there was some tension between them. They seemed to be making biting remarks at each other.

(I did not take notes or record sound while I was watching the musical. I do not have access to the musical's script. Although the musical's sound system was superb, my hearing is becoming worse, and I could not understand every word. My account of the dialogue is based only on my memory and might be mistaken in some details.)

My perception might be based on the ABC original movie, in which they are approaching a divorce.

After Penny recovers from her abortion in the musical, she is so grateful to the entire Houseman family that she takes the initiative to give private dance lessons to Marjorie. During such a lesson, Penny mentions that Jake had treated her after her an abortion. Penny assumes that Marjorie knew about this, but Marjorie knew nothing until Penny mentioned it.

Marjorie is angry that Jake has kept this secret from her, and so she goes and confronts Jake about it.

Afterwards Marjorie confronts Baby. This scene in the musical is similar to a scene that was filmed for the movie but was deleted (8:17 to 9:02 in the following video).

In both the movie and the musical, Marjorie insinuates that Baby's actions have been wrecking the Houseman family. This insinuation makes much more sense when we understand that Marjorie fears that her marriage might be breaking apart.

Since all the marriage problems have been removed from the movie, Marjorie's insinuation is puzzling. How exactly has Baby been "wrecking everyone else's lives"? As far as the movie audience can see, Baby has only disappointed her father by lying to him about the borrowed money. Even in regard to Jake, Baby has not wrecked anything.

In the musical, however, Baby has caused a serious argument between Marjorie and Baby, because Penny unwittingly revealed to Marjorie the secret of Jake's involvement in the abortion. Since Marjorie and Jake have been having marriage problems, this revelation might be the straw that breaks the camel's back of the marriage. In that regard, Baby might have wrecked her parents' marriage.

The scene deleted from the movie was a superb, and it was acted superbly by the actress Kelly Bishop, who played the character Marjorie. Since the marriage problems had been eliminated from the movie, however, Marjorie's insinuation that Baby was wrecking everyone else's lives no longer made sense. That might be why this superb scene was deleted.

The marriage trouble between Jake and Marjorie was removed from the movie but later was restored to the stage musical and to the ABC original movie.

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Neil Kellerman and Baby Houseman

During last September and October I wrote a series of articles called Baby Houseman's Inner Conflict about Femininity. In that series' sixth part, I re-evaluated the relationship between Baby and Neil:

In the first part of Dirty Dancing, the relationship between Baby Houseman and Neil Kellerman is friendly, even affectionate.

In the movie's last part, Neil becomes a rather negative character. Therefore, people who have watched the entire movie develop a false memory that he was a negative character in the first part too. People persist in this mistake even as they watch the movie many times.

Early in the movie, Baby and Neil dance and chat together in the ballroom. A couple days ago, I re-watched that scene three times, looking for indications that Baby felt uncomfortable with Neil. I was surprised to find that she obviously is enjoying her time with him in the ballroom. This realization has caused me to reconsider Baby's and Neil's relationship.

Now I recognize that Baby was using Neil as her practice boyfriend, also known as a starter boyfriend, without his knowing his status.

[....]

Baby decided to use Neil as a practice boyfriend because she is not sure how to be feminine naturally. She wants to see how an interested man talks and acts with her, and she wants to experiment with her responses. For her, this is fun, and she is happy to remain in an elementary flirting stage for a long time.

She strings Neil along slowly. As the week passes, she gradually allows him more freedom to kiss and embrace her. Eventually she even allows him to touch a breast briefly through her clothes during a night's final embrace.

Baby likes Neil as a friend. He has many admirable qualities. After Neil and Johnny argue about the pachanga dance, she advises Johnny to discuss the issue with Neil again. She knows that Neil is a reasonable and accommodating person.

Baby thinks that Neil learned useful lessons about female-male interactions from herself too. She expects that he eventually will become a good husband for some other woman.

That interpretation of mine has been confirmed by my watching the stage musical. In particular, the musical includes an important conversation among Baby, Neil and Johnny in the scene right after the "Love Is Strange" dance. Neil enters the dance room and begins talking about the talent show, the pechanga, and so forth.

During this conversation, they talk about politics. Baby admires Neil for his political activism, for his intention to travel to Mississippi to help promote civil rights for Negroes. Johnny scoffs, saying that he himself never has voted even once in his life. Baby is appalled by Johnny's lack of even interest.

Then, however, Neil reveals that he will not travel to Mississippi after all, because he as a manager should not be gone from the hotel for a couple of weeks. Now Baby is somewhat disappointed with Neil for subordinating his political activism to his professional career.

This conversation is important in the story, because it gives Baby a reason to shift her romantic affection from Neil completely to Johnny. Although Johnny is not interested in politics, Neil's interest is more talk than action.

In general, I perceived throughout the musical scattered indications that Baby was affectionate and respectful toward Neil. These indications are related to the scattered mentions that Neil intends to travel to Mississippi.

In contrast, the movie mentions Neil's intention only once, when Neil and Baby are dancing in the ballroom during her first night at the resort. In that single context, the mention seems to be merely an empty boast to impress idealistic Baby.

The musical's continuing mentions of Neil's intended Mississippi trip support Baby's affection and admiration toward Neil during the story. Her disappointment in him occurs near the story's end and occurs suddenly.

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Johnny Castle and Baby Houseman

In the stage musical that I saw, Baby dances more poorly and improves more slowly than in the movie.

The musical's program reports that the actress, Kaleigh Courts, has attended the Houston Ballet Academy and has performed as a member of the Houston Ballet, so the actress can dance superbly. She purposely dances poorly in the musical.

She continues to dance poorly through the "Hungry Eyes" and  "Hey, Baby" scenes. Only when she accomplishes the lift move in the lake does she seem to show improvement. Her dancing at the Sheldrake is likewise worse in the musical than in the movie. Her dancing during and after the "Love Is Strange" scene is about the same in the musical as in the movie.

Johnny's apparent affection for Baby corresponds to her dancing skill. In other words, his affection develops slower in the musical than in the movie. I didn't notice this difference in any dialogue. Rather, his coolness -- his iciness -- toward her is indicated by his body movements and voice tone.

Maybe other actors playing Johnny and Baby in other companies play their relationship differently. Maybe other actresses playing Baby dance better and maybe other actors playing Johnny speak more warmly. For the purpose of my article here, I must assume that the performance that I happened to see is the Baby-Johnny relationship that the stage musical is supposed to portray.

In the musical, the relationship develops more slowly, and so their decision to becomes sexual is more sudden and seems to be prompted by their mutual experience of seeing Penny in mortal danger after her abortion.

In the movie, they became gradually more affectionate while they are practicing for their Sheldrake performance. In the musical, they become suddenly more affection after they have become sexual, which they have done because they were upset about Penny.

Even after Baby has become sexual with Johnny, she still feels affectionate towards Neil. Only after Neil reveals that he will not travel to Mississippi after all, does Baby shift all her romantic attention to Johnny.

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I think that the musical's portrayal of the relationship among Baby, Neil and Johnny is closer to Bergstein's original concept than the movie is.

In the movie, Neil seems to be merely a tiresome creep, and so it is obvious that Baby should disdain him and prefer the exciting artist Johnny. Furthermore, the movie's Jewish subtext suggests that Baby feels pressured by her family to marry a Jewish man, like Neil.

In the musical, Baby continually admires Neil because of his political activism, which is symbolized continually by his intention to travel to Mississippi. In contrast, Baby is appalled that Johnny is so politically uninterested that he has never even voted. Therefore, Baby's dilemma about whether to select Neil or Johnny as her ultimate romantic interest is more conflicted. Her dilemma is resolved only when Neil reveals that he will not travel to Mississippi after all.

The removal of most of the racial aspect from the movie prevented the movie audience from understanding why Baby might admire Neil. The movie audience perceived Neil to be merely a tiresome creep.

The character Neil was played brilliantly as a tiresome creep by the actor Lonny Price, who furthermore is a rather short man. Perhaps the character Neil turned out to be more despised by the movie audience than Bergstein intended because of the decision to cast Price in the role and because of Price's brilliant performance of the role.

If my speculation that the musical's portrayal of the Baby-Neil-Johnny triangle is closer than the movie to Bergstein's original concept, then I judge her original concept to be the better story. In the musical, Baby is more conflicted about whether she should pursue a romantic relationship with a man like Neil or a man like Johnny.

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Most people love the movie Dirty Dancing so much that they reject reflexively other presentations of the story. This rejection happened especially in regard to the ABC original movie. (I have published two posts praising the ABC version and intend to publish two more.)

However, the movie is somewhat different from Bergstein's original story. The movie was addressed to an audience in the 1980s and had to be kept to a standard length and had to kept rather simple. Therefore, much of Bergstein's story was not included in the movie.

The other presentations -- the stage musical and the ABC original movie -- were for audiences in the 21st century. Those audiences are already very familiar with the movie's story and they live in a more multi-ethnic society. The story can be told more briskly, making time for the racial aspect and the Housemans' marriage trouble to be restored into Bergstein's story. The later presentations are closer than the movie to Bergstein's original concept of the story.

The stage musical has provided new insights into the roles of Billy, Jake, Marjorie, Neil and Johnny -- and therefore into the role of Baby.

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This series will continue:

4) My Review of the Stage Musical -- Comparison of Songs

I think she gets it from me!

While Marjorie and Jake Houseman are watching Baby Houseman and Johnny Castle doing their final dance, Marjorie remarks to Jake:

I think she gets it from me!

In the following video clip, Marjorie's remark occurs at 1:20.

Marjorie seems to imply that Baby inherited her apparent dancing talent from Marjorie. The movie audience has not seen, however, any evidence that Marjorie herself has any dancing talent. Marjorie has been seen in four dancing situations:

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1) Marjorie is participating in a class for beginning dancers conducted by Penny Johnson.

The Houseman family taking a class for beginning dancers.

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2) During their first evening at the resort, Marjorie and Jake are dancing to orchestra music. Marjorie's dancing is not remarkable.

Marjorie's unremarkable dancing with Jake in the ballroom

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3) During a later evening, some guests are dancing in the gazebo. Marjorie and Jake are not dancing, because they are waiting for an "a waltz" -- a simple and slow dance.

Marjorie: "We're waiting for a waltz"

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4) On the last evening, after Baby and Johnny have performed their dance, Marjorie is seen dancing with Neil Kellerman. Marjorie's dancing is a simple boogie -- not remarkable.

Marjorie boogie-dancing with Neil

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Marjorie's remark makes a bad impression that she is ditzy and vain. At that point she has seen Baby performing her dance for only one minute, but that short time has sufficed to see that Baby is performing rather well. Marjorie's apparent conclusion that Baby's performance is due to Marjorie herself seems absurd.

It's possible that Eleanor Bergstein intended to make Marjorie look ditzy and vain. The Houseman family seems to comprise two contrasting groups:

1) Lisa and Marjorie are ditzy and vain.

2) Baby and Jake are thoughtful and modest.

However, Marjorie's remark is said during the movie's happy ending. I think that Bergstein intended the remark to make a better impression about Marjorie, but Bergstein's intention went awry.

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Important context for Marjorie's remark was deleted from the movie. A few hours before the talent show, Marjorie and Baby had a serious conversation in which Marjorie compared herself to Baby. The conversation was filmed, but the scene was deleted when the film was edited. In the following video, the deleted conversation can be seen between 8:17 and 9:02.

Baby Houseman
Ma, please, you don't understand.

Marjorie Houseman
No, Baby, you don't.

I know about this. I really know.

When I was your age, I was in love with someone else before your father. And when it ended, it hurt so bad I thought I'd die of it, but I didn't.

And I didn't wreck everyone else's lives in the process either.

Here, Marjorie compares her own seventeen-year-old self with seventeen-year-old Baby. Marjorie too suffered a painful break-up with a boyfriend.

Marjorie's remark she she didn't wreck everyone else's lives either is ambiguous. This remark might mean

* Marjorie did not wreck lives, but Baby is doing so.

... or else it might mean ...

* Marjorie did not wreck lives, and Baby likewise is not wrecking lives.

I think that the second meaning is the correct interpretation. Marjorie is reassuring Baby that Baby will get through this personal crisis and that the Houseman family too will survive this family crisis. However, Marjorie also is suggesting to Baby that Baby's crisis is affecting -- albeit not wrecking -- the family.

Marjorie is helping Baby to understand her crisis with a proper perspective.

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My key point here is that in this deleted scene Marjorie compared herself to Baby. Although the scene has been deleted, we should use it as important context for Marjorie's remark, just a few hours later, that I think she gets it from me!

In that sentence, Marjorie's word it does not refer mainly to Baby's dance skill, but rather to Baby's emotional strength.

Marjorie and Jake both are aware that Baby is suffering from her breakup with Johnny. Although Johnny has disrupted the talent show and has taken Baby up onto the stage, the breakup continues.

Johnny's speech gives Marjorie and Jake a new perspective on Baby's recent actions. Baby has not been "wrecking everyone else's lives". Rather, Baby has been standing up for other people and has been teaching Johnny to be a better person.

Then, despite the emotional pain that Baby has suffered -- and still is suffering -- from her breakup, Baby focuses on dancing well and keeps a smile on her face. Baby makes the whole Houseman family proud of her.

Baby privately has stood up for and taught other people, and now she publicly is displaying grit and courage. In that regard, Marjorie sees her own young self in Baby and feels proud that she has raised Baby to become such an admirable young adult.

That is why Marjorie -- a mother proud of her daughter -- exclaims I think she gets it from me!

My Praise for ABC's "Dirty Dancing" -- Part 1

On May 24, 2017, ABC broadcast the ABC original movie event (notice that expression on the poster) titled Dirty Dancing.

ABC does not call the movie a remake, which is the word used by most people who discuss the movie. Here in this blog article, I will use the expression ABC original movie (not remake).

If you have not seen the ABC original movie, then watching this video, made by Clevver News, summarizes it well.

Having watched the ABC original movie three times, I like it. I encourage people to watch the ABC original movie with an open mind. I encourage people who already have watched it -- even if they hated it -- to watch it again.

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The ABC original movie has received little praise. The website Rotten Tomatoes reports favorable reviews from only 20% of the professional reviewers and from 12% of ordinary reviewers. I will provide excerpts from four negative reviews.

Then I will provide my own, positive review.

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 Here are excerpts from a negative review, written by television critic Neil Genzlinger for The New York Times:

The Dirty Dancing phenomenon was never really about the story — or the music — or even the dancing. It was about the way those things came together at a particular moment in time for a particular audience in a gritty movie featuring two engaging stars.

That kind of lightning in a bottle can’t be recreated, a point ABC takes a wearying three hours to make on Wednesday night with its new, chemistry-free version of that beloved film. Most of the signature scenes are reproduced — watermelons are carried, a dance lift in a lake is attempted — but the emotional investment that made the 1987 movie an unexpected worldwide phenomenon is nowhere to be felt. ...

The music is also handled differently. Rather than having a soundtrack, the remake often has actors singing the numbers as they would on Broadway. But the device generally feels forced and isn’t used often enough to give this treatment the feel of a full-fledged musical. It’s more like “a movie in which actors occasionally burst into song for no reason.” A real musical deploys its songs organically; here they tend to interrupt rather than enhance.

The hope for this “Dirty Dancing” is presumably that it will both charm the original fans and appeal to viewers who today are the age that those fans were in 1987. But no young person in 2017 wants to hear another word about the 1960s. And the moviegoers who loved Dirty Dancing in the Reagan administration will recognize this new version for the sterile imitation that it is. ...

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Here are excepts from a second negative review, written by movie critic Mae Abdulbaki for The Young Folks:

Remaking one of the most popular and beloved movies in the history of cinema feels almost disrespectful on many levels. Going into the TV movie remake of Dirty Dancing with a clear and open mind, I figured that if at least the dancing was good, then there was something to enjoy. However, the updated version doesn’t even meet the lowest of expectations and blows past mediocre to land at downright terrible. The film is slow and dull, the lead actors have absolutely no chemistry, and the musical aspect doesn’t add anything to the film beyond being time-consuming.

The Dirty Dancing remake follows the same general storyline of the original film. It’s still set in the 1960s, Baby Houseman (Abigail Breslin) still ends up falling for Johnny Castle (Colt Prattes), and she still fights the expectations set by her father (Bruce Greenwood). However, it modifies some of the narrative and, to put it simply, makes it much more palatable and suitable for a younger audience. This Disney-washing, if you will, takes away some of the more serious and important aspects of the original film and makes it feel like more of a saccharine version of it. The remake also expands on several characters’ backstory, like that of Baby’s mother (Debra Messing) and father. This version of the film gives them marital problems and allows Baby’s sister, Lisa (Sarah Hyland), to develop outside of the story of simply falling for a jerk.

It’s important for any remake to set itself apart from the original film it’s based on, but Dirty Dancing only allows for so many changes and mostly follows the original narrative verbatim. The additional aspects–the singing, the expansion of some character dynamics, its attempts at being really cute – don’t add anything to the film at all. The TV movie is long, clocking in at two hours and ten minutes, and there are several instances where it becomes boring to watch. ....

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Here are excerpts from a third negative review, written by television critic Sonia Saraiya for Variety:

Dirty Dancing on ABC is a sappy, passionless, schlocky remake of the original, without even the iota of imagination necessary to expand upon the 1987 film. Nearly every element of the film that caught worldwide audiences’ imaginations has been sanded down into an advertisement-ready imagining of the swinging ‘60s.

What stands out most, surprisingly, is the smallest of details — the cast doesn’t sweat, even while they are dancing in the hot summer, or while they are making love in the middle of the humid night. There’s nothing dirty about this. And there’s barely even dancing: The production attached “Hamilton” choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, but it’s unclear what they did with his talents, because dance sequences do not take up much of the film’s run-time, and what is seen is sadly below par. The average ABC viewer can see better on an off-week of Dancing With the Stars.

This is not to specifically ding lead Abigail Breslin, who is quite winning during the scenes where Baby is called upon to express emotions. But Dirty Dancing is a dance movie, and Breslin, while competent, is not a dazzling performer. Opposite her, Colt Prattes, who plays Johnny, is a better dancer but a far worse actor.

The two have all the chemistry of mannequins, which makes their already improbable love story completely incomprehensible. And then to make matters worse, they start singing — a bizarre departure from the mise-en-scene in a story that puts realism at the forefront. In the original film, when Swayze and Grey lipsync to “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” or “Love Is Strange,” there’s an impromptu enthusiasm to the scenes — just two kids singing along to their favorite songs. In the remake, those rareified moments of intimacy become another opportunity to showboat for the camera. ...

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Here are excerpts from a fourth negative review, written by film-maker Scout Tafoya for Roger Ebert.

.... Every room is a little too big and every actor is a little too far away from the camera, as in a multi-camera sitcom. [Director Wayne] Blair has no eye for the dancing, which is his most lethal failing. He has no sense of how to film bodies, the space needed to ensure we see the impressive physicality of each performer, no sense of how to communicate the sensual thrill of two people touching. Blair may well be trying to shoot around the lackluster choreography, which also fails the performers at every turn. The dancers may as well be rogue parade floats accidentally smacking into each other. The music direction is similarly ghastly. Slick, soulless covers of 60s and 80s pop and ballads stumble around like reanimated corpses on the soundtrack.

That's all bad enough, but the final 15 minutes detonate a nuclear bomb of misbegotten ambition in the viewer's brain. It dares you to reconsider your opinion of every poorly staged number and overacted monologue. Prattes' constipated Johnny Castle storms the dance hall for his closing performance, walks over to the table where Baby and her family sit, and delivers the now iconic line that lodged "Dirty Dancing" into popular cinematic imagination. His somnambulant read of "Nobody puts Baby in a corner" spurts from his lips like a mouthful of water he'd forgotten to swallow. A film which had been held together with hope and a prayer until this point, finally falls apart. ....

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Now I will provide my own, positive opinion of the ABC original movie. My basic arguments:

* Some stories become so implanted in our culture that they flourish with a multitude of variations and embellishments. Our culture is full of people who love the story and want to retell it. Younger generations of producers, directors, actors, musicians and designers will want to apply their own artistic talents to present the story to younger generations of audiences. We should welcome, appreciate and celebrate these creative efforts -- not denounce, mock and stifle them.

* You can enjoy a lot of fun, surprises and laughs by watching new presentations. For example, in the ABC original movie, the the actor who plays Johnny is much smaller than Patrick Swayze and the actress who plays Baby is much heavier than Jennifer Grey, and so the audience feels amused in anticipating and watching the lift movement in the final dance. It's funny!

* New presentations will fill in gaps in the original story, clarify fuzzy elements, add new characters and subplots, enlarge minor characters, challenge established assumptions and interpretations -- and thus enrich the original story.

* New presentations might attract other social groups to become fans of the story. For example, the ABC original movie adds an African-American character and enlarges the roles of the older characters.

* Some elements of new presentations might be improvements. For example, ABC's Neil Kellerman is a different, more realistic and thought-provoking character.

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In order to open your mind about the ABC movie, I suggest that you replace the  expression remake in your thinking with the word original movie. To help you do so, I will use the following expressions in this article:

* The ABC original movie.

* The Gottlieb original movie. (This is the 1987 movie that was produced by Linda Gottlieb and that starred Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze.)

* The San Pietro original movie. (This is a 2014 movie made by an Italian amateur theater club at the Communale San Pietro.)

* The Uskup original movie. (This is a 2012 movie made by a Umskup drama club in the Czech Republic.)

These four movies differ so much that each deserves to be called "original". Each can be enjoyed in its own circumstances and on its level.

If you were a tourist who happened to come across those live performances in Italy or the Czech Republic, you would have enjoyed watching them. You would have smiled and laughed the entire time. You would not have judged them harshly. They were just young foreigners having fun and putting their own spin on the story -- changing it into an Italian story or a Czech story, with their own cultural references and jokes.

Likewise, the new generations of Americans who made the ABC original movie have adapted the story to their own attitudes and sensibilities. By casting a grungy actor and a chubby actress into the lead roles, they have provocatively outraged the older generations that devoutly venerate the now ancient movie, which has become a sacred cow.

A grungy Johnny and a chubby Baby
in a "Dirty Dancing" for new generations. 

Many girls and young women now identify primarily with the Baby Houseman played by Abigail Breslin, an actress they have watched for many years.

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The website IMDb lists 48 Tarzan movies, from 1918 through 2005. Each one can be appreciated on its own merits, as an original movie. We don't consider the last 47 of these Tarzan movies to be "remakes" of the first Tarzan movie that was made in 1918.

The Tarzan movies continue to be made for various reasons. They are exotic, exciting and funny. They feature an extraordinarily handsome male character. They can raise various cultural, political and environmental issues. The basic story is so well known that the audience keeps it in mind while watching new, alternate, spun-off stories.

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In an earlier article in my blog, I wrote about the two Footloose movies -- released in 1984 and 2011. Each is a good movie, and each can be appreciated independently.

Of course, the Tarzan movies and the Footloose movies are based on written works that existed before the movies, whereas the Dirty Dancing movies are not based no a prior written work. However, very few people have read the Tarzan novel or the Footloose article. In the mind of the public that has not read the Tarzan novel, all the Tarzan movies are based on abstract story that has become a part of our culture.

Likewise, the Dirty Dancing story is so well known that the story -- as an abstraction -- has become a part of our culture.

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Consider the story of The Wizard of Oz. Because of the 1939 movie, the story has become so well known that other works can be based quite loosely on the abstract story -- for example, Broadway musical The Wiz and the television series The Tin Man.

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The Dirty Dancing story has been made into a stage musical (which I have not studied or seen). Somehow, moving the story from a movie onto a theater stage is "really fun". As an example of that open-minded attitude, here is an excerpt from a theater review written by Jane Horwitz for the Washington Post.

.... So, is this highly commercial, “live” re-creation of a beloved film an example of great and artful theatrical innovation? Nope, it is not. But is it really fun? Yup. ....

The characters talk a bit more about civil rights, Vietnam, and class conflict onstage. Musically, choruses of “We Shall Overcome” and “This Land Is Your Land” emphasize, somewhat awkwardly, growing political and social unrest. ....

You know the story: The Houseman family arrives for three weeks of fun in the Catskills at Kellerman’s resort. .... Baby jumps at the chance to learn Penny’s part for a steamy number with Johnny.

All these crises whiz by amid the strains of, among others, “The Time of My Life,” “Do You Love Me?,” “Cry to Me,” and the comical “Lisa’s Hula” for the hotel talent show. Audiences hear some master recordings from the film’s soundtrack, and other numbers performed live. A couple of terrific singers shine: Doug Carpenter, who plays Johnny’s cousin Billy Kostecki, belts a gorgeous “In the Still of the Night,” and Jennlee Shallow movingly solos on “You Don’t Own Me” and “We Shall Overcome.” ....

A few weaker links in the acting department dampen the fizz at times, but most such moments go by too fast to cause damage. ....

If it's "really fun" for a theater company to change the story so that the characters sing some of the songs and so that new songs are added, then it might be "really fun" if ABC exercises similar creativity.

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In ancient Greece there were annual festivals that featured drama competitions. A mythical story -- for example the Oedipus Rex story -- would be chosen for the year's competition. The entire population already knew the mythical story from famous legends and poems. Various drama clubs were sponsored by wealthy patrons, and each club prepared a play and then performed it at the festival. A prize was presented for the year's best play.

Although each play was about the same mythical story, each play presented unique scripts, songs, characters and plot details. Watching the variety of plays was an enriching experience. The mythical story was elaborated. Some minor characters became major characters. Background details and subplots were added. New poetry and songs became popular. Citizens who attended such a festival and watched a dozen different plays about, for example, Oedipus Rex enriched their understanding of that mythical story.

Even if an Oedipus Rex play already had been performed many years previously, the various new plays performed at this year's festival were not considered to be "re-makes". Rather, each new play was appreciated as an original play.

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The ABC original movie enriches the abstract "Dirty Dancing" story that has become a part of our culture.

Even if you watched the ABC original movie and hated it, the new idea has been planted into your mind that Jake as a young man used to work as a waiter at the Kellerman resort hotel and that he met Marjorie there. You never will get that idea out of your subconscious mind.

Similarly, people who watched the stage play know now that the song "We Shall Overcome" was sung at the Kellerman resort hotel during the Kellermans' vacation.

As the abstract story is told variously in separate dramas, new details are added -- for example, young Jake the waiter and the song "We Shall Overcome". This elaboration is similar to the drama-festival elaboration of the Oedipus Rex story in Greece's culture.

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This essay is the first in a series of four articles.

The series second article is here.

Vivian Pressman and Johnny Castle

The actress Kelly Bishop was hired for the role of Vivian Pressman in Dirty Dancing because Bishop danced well. The characters Vivian Pressman and Johnny Castle were supposed to dance together in the movie. Watch this video of Bishop starting at 3:20.

The Wikipedia article about Kelly Bishop describes her dancing and acting experience before the filming of Dirty Dancing in 1986:

.... She grew up in Denver, Colorado, where she trained to be a ballet dancer, attending American Ballet Theatre's Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School and the San Jose Ballet School. At eighteen, she headed to New York City and landed her first job dancing in a year-round ballet company at Radio City Music Hall. Bishop continued to dance in Las Vegas, summer stock and on television until she was cast in 1967 in Golden Rainbow, her first Broadway role.

Bishop's big break came when she was cast as the sexy, hard-edged Sheila in the Broadway production of A Chorus Line. Her performance earned her the 1976 Tony Award as "Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Musical)" as well as the 1976 Drama Desk Award for "Outstanding Actress in a Musical".

She also acted in the Broadway productions of Six Degrees of Separation, Neil Simon's Proposals, the Tony Award-winning The Last Night of Ballyhoo and Bus Stop. 

Bishop's experience indicates that the role of Pressman was supposed to be much more significant and was supposed to portray Pressman as an excellent dancer. However, Pressman -- now a bit part played by the movie's assistant choreographer Miranda Garrison -- is seen dancing for only a moment.

Johnny Castle and Vivian Pressman (Miranda Garrison) dancing
in the Kellerman gazebo in the 1987 "Dirty Dancing"

Bishop's role as Marjorie Houseman turned out to be a good stepping stone in her acting career. In the following year she went on to a big supporting role in the 1978 movie An Unmarried Woman, which was a commercial success and was nominated for three Academy Awards.

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In the ABC Dirty Dancing original movie that was broadcast in May 2017, Pressman indeed is a major character who dances rather well. I suppose that the ABC movie's scriptwriters were informed by research and interviews about the 1987 movie's original story. Much of the original story was cut out as the script and film was edited.

In the 2017 ABC movie, Pressman is a former Miss Rhode Island beauty contestant who married a wealthy man. After her divorce, she herself remains quite wealthy. Although she is much older than Johnny Castle, she has been involved in a sexual affair with him rather openly for quite a while. She performs songs and dances in the Kellerman ballroom, whee she also dances with him as the orchestra plays.

Johnny Castle and Vivian Pressman dancing in
the Kellerman ballroom in the 2017 ABC "Dirty Dancing"

Unfortunately, I could not find any YouTube videos showing the Pressman character in the ABC 2017 movie. (I have been writing a long article about the ABC movie, which I will publish soon.)

Johnny Castle and Vivian Pressman dancing in
the Kellerman ballroom in the 2017 AC "Dirty Dancing"

I suppose that the 2017 ABC movie's Pressman is largely similar to the intended Pressman in the 1987 movie. By the time Bishop arrived for filming in 1986, however, the Pressman role had been reduced drastically. Because of Bishop's professional stature, she was compensated with the role of Marjorie Houseman.

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In the 1987 movie, Castle's relationship with Pressman is rather secret, but in the 2017 ABC the relationship is quite public.

In the 1987 movie, Castle and Pressman are close in age. Castle was played by the actor Patrick Swayze, who was 35 years old, and Pressman was played by the actress Miranda Garrison, who was 37 years old. However, Pressman was supposed to be played by Bishop, who was 42 years old.

Vivian Pressman (Miranda Garrison) looking rather young and very sexy
in the 1987 "Dirty Dancing"

In the 2017 ABC movie, Castle was played by the actor Colt Prattes, who was 31 years old, and Pressman was played by Katay Sagal, who was 63 years old.

So, in the 1987 movie, the age difference between Castle (35) and Pressman (Garrison, 37) is only two years, whereas in the 2017 ABC movie the difference between Castle (31) and Pressman (63 is 32 years.

Vivian Pressman (Miranda Garrison, age 37) in the 1987 movie and
Vivian Pressman (Katay Sagal, age 63) in the 2017 movie

In the 1987 movie, the relationship is rather secret. In the 2017 ABC movie, the relationship is rather public.

I think that the Castle-Pressman relationship in the 2017 ABC movie is closer to the original story in Bergstein's mind as she was writing her screenplay.

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 I speculate also that the original Castle-Pressman relationship was based in the Arthur Murray Dance Studio where Castle had learned to dance and worked in past years. In my previous blog article, titled Working as an Instructor at Arthur Murray, That article reported that rich female clients sometimes provided money for dance-studio owners and instructors to stay in business and open new studios. The Castle character perhaps viewed the Pressman character as a wealthy source of funding for a future dance studio..

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I speculate further that Bergstein's originally conceived her third movie Let It Be Me as a sequel to Dirty Dancing. However, by the time Let It Be Me was filmed in 1994 (eight years after Dirty Dancing had been filmed in 1986), the story and main characters were differentiated greatly from those of Dirty Dancing.

In the movie Let It Be Me, male dancer, named Bud, is struggling to make his dance studio into a successful business. A young woman, named Emily, enrolls in dance lessons at the studio in order to practice dancing with her fiance for her upcoming wedding. It turns out that Bud and Emily know each other but have not had any contact with each other since they had ended a sexual relationship 12 years previously, when Emily had been 17 years old. In this regard, Let It Be Me seems to have been conceived as a Dirty Dancing sequel that would have brought Johnny Castle and Baby Houseman back together briefly in the year (1963 + 12 =) 1975.

If so, then Vivian Pressman might have been included as a continuing investor in the dance studio. Such a character is not included in Let It Be Me, but one character is rich, elderly woman who takes dance lessons at the studio and eventually marries one of the dance instructors, who is about her age. The falling-in-love relationship of these two elderly characters is quite charming and heart-warming.

If Let It Be Me had become a real sequel to Dirty Dancing and if Pressman had been included as a character, then Let It Be Me might have ended with Pressman's happy marriage to a dance instructor who was  about her own age.

In general, Let It Be Me provides much insight into the difficulties of managing a dance-studio business. Pressman as a wealthy female investor pressuring the male owner to make the business profitable could have been inserted into the story easily.

If Let It Be Me had become a successful sequel, then Bergstien well might have made a prequel about how Castle and Pressman had met at an Arthur Murray Dance Studio before 1963.

Through the three movies -- the prequel, Dirty Dancing and the sequel Let It Be Me -- the continuity would have been the relationship between Johnny Castle and Vivian Pressman.

Disconnected Women - Penny Johnson, Vivian Pressman and Marjorie Houseman

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 night 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 him 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 his 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

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.