"Dirty Dancing" is the first in a series of Bergstein stories

Eleanor Bergstein has published one novel and has written three screenplays that became movies. In chronological order of their publication or release, they were the following.

1) The novel Advancing Paul Newman (published in 1973)

The novel takes place in 1972, when the heroine is about 34 years old. In a previous post, I summarized the novel as follows:

The novel takes place in 1972 and portrays the long friendship of two young American women.

* Kitsy Frank (based on Bergstein) is a literary agent and is married to a poet.

* Ilia Rappaport is an unsuccessful free-lance writer, unmarried, with a varied love life.

... The married, established Kitsy envies Ilia's freedom and excitement, while single, struggling Ilia envies Kitsy's marriage and stability. ... The novel portrays the conflicts that many young women suffer in balancing family and career.

Assuming that Kitsy is based on Bergstein, this character about 34 years old in 1972. The two characters interact in 1972 while working to support the Presidential campaign of George McGovern.

At the end of the story, Kitsy gets an abortion.

2) The movie It's My Turn (released in 1980)

The story takes place sometime during the 1970s, when the heroine is about 35 years old (the actress's age). In a previous post, I summarized the movie as follows:

Kate Gunzinger is a super-serious mathematics professor who is never-married but living with a successful architect in Chicago. She travels to New York City for a few days to attend a job interview and her widowed father's wedding.

During her few days there, she falls in love and enjoys sex with her new brother-in-law (the son of her father's new wife) a professional baseball player who recently had to retire because of an injury.

Kate returns to Chicago but wants to continue her affair with Ben long-distance. He, because he is married, breaks off the affair.

Then Kate dumps her boyfriend Homer because he does not pay enough attention to her. The movie ends with her continuing to be single and to teach mathematics at her Chicago university.

3) The movie Dirty Dancing (released in 1987)

The story takes place in 1963, when the heroine is about 17 years old. She is about to enter her first year of college. The story involves an abortion.

4) The movie Let It Me Me (released in 1995)

The movie takes place in an unknown year, when the heroine is 29 years old. In a previous post, I summarized the movie as follows:

When the story begins, Emily and Gabriel have been acquainted for seven months. They love each other and live together and are planning their wedding.

The character Emily is 29 years old. Emily is keeping a secret from Gabriel. Twelve years previously, when she was 17 years old, she got pregnant from a high-school classmate named Bud (last name not mentioned). Emily and Bud were dancing partners in some program that is not explained in the dialogue. When Emily learned she was pregnant, she was not able to contact Bud, who was touring with a dance troupe. Therefore Emily had an abortion, and she had no contact with Bud for the following 12 years.

About a third of the way into the movie's story, Emily and Bud happen to meet again. Bud owns a dance studio where Emily's fiancé Gabriel ... has been taking dance lessons to prepare for the post-wedding party of Gabriel and Emily. Emily visits the studio to join Gabriel in his dance lessons, and there she meets Bud. Although 12 years have passed, Emily and Bud recognize each other immediately. They explain to Gabriel that they had known each other and danced together in high school.

When they meet each other again in Bud's dance studio, he still does not know about Emily's pregnancy and abortion. Emily does not tell Bud until much later in the story. ...

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When the above works are arranged in order of the heroine's age and marriage status, then list is as follows:

1) The movie Dirty Dancing (the heroine is about 17 years old and never married)

2) The movie Let It Be Me (the heroine is 29 years old and about to cancel her wedding)

3) The movie It's My Turn (the heroine is in her mid-thirties and never has been married)

4) The novel Advancing Paul Newman (the heroine is in her mid-thirties and is married)

All four works involve pre-marital sex. The only one that does not involve an abortion is It's My Turn.

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The movie Dirty Dancing is the only one of the four works that does not feature a woman's conflict between 1) pursuing a professional career and 2) getting married and raising a family.

The works express women's feelings that men are lucky because they do not have to deal with this conflict. Men can devote themselves entirely to their careers and still enjoy raising a family. In Dirty Dancing and in Let It Be Me, the heroine's father is a wise, successful and respected man, whereas the heroine's mother is, respectively, ineffectual or deceased. The heroine's role model is her father, not her mother.

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The four works' characters are different, so this is not a sequel series. However, the series deals with the emotional conflicts of a woman who for career reasons postpones marriage until her mid-thirties. She fears that an accidental pregnancy would upset her career plans. Even after she marries and gives birth, she fears that an accidental pregnancy would prevent her return to her professional career.

She feels disadvantaged because raising children would impede her from matching the professional achievements of her father and of her husband/boyfriend.

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As a 17-year-old ambitious young woman, Baby Houseman wants to succeed professionally like her father. Baby does not want to become personally and professionally stunted like her mother.

Because the mother hoped to return to a professional career, she nick-named her second daughter "Baby" so that this daughter would remain forever the baby of the family -- there would never be a third child. Now that Baby is going to college and thus leaving home, Marjorie should be free to work full time, but she has lost her ambition and drive. She can get a job, but she no longer can become professionally successful.

 Because the daughter does not want to end up stunted like her mother, the daughter postpones marriage to finish her higher education and to begin her career. Along the way, she becomes involved briefly with a few men who can please her physically but not intellectually. The men who would be good intellectual partners do not become her husband, for various reasons.

When she does finally marry in her mid-thirties, her professional career is developing a strong, forward momentum, but she has to drop out of her career to give birth and raise a family.

That is the overall story that Bergstein has told in her complete body of work.

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Bergstein's primary envy is toward men, because they do not have to deal with this conflict between career and family.

Bergstein has also a secondary envy, though, toward the women who happily marry, give birth, support their husbands, help them to succeed -- and simply enjoy all the resulting financial comforts and family fun. Such women do not try to buck the patriarchical system -- rather, they cynically exploit the patriarchical system by happily becoming matriarchs themselves.

This is the cause of Baby's resentment toward her sister Lisa, who seems to be happy to follow their mother's example. Lisa will happily marry an intelligent medical student like Robbie Gould, become a doctor's wife, raise a family, live in financial comfort, play golf regularly, and enjoy her life. Baby foresees her own future struggles and Lisa's future luxury, and so Baby resents Lisa because it is not fair.

Baby's resentment toward her sister Lisa was the main conflict of the "Dirty Dancing" story that Bergstein originally conceived. However, this sister-resentment element of the story was greatly reduced by the time that the movie was completed. This I will explain in my following article of this blog.

The Symbolism of Moe Pressman's Turban

I previous published an article titled The Symbolism of Moe Pressman's Pirate Hat. There I argued that the movie Dirty Dancing was hinting subliminally that the audience should view Moe as a villain. Moe was a card shark collaborating with his wife Vivian Pressman to trick rich hotel out of their money while gambling in card games.

More Pressman wearing a pirate hat during the talent show.

After I wrote that article, I noticed that Moe appears also in a turban. Moe is working as a magician's assistant and is sawing Baby Houseman in half during her first night at the Kellerman resort hotel.

Moe Pressman wearing a turban and sawing Baby in half.

Moe's turban is an additional subliminal hint that Moe did card tricks when he gambled.

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As I explained in another previous article, titled After Johnny was fired, he drove to the Sheldrake, Baby and Johnny practiced to perform their dance during the talent show that would take place on the last night of the hotel's summer season. Once again, Baby would be sawed in half. At the end of the trick, she would emerge whole from the box, and then she and Johnny would dance for the audience.

Baby's performance would be a zillion times better than her sister Lisa's dopey Hawaiian song.

However, because Johnny was fired for stealing money from Moe during a card game, the final dance of Johnny and Baby was performed without the magic trick.

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In another previous article, titled Which Lionel Richie song was replaced?, I argued that Baby and Johnny originally were supposed to dance to a Lionel Richie song called "Dancing on the Ceiling", but that song was replaced by the song "Time of My Life" while Dirty Dancing was being filmed.

The original song "Dancing on the Ceiling" has a magical aspect that would have fit with the magic trick.

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Below is the first of a series of six videos that demonstrate card-shark tricks.

The fact that Johnny and Baby rehearsed with Moe and the magician to do this combination of a magic trick and a rumba dance indicates that the four characters all knew each other much better than the movie reveals. Johnny's knowledge of Moe's (and the magician's) card-trickery might be a reason why Moe offered Johnny money to go away and give Vivian a dance lesson during a card game. Johnny's knowledge might also have been a factor that raised the suspicion that Johnny stole Moe's money at the end of a card game.

I have suggested a movie that I would call Dirty Scamming and that would feature the Pressmans, the Schumachers and the magician as a spin-off movie of Dirty Dancing. In my movie, Johnny (and maybe Baby too) would suspect or even know that Moe and the magician were cheating the other guests in the card games.

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The idea that a magician sawing a woman in half should wear a turban was common in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The following video shows a turban-wearing magician performing such a trick on a 1956 television show.

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The idea that magicians performing card tricks should wear turbans is likewise common.

 

The Quora website answers the question Why do some magicians wear turbans? as follows:

Every magician is at some level an illusionist- they proffer the illusion of mystical powers and you believe that their actions are the result of “magic”. ....

The Victorian fascination with Egyptology, spiritualism, mysticism.. and magic… and the mysterious nature of the “far east” and eastern mysticism… all these backgrounds helped to make wearing a turban a clear sign that the magician wasn’t a skilled trickster but someone with special powers.

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In my movie Dirty Scamming, Lisa's dopey hula song and dance during the talent show would be replaced by a couple of mysterious South-Asian dances featuring turbans and other oriental garb. Such dances that were presented by turban-wearing Korla Pandit in hundreds of 15-minute television shows, many of which featured sexy dances, that were broadcast as fillers in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Here is a video about the career of turban-wearing musician Korla Pandit.

Patrick Swayze's Unknown Son

The July 31, 2017, issue of Globe magazine includes an article about an alleged secret son of Patrick Swayze.

The alleged son is Jason Whittle, who was born in 1973 and now is 44 years old. The following two pictures show, first, Whittle and, second, Swayze.

Jason Whittle

Patrick Swayze

Whittle grew up not knowing he was Swayze's son. His mother, Bonnie Kay Whittle, was 15 years old when she allegedly had a one-night stand with 20-year-old Swayze in 1972. Bonnie Kay died of cancer in 2012, and the article seems to indicate that she informed Jason only a short time before she died.

Swayze died in 2009, so it seems likely that he never knew about Jason Whittle. If Swayze had known, then his estate lawyer surely would have advised him to give Jason Whittle at least a token $1 in the will to prevent him from challenging the will. Swayze left his entire estate to his wife Lisa and left nothing to his other Swayze relatives. Now Whittle is claiming a big part -- perhaps half -- of Swayze's estate, which is estimated to be $40 million.

The other Swayze relatives claim that Lisa used abusive methods to coerce Patrick to change his will seven weeks before his death to give everything to her. Globe reports that some of those stiffed relatives now feel gratified that Whittle might take much of the estate from Lisa.

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I have a copy of Swayze's autobiography The Time of My Life, and I intend to write an article about it for this blog. The book says that in 1972 he was in a touring ice-skating show called Disney on Parade. That's how in 1972 he would have visited Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, where Bonnie Kay lived. Jason Whittle probably can prove that Disney on Parade was in that location exactly nine months before he was born.

The book includes the following passages about Swayze's experiences in 1972 (pages 30-32).

The dancers made $125 a week, which felt like a lot of money, especially since we all doubled, tripled, and quadrupled up in our living arrangements on the road. Most of the dancers were women, and of the few who were men, even fewer were straight men. So the opportunities for me in terms of finding women to date were just about endless.

Unfortunately, I still didn't know how to communicate with women, or anybody else. I just sounded like an egotistical ass whenever I talked, as I couldn't stop going on and on about myself. For one thing, my knee [injured in a high-school football game] kept blowing up after each performance, the joint swelling painfully due to the rigors of the show. .... It got so bad that I had to go to the hospital in every city to get the fluid drained from my knee. And the more knee trouble I had, the more I had to talk about it.

But after I had initially alienated just about everyone with my incessant blathering, people started realizing that I wasn't really egotistical, just insecure.

Apparently, Swayze was extraordinarily promiscuous during this 1972 tour. He hit on many girls who crossed his path and managed to seduce many of them.

Although Swayze was an extraordinarily handsome and talented young man, I think that he didn't study much in high school and felt intellectually inadequate. He was too busy with dance and athletics to read and study. I think that he often felt stupid in conversations with women in conversations about general knowledge -- history, current events and so forth.

In this regard, Swayze was quite similar to the character Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing in his relationship with intellectual Baby Houseman. His personal experience and feelings of intellectual inferiority enabled him to play the role so well.

I think that Swayze's insecurity was a major reason why in 1972 he involved himself with much younger girls, such as 15-year-old Bonnie Kay. He was intellectually inhibited by older, more sophisticated and sarcastic women.

I began dating one woman who was in the show, a good-looking blonde who had a party-queen reputation. She was a wild one, the kind of girl who liked trouble, and at first I was drawn to her dangerous air. Part of me just wanted to see if I could win her, but once I did, I realized she wasn't at all the kind of woman I was looking for. It sounds corny, but I really did believe in Snow White and Prince Charming -- I wanted to find a woman whom I could ride off into the sunset and share my life with.

While Swayze was touring in 1972, he maintained also a long-distance platonic relationship with Lisa Haapaniemi, a 16-year-old girl, a dance student in his mother's dance school in Houston, Texas.

I'm not sure I as even aware of it at the time, but subconsciously I was comparing all the women I met to Lisa.

Beyond sharing Patrick's love of dance, Lisa did not threaten him intellectually, because she was so young and was likewise a poor student.

Lisa was back in Houston having problems of her own. She'd been having a lot of trouble sleeping, and her insomnia eventually got so bad she had to drop out of high school. She'd always had trouble fitting in, and now, with the onset of a creeping depression, she felt even more alienated. This was the beginning of what she later called her "blue period".

Lisa argued with her parents and so came to live for two weeks with Patrick's mother, who was Lisa's dance teacher. During those two weeks, Patrick happened to come home from his tour for several days. Lisa and Patrick already knew each other from their participation in his mother's dance school.

Patrick Swayze and Lisa Happaniemi at his mother's
dance school in the very early 1970s (photo from his autobiography)

During those two weeks, Patrick dated other girls but also became sexually involved with Lisa in his home.

My mom didn't know it, but the attraction between Lisa and me had been growing for some time. She had seemed indifferent to me all those months [of Disney on Parade], but it turned out she was interested in me, too -- she was just shy, and acting like she didn't care was her way of covering it up.

But during those two weeks when Lisa stayed with us, and and I took every opportunity to steal time together. When Mom was in the kitchen, we'd be behind the swinging door in the dining room, making out. After everyone n the house had gone to sleep, we'd sneak out to the living room and fool around on the couch.

We still weren't technically "dating", but, man, we couldn't get enough of each other.

In fact, I had been seeing other girls -- and the very day Lisa came to stay at our house I had a date with a girl named Mimi, which led to an uncomfortable moment. ... I'd asked Mimi out for that Saturday night, to go to the Houston Rodeo. When Lisa moved into our house that afternoon, Mom expected me to give her a ride to the rodeo too.  ....

To my embarrassment, Mimi kept tickling my ear and kissing me all the way to the rodeo, as Lisa sat silently. ...

Soon, however, Patrick settled down with Lisa. As far as the public knows, he ended this promiscuous period of his life. Patrick married Lisa in 1975 and they remained married until his death in 2009.

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When 15-year-old Bonnie Kay happened to cross paths with 20-year-old Patrick Swayze in Missouri, their encounter might have had nothing to do with Disney on Parade. Perhaps she was a Candy Stripe volunteer at a hospital where he had fluid drained from his knee. Since he hit on girls everywhere and was becoming a pickup artist through frequent practice, he might have seduced Bonnie Kay in one day -- and she never even saw the Disney on Parade show. (This is just my idle speculation.)

Candy Stripe volunteers at a hospital.

Globe reports:

Her [Bonnie Kay's] mom, Lebetta Whittle, tells Globe, ... "She [Bonnie Kay] told me he [Patrick] wanted her to run away with him," Lebetta recalls. "But she was way too young and told him he could get in trouble for doing that. It was a short relationship, and she said she stayed there all night."

The fact that Bonnie Kay's mother has the last name Whittle indicates that Bonnie Kay never married.

When 15-year-old Bonnie Kay became pregnant in 1972, abortion still was illegal in Missouri. On January 22, 1973, the US Supreme Court ruled that abortion would henceforth be legal during at least the first three months of pregnancy. The Globe article does not specify Whittle's birthday, but it's likely that Bonnie Kay was a little more than three months pregnant on January 22, 1973. If so, then abortion remained illegal for her.

Although Bonnie Kay's fling with Swayze lasted only about one day, she did learn his identify. Her brother Ron told the Globe that she had Swayze's name and phone number written her arm when she came home from her night with him. At that time, though, Swayze was a nobody -- not worth the trouble of tracking him down to try to prove his paternity and collect child-support payments. Bonnie Kay kept Patrick's identify secret through the years, but sometimes was heard to remark that her seducer Patrick "was doing acting".

It's quite possible that she deliberately passed on any abortion possibilities anyway, because she considered an abortion to be a murder of a baby. That was an opinion to which many young women adhered even when they become unhappily pregnant -- and that still is true.

Many such young women who got pregnant dropped out of high school, gave birth, kept the child, and eventually married another man who adopted the child. The child was taught to respect that other man as the family's father. Such women considered such a difficult solution to their problem to be the moral solution.

The fact that Bonnie Kay kept the identity of Jason's biological father until perhaps her deathbed -- even though she knew that he was famous and rich Patrick Swayze -- suggests to me that she adhered stubbornly to some very strong moral convictions. It seems that she blamed herself for her foolish teenage fling and did not want to cause trouble for her own relationships or for the Swayzes' marriage.

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The story of Jason Whittle is an ironic counter-point to the movie Dirty Dancing, which portrayed sexual flings and subsequent abortions positively -- and which made Patrick Swayze an international star. If Baby Houseman had become pregnant from her fling with Johnny Castle, she certainly would have obtained an abortion and continued on with her planned life, graduating from college and becoming a career woman.

In contrast, Bonnie Kay probably dropped out of high school and lived a lower-middle-class life as an unmarried mother -- or as a common-law wife to another high-school dropout. Even after she realized, many years later, that her son's biological father was the actor Patrick Swayze, she kept that secret to herself out of respect for her family.

Swayze did not became even moderately famous until 1985, when he starred in the televised historical drama North and South. By that time, Jason was already about 12 years old. When Swayze became a superstar from Dirty Dancing in 1987, Jason was already about 14 years old.

After Jason became an adult, he probably began to hear comments that he looked like the now famous actor Patrick Swayze. However, Jason might have suspected that his biological father was another man in the vicinity who had similar looks.

Jason would not have imagined any possibility that his mother ever crossed paths with Swayze -- much less ever had sex with him -- when she was a 15-year-old girl living with her parents in a Missouri town.

Decades would pass before the adult Jason would be able to sit down at a computer and google "Patrick Swayze" and instantly receive a wealth of information about Swayze's life. Before Google, Jason would not have been able to discover that Swayze was touring with Disney on Parade throughout the USA in 1972, when Jason was conceived.

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Because Swayze died not knowing about this biological son, Swayze left his entire $40 million estate to his wife Lisa and did not even mention this unknown son in his will. Swayze did not explicitly exclude Jason from his estate.

Because Bonnie Kay did not inform Jason until after Swayze had died, Jason eventually might able to acquire as much as half of Swayze's $40 million estate.

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This is the first in a series of articles.

The second article is titled The Whittle Family of Morgan County, Missouri.

The third article is titled The Disney on Parade 1972 Tour and Patrick Swayze.

The fourth article is titled Patrick Swayze met Bonnie Kay Whittle in April 1972.

The fifth article is titled No More News About Jason Whittle

The sixth article is titled A Comment from the Son of Jason Whittle

The seventh article is titled Patrick Swayze: "I was born to be a dad"

The eighth article is titled A Comment About the Whittle Family

The ninth article is titled Swayze Family Feud Explodes