Monday, July 31, 2017

The 1972 "Disney on Parade" Tour and Patrick Swayze

This article is the third in a series.

The first article is titled Patrick Swayze's Unknown Son.

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

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"

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In 1972, when Patrick Swayze was 20 years old, he got a 15-year-old girl named Bonnie Kay Whittle pregnant. She lived near Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. In 1973, she gave birth to a boy, Jason Whittle, who now is 44 years old. It seems likely that Swayze, who died in 2009, never knew anything at all about Jason Whittle.

I no longer will use the word "alleged", because a couple of comments on the first article confirmed Globe's article to my satisfaction.

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As a high-school student, Swayze participated in his mother's dance school and in high-school athletics. He injured his knee in a football game. He enrolled in college and participated on the gymnastics team. His knee injury still bothered him. After one year of college, he dropped out when he was hired as a dancer for the Disney on Parade show. He toured with this show throughout the USA during 1972.

During that year -- he wrote later in his autobiography Time of My Life - he was sexually promiscuous. During that year, he got Bonnie Kay Whittle pregnant in Missouri. When he returned to his home in Houston, Texas, in late 1972, he soon became involved exclusively with his (until then) platonic girlfriend Lisa.

After the 1972 tour, Swayze quit the Disney on Parade show and moved to New York City to study and work as a dancer. Soon his girlfriend Lisa joined him there, and they married in 1975. They remained married -- and it seems that he remained faithful to her -- until his death in 2009.

It seems from the autobiography that both Patrick and Lisa had troublesome personalities (don't we all?). For example, he suffered from alcoholism and she suffered from depression. Each partner in the marriage needed the other to cope. They shared a passion for art and, in particular, for dance.

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The year 1972 was an aberration in Swayze's life. He turned 20 in the middle -- August 18 -- of that year. Until he joined Disney on Parade, he had lived at home and had participated constantly in the dance school run by his mother, who raised him as a devout Roman Catholic. He had attended school and church dutifully although not enthusiastically.

On the tour, he was away from home, along with a large number of other traveling young people who were artistic and physically fit. Most of his fellow male dancers (he wrote later in his autobiography) were homosexual, and so he enjoyed easy success engaging sexually with the female dancers. Through this success, he developed his confidence as a pickup artist and improved his skills in seducing young women.

Despite his sexual success, Swayze recognized his own personal faults. He felt ashamed that other people perceived him correctly to be an egotistical, superficial braggart. He felt challenged by women his own age who were sarcastic and worldly. Therefore he involved himself with girls who were significantly younger and unsophisticated.

Swayze felt also that his aspiration to become a professional dancer was doomed by his knee injury. At every city in the tour, he had to go to a hospital to drain excess fluid from his painful knee.

In general, Swayze had trouble contemplating his future family, professional and religious life.

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I was not able to find a video of the 1972 tour of Disney on Parade, but I found the following videos of the 1971 and 1973 shows.


The following video of the 1971 show demonstrates the dancers' skills.


The following video shows the 1973 show.


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During 1972, Disney on Parade performed twice in Missouri -- in Saint Louis during January 25-30 and in Kansas City during May 16-21.

A booklet sold to the 1972 audiences
On January 9, a couple weeks before the Saint Louis show, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper published the following preview:
"Disney on Parade" Coming

The 1972 edition of "Disney on Parade," the spectacle using live action to portray the famous Walt Disney animated characters of films, will come to the Arena Tuesday, January 25 for a run through Sunday, January 30.

Mickey Mouse will be featured in "Mickey's Review" and "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." Other production numbers will be "Sleeping Beauty," "Winnie the Pooh," "The Aristocrats" and "The Three Caballeros," plus special acts featuring such characters as Donald Duck, Goofy, Clara Duck and many others.

Motion picture clips projected on a massive screen 56 feet side hung at the south end of the Arena will introduce the live action on the specially designed stage. Lavish settings and costumes will be used. In "Sleeping Beauty," the princess will waltz with the prince in a shimming gown with 800 tiny light bulbs glowing through the sheer material.

The ingenious makeup will include latex masks for many of the characters. The Love Bug, the small car with personality and a voice made famous in the Disney live action comedy, "The Love Bug," will return, this time with his whole family of tiny cars.

Donald Duck will get himself into exasperating situations and try to squawk his way out of them, as with the Three Caballeros, and in "Winnie the Pooh," the whimsical little bear and his companions, Eeyore, Tiger and Piglet, will celebrate his birthday as he stuffs himself with too much honey and gets a severe case of Hefffalumps and Woozles.

The two-and-a-half-hour show aimed at the small fry will start at 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with additional matinees at noon and 4 p.m. on Saturday and at 2 and 6 p.m. on Sunday. ....
The show scheduled to take place in Kansas City in May was advertised in the local newspapers.

A newspaper advertisement for the "Disney on Parade"
performances in Kansas City, MO, during May 16-21, 1972
On May 17, 1972, the Kansas City Times newspaper published a review of the opening show.
Music in Mid-America

by Glenda-Jo Self

Municipal Auditorium hadn't been so filled with children in years as it was last night for the opening of the 1972 edition of Disney on Parade, a 2½-hour show that brings to life 300 Disney characters.

The Disney touch is evident throughout the lavish production, which features elaborate costumes and sets skillfully charged to eliminate a lag in the action.

The big hit of last year's show, Herbie the Love Bug (a smitten Volkswagen), is back this year with family in tow -- complete with a miniature copy sporting Mickey Mouse ears (what else?) and doing as good a job as ol' Dad in out-thinking Goofy, the policeman.

The circus element is woven throughout the program. The lavish last act, "The Three Caballeros," features a knife-wielding duo in a balancing act.

It's a difficult job to produce the 2½-hour show with interest both for preschoolers and their parents, but fast changes between the rough-and-tumble action of Clara Cluck, Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow and the more refined dancing of Sleeping Beauty and the residents of Baia in "The Three Caballeros" keeps both audiences entertained.

There's as much to see from the highest seat under the rafters as there is from a first-row chair. Many acts, such as Goofy and Herbie in "Three's a Family," are better from a higher level.

Again this year the finale is based on the theme "It's a Small World" -- a parade of characters that brings actors and their young audience into hand-to-hand contact as Mickey, Mouse, Donald Duck and friends circle the stage greeting the audience.

An equally large audience through Sunday's performance would allow many more Kansas City youngsters the chance to meet their Sunday-night friends in person -- and that's what Disney is all about.
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The one-way drive to Saint Louis from the Stover area, where Bonnie Kay Whittle lived, was at least three hours. The one-way drive to Kansas City was at least two hours.

Bonnie Kay was one of seven children, and her father was a "self-employed tree trimmer and log buyer". For sure, the Whittle parents could not afford to take their seven children to watch the show in either city.

The Whittle family did not travel to Disney on Parade. Rather, Disney on Parade traveled to the Whittle family.

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More than one Disney on Parade troupe toured in the USA. For example, during May 9 - 14, the show was performed in Charleston, West Virginia and in Houston, Texas. Because of the multiplicity of troupes, I was not able to determine how long Swayze's troupe stayed in Kansas City. I also could not determine where his troupe performed before and after Kansas City.

Disney on Parade performed in Kansas City from Tuesday, May 16, through Sunday, May 21. That was six of the seven days of that week. Either the preceding or the following week must have been relatively free time for the troupe. A troupe of such a large size, with so much equipment, needed more than one day to travel to another city and prepare the following performances. Maybe there always was one non-performance week between performance weeks.

I am guessing that the troupe was basically free for rest and relaxation for several days -- let's say an entire week -- following Sunday, May 21. Because the following weekend was the Memorial Day weekend, perhaps no performances were scheduled for that weekend.

During such a break in the tour schedule, members of the troupe might have traveled the two hours from Kansas City to the Lake of the Ozarks. When the whole troupe traveled, it must have done so in chartered buses. If just some of the group traveled there, they could have done so in commercial buses (e.g. Greyhound) or in rented or borrowed cars.

At Lake of the Ozarks they could rent some cheap rooms and enjoy the many recreational opportunities there. A list tourist attractions at the present time is provided at this webpage.

Bonnie Kay Whittle's family lived not far from the Lake of the Ozarks area. Perhaps she met Patrick Swayze while he visited that area during the weekend of May 27-28, 1972. If so, then Jason Whittle would have been born at about the end of February 1973.

Since I do not know when Jason was born, I can only guess now about when Patrick and Bonnie Kay met. Once I know the birth date, I will be able to search through old newspapers to determine the whereabouts of Disney on Parade performances around the correct time.

Since Bonnie Kay was only 15 years old, she should have been attending school on weekdays (unless she had dropped out). Therefore, she would have met Patrick during a weekend. The Globe article indicated that she spent only one night with him.

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Patrick Swayze was always only second-best

An essayist who calls himself Seanbaby and writes for the Cracked website has evaluated Why Patrick Swayze Was The Second Best Movie Star Ever.

Seanbaby explained as follows (vulgar remarks removed):

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What a lot of people don't realize is that Swayze was the Second Greatest Film Star of All Time, and not in any kind of subjective way-- it's basic science. Almost every movie he starred in was the second best of a particular genre. ...

The Second Best Dancing Movie of All Time: Dirty Dancing

We owe a lot to Dirty Dancing. It was a runaway hit that changed the way people communicated with the language of dance. ...

What was the #1 dance movie? Footloose ... is a better movie. It was about a town that tried to preserve its moral structure by outlawing dance. If you were on the city council of the Footloose town, your eyeballs couldn't even register how filthy Dirty Dancing is. ....

The Second Best Cold War Movie of all Time: Red Dawn

Like everyone who was a kid in 1984, my parents were paranoid gun owners -- positive that any day now, the Russians were going to paradrop into our backyard. Back then, people used to fantasize about Soviet invasions like people fantasize about zombie apocalypses today. And Red Dawn was like every fantasy come true. ... It was about Soviets and Cubans invading Colorado and getting all their Communist shit fucked up by Swayze and a group of high school guerrilla fighters. They even called themselves Wolverines just so they'd have something awesome to scream after they killed Spetsnaz commandos. ...

What was the #1 Cold War movie? Rocky IV Red Dawn was amazing, but when Rocky beat Ivan Drago, he actually ended the Cold War. ....

The Second Best Transvestite Movie of all Time: To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Numar

Most cross-dressing movies center around the theme that if the worst failure of a man disguises himself as a woman, he's immeasurably better than any woman. I'm not sure if this is because screenwriters hate women or because girls just can't do anything right. To be honest, neither reason would surprise me. In To Wong Foo, the superiority of a man in a dress over a regular woman in a dress is never more apparent, but it's kind of not fair since two of them are Wesley Snipes and Patrick Swayze, and they're both completely awesome.

What was the #1 transvestite movie? Tootsie ....

The Second Best Ghost Movie of all Time: Ghost

At one point, people who enjoyed the hobby of pottery also unintentionally enjoyed the hobby of celibacy. Then the movie Ghost came out. After that scene where Swayze bones Demi Moore by the pottery wheel, ceramics were suddenly an aphrodisiac. ...

To us normal people, Patrick Swayze's death is a sad loss. But psychic mediums have been waiting for this day for years. It's no exaggeration to say that every woman that can communicate with the dead is sitting in her underwear by a pottery wheel and trying to summon Patrick Swayze's ghost right now. Parker Brothers is going to have to release a Ouija board with a Patrick Swayze button and vibrating clay pot attachment.  ...

What was the #1 ghost movie? Ghostbusters Tragically, if the Ghostbusters were here, they'd be trying to kill Patrick Swayze's eternal spirit.

The Second Best Gay Movie of All Time: Point Break

Point Break could be considered a movie about surfing, skydiving, buddy copping or heisting. However, at its core, it's about Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze not quite having sex.

What was the #1 gay movie? Brokeback Mountain. ....

The Second Best Saturday Night Live Skit of All Time: Chippendales Tryouts

The fact that Swayze managed to keep a straight face while he and Chris Farley competed against each other in a stripper audition cements him as at least the second-finest actor of his generation. Or an android. ....


What was the #1 SNL skit of all time? Dick in a Box ....


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The commenters following Seanbaby's article added the following comparisons.

The second-best hockey movie -- Youngblood.
#1 was Slap Shot.

The second-best gang movie -- The Outsiders.
#1 was The Warriors.

The second-best trucker movie -- Black Dog.
#1 was Big Trouble in Little China.

The second-best post-apocalyptic movie -- Steel Dawn.
#1 was Road Warrior.

Saturday, July 29, 2017

"Dirty Dancing" Drawings on DeviantArt

DeviantArt is a website where amateur artists can post their art works. There I used the search expression "Dirty Dancing" and got a result page with 2,480 works. From those, I selected my favorites.

You can click on an image to enlarge it.

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"Louise 9" by Bettyboopjade
Louise9 by Bettyboopjade.

The artist did not write anything about her picture, but she did write the following about herself in 2012:
My name is Julie, but in the virtual world is my nickname Bettyboopjade, Betty shorter.

I am 33 years old, I am married and I live in Belgium.

I'm a fan of the sims and I started graphics about a year ago.

I retouch photos sims almost exclusively during modeling contest.

I Simsartists forum www.sims-artists.com/ administrator and with my co-admins us we are launching in organization contest modeling many fashionable at the moment. :-D

Feel free also to come and register, you will find lots of very useful tutorials (the primary purpose of the forum).
The artist's gallery is here, and it included the following picture.

"Louise 8" by Bettyboopjade
These two pictures are part of a macabre series called Louise.

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"Baby" by MarineElphie
Baby by MarineElphie

About her drawing, the artist wrote:
I felt some nostalgia and drew this! Baby from Dirty Dancing, I used to love this scene when she hides to put lipstick on and do some rehearsal... It's so cute and funny!
About herself, the artist wrote:
France

Freelance lonely potatoe.

I do take comissions, payment via PayPal only.

Current Residence: Paris
Her gallery is here.

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"Usagi Tsukino Watching Dirty Dancing" by JasonPictures
Usagi Tsukino Watching Dirty Dancing by JasonPictures.

The artist did not write anything about the illustration, but about himself he did write:
Jason Cando, Philippines

Favourite style of art: Entertainment

Favourite cartoon character: Too much to decide
His gallery is here.

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"What Baby Wants" by 2dFoxy
What Baby Wants by 2dFoxy. You should click the image to enlarge it, because the dialogue in the captions is amusing.

About his picture, the artist wrote:
I have NEVER watched Dirty Dancing. I will NEVER watch Dirty Dancing. My mom wore a video tape out twice watching this movie. I know absolutely NOTHING about said movie, but when I threw this girl into Studio & rendered this scene, she looked like Jennifer Grey to me. The shorts reminded me of the movie, what lil I know of it.

I Googled some famous lines from the movie & changed a lil bit to be funny & fit.

My wife says this is weird. Oh well....
About himself, the artist wrote:
If y'all don't hear from me for a bit, don't worry. I've got a LOT of offline things happening right now. Our central unit is having problems. We will have to buy a new refrigerator tomorrow, if possible. Our vehicle is having a few issues. I think a trip to the grocery store because of our fridge. The lawnmower & weed eater are down. Sinus/allergy troubles along with the extreme heat & a few pop up thunderstorms.

I've been having trouble sleeping due to anxiety about things & the warmer climate inside my house. I need a bit of a rest.

On top of all those things, I keep getting nailed by computer viruses lately. Ain't that funny? I work for a business that involves multiple businesses. At one of them, I'm a computer tech. I get hit more often than not by viruses jumping from customers computers. I just wiped & reloaded & I think I'm about back to square 1.

At least the kids go back to school in a few weeks. Then I'll miss them. :(

Listening to: my sinuses dripping.
Reading: Nothing. My eyes hurt too badly.
Watching: What lil TV I can.
Playing: Fallout Shelter when my eyes ain't teared up.
Eating: Boogers.
Drinking: Snot.
His gallery is here.

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"Love Man" by ArtByMomo
Love Man by ArtByMomo.

About his drawing, the artist wrote:
I wanted to draw a scene from a wonderful fanfic I read called Dirty Dancing [the link is broken] so that's what I did! This scene is from Chapter 3; Love Man. Characters are Roronoa Zoro and Sanji from One Piece.
About himself, the artist wrote:
Silus, United Kingdom

Favourite style of art: Manga

Favourite cartoon character: Sanji

Personal Quote: "I'll kill you before you can kill me." (Said with a straight face)

silus-s.tumblr.com/
His gallery is here.

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"Dirty Dancing" by adavis57
Dirty Dancing by adavis57.

The artist did not write anything about the drawing, but he he did write a little about himself.
Alan Davis

postal clerk for 30+ yrs. Have done live caricatures at local fairs. Also some commission work.
His gallery is here.

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"CM for Tatsunokoisthebest" by StarMVenus
CM for Tatsunokoisthebest by StarMVenus

The artist did not write about the picture or herself and does not have a gallery.

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"Dirty Fantasy" by Kizzy1996
Dirty Fantasy by Kizzy1996

About the drawing, the artist wrote:
Shawn and Juri take the place of Frances (Baby) and Johnny, and move on dirty dancing
About herself, the artist wrote:
Netherlands

Hi my name is Kizzy, alias Maki Media.
Her gallery is here.

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"Klaine: Dirty Dancing" by Segda
Klaine: Dirty Dancing by Segda

About the drawing, the artist wrote:
Just imagine - autumn 2013, New York, Academy, dance class... And dirty dancing... Perfect! X))))

Klaine (c) Glee

pose (c) Dirty Dancing
Segda did not write about himself/herself. (I assume the artist is male, but I am not sure.)

The gallery is here.

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"Time of My Life" by Blossom525
Time of My Life by Blossom525

About her drawing, the artist wrote:
Here is a tribute that I completed several days ago.

The movie Dirty Dancing will always have a place close to my heart ❤️ Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey have such great chemistry!
About herself, she wrote:
Sarah Black

I am addicted to drawing, and obsessed with Disney!!! Any spare time I have is used to create new scetches, paintings, or whatever I feel like doing. This is my passion and there is nothing else I enjoy more than finishing a new peice of art. Please feel free to leave comments or a watch and I hope you enjoy my artwork :D

Website: sarahblack45.wixsite.com/sarah…

Instagram: sarahblack_art
She does not have a DeviantArt gallery.

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"Baby (Dirty Dancing) by TornadoSoup
Baby (Dirty Dancing) by TornadoSoup

About her drawing, the artist wrote:
I can't remember when I first discovered this movie but I think I've always loved it, Jennifer Grey in it is just Love.

Also if you couldn't tell I really love her hair
About herself, the artist wrote:
United Kingdom

Hi all!

I'm a film student in university, but I also love editing, drawing and writing, so that's why I'm here:)

I mostly favour fanfics and parodies (whether I'm producing them myself or enjoying other people's) so I wouldn't say I am particularly drowning in creativity

Find me on Tumblr and be my friend:3

www.tumblr.com/blog/tornado-soup
Her gallery is here.

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While I was on DeviantArt, it happened to feature the artist Kuvshinov-Ilya. I really liked the gallery. (I did not find any Dirty Dancing drawings.) Here is a sample:

"Messy" by  Kuvshinov-Ilya

"Dirty Dancing" GIFs

A Tumblr page called Mine: Dirty Dancing has a lot of GIFs from the movie Dirty Dancing. Below are just a few examples.







Debra Messing Used to Look Like Baby Houseman

Debra Messing -- who played Marjorie Houseman in the 2017 ABC original movie -- says that when she herself was a teenager she used to look like Baby Houseman.


Listening to Messing's remarks about the ABC movie is worthwhile.

Friday, July 28, 2017

The Whittle Family of Morgan County, Missouri

This article follows up my previous post titled Patrick Swayze's Unknown Son.

In 1972, when Patrick Swayze was 20 years old, he got a 15-year-old girl named Bonnie Kay Whittle pregnant. She lived near Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. In 1973, he gave birth to a boy, Jason Whittle, who now is 44 years old. It seems likely that Swayze, who died in 2009, never knew anything at all about Jason Whittle.

I no longer will use the word "alleged", because a couple of comments on my previous article confirmed Globe's  article to my satisfaction.

Bonnie Kay Whittle Lada
A photograph from the "Find a Grave" website.
Bonnie Kay Whittle Lada was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on May 1, 1956, and died on August 12, 2012, in Barnett, Missouri. She was the daughter of Milvon and Lebetta (Luvin) Whittle.

The Find A Grave website reports further:
In 1995, in Harrison, Arkansas, she was married to Ronald Lada, who survives at the home. Bonnie enjoyed camping, music, dancing and spending time with her family and friends.

Others who survive her include: five children:

* Jason Whittle ...

* Ben Curtman ...

* Maria Klein ...

* Michael Wilson ...

* Travis Lada ...
Four sons with different last names, because she was married at least three times. The youngest child has the same family name -- Lada -- as her widower.

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Bonnie Kay's father, Milvon Whittle, was described in his obituary as follows:
Milvon Whittle, 65, Barnett, died Oct. 2, 1999, at his home.

He was born Feb. 18, 1934, in Morgan County, a son of Everett and Alpha Ellen Branch Whittle. He was married April 18, 1953, to Lebetta Luvin, who survives at the home.

He was a self-employed tree trimmer and log buyer. He was a member of Mount Nebo Church, Versailles.

Other survivors include: three sons, Ronnie Whittle, Eldon, Randy Whittle, Barnett, and Rodney Luvin, Columbia; four daughters, Debbie Sieling, Belinda Byrd and Brenda Draeger, all of Eldon, and Bonnie Lada, Bagnell Dam; one brother, Wilford Whittle, Barnett; one sister, Lula Capps, Stover; 23 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
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Bonnie Kay had an aunt (her mother's sister) named Bonnie (née Luvin) Vansell, whose obituary reported a lot of family relationships:
Bonnie Vansell .... was born March 12, 1943, in Napoleon, Missouri. ....

On August 20, 1960, at the Stover United Methodist Church, Bonnie was united in marriage to Raymond Vansell, who survives at their home.

As a teenager Bonnie worked at Primo Pants Factory in Versailles. She later worked as a CNA at the Golden Age Living Center in Stover. ...

She is survived by four children (Bonny Kay's cousins) and their spouses:

* Rick and Lisa Vansell of Stover ...

* Gina and Kent Englbrecht of Stover ...

* Aaron and Crystal Vansell of Versailles ...

* Michael Wood of Stover ...

and six siblings (Bonnie Kay's aunts and uncles)

** Louise and Bob Kimball of Sacramento, California ...

** Loretta Klindworth of Stover ...

** Lebetta Whittle (Bonnie Kay's mother) of Barnett ...

** Ellis and Marilyn Luvin of Kansas City ...

** Roy and Rose Luvin of Stover ...

** Peggy Eckhoff of Barnett ...
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In 2016, a younger Milvon Whittle (a grandson?) worked as a bus driver for the R-I School District of Morgan County, Missouri. Morgan County touches on Lake of the Ozarks, which is where Globe magazine reported that Bonnie Kay Whittle met Patrick Swayze in 1972.

The central town of the Morgan County R-I School District is Stover. In the year 1970 (two years before Bonney Kay met Patrick Swayze), Stover's population was only 849. By the last census in 2010, Stover's population had grown to 1,094.

Morgan County School District R-I is dark gray.
Lake of the Ozarks State Park in at bottom-right corner.
(Click the image to enlarge it.)
Directly east from School District R-1 is District R-Ii, which encompasses Versailles, which is the seat of Morgan County. If you drive from Stover to Versailles and continue on Highway 52, you come to Eldon, which will be mentioned below.

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Sometime between 1972, when Bonnie Kay Whittle met Patrick Swayze, Lebetta Whittle and much of her family moved from the Stover area to Springfield, Missouri.

After Bonnie Kay Whittle met Patrick Swayze,
she and her mother moved from the Stover area to Springfield, Missouri.
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The Springfield Leader and Press newspaper, published in Springfield, Missouri, reported on July 24, 1974:
Rented Home of 8 Damaged by Blaze

Springfield firemen put a quick stop to a fire at at residence occupied by eight persons at 2153 South Weller, but said two of its five rooms were extensively damaged.

The blaze, at the residence of Mrs. Lebetta Whittle, was reported at 10:34 p.m. Tuesday while much of the city's fire-fighting force was tied up at the scene of an asphalt explosion and fire at Sequiota Park. ....

The home rented by Mrs. Whittle also was occupied by

* her daughter, Mrs. Debbie Johns, 20, her three children, Tina Marie, Venus and Trevis Johns,

* another daughter, Mrs. Bonnie Curtman, 18, and a son, Jason James Whittle, and

* and a third daughter, Belinda Whittle, 15.

The owner of the house is H. H. Stokes.

[Fire Inspector Herschel] Jordan said the fire apparently started in the garage, probably from a firecracker or matches. The family was removing belongings out of the house when the neighbors called in the alarm.

Firemen confined the damage to about 50 percent of two rooms and managed to cover furnishings and save the other three rooms from extensive damage, Jordan said.
On that day, July 24, 1974, Bonnie Kay's age was 18 years old and almost three months. At some previous date she had married a man named Curtman.

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The above list of Bonnie Kay's children included a boy named Ben Curtman -- Jason's younger brother.

So, when Bonnie Kay gave birth to her first son, Jason, she was unmarried, and so Jason was given Bonnie Kay's family name Whittle.

By the time Ben was born, Bonnie Kay was married to a man named Curtman. (Jason Whittle certainly knew that Mr. Curtman was not his biological father.)

The third child, Maria, might have grown up as Maria Curtman or as Maria Wilson -- but eventually Maria married and became Maria Klein.

The child after Maria is Michael Wilson. Therefore, Bonnie Kay stopped being married to Mr. Curtman and became married to a Mr. Wilson.

Ultimately Bonnie Kay married Ronald Lada and gave birth to Travis Lada.

======

Ben Curtman's full name is Ben Cary Curtman.

======

When I discovered that Jason Whittle's middle name is James, I found that he married Delpha Rachelle Bell Stevens on November 14, 2015. At that time, they both lived in Stover, Missouri.

When I discovered that his wife was named Delpha Stevens, I found the obituary of her mother Diana Bradshaw, who lived her whole life in the area of Kansas City, Missouri, and died there on October 27, 2016. Bradshaw had one surviving child, Delpha Stevens Whittle, who had one daughter, Izzabella Whittle. Through her step-son Jason Whittle, Bradshaw had step-grandchildren Riley and Noah.

I found also that Delpha Whittle at some time worked as a teachers aide at Dogwood Hills School, in Eldon, Missouri. The school educates severely disabled children. In the above map showing the school district, Eldon is located on the image's center-right side.

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Bonnie Kay Whittle died in Barnett, Missouri. which is about a 20-mile drive east from Stover. The drive is through Versailles.

The drive between Stover and Barnett, Missouri.
(Click on the image to enlarge it.)
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Bonnie Kay's father Milvon Whittle died in 1999 and is buried in Big Rock Cemetery.


Bonnie Kay's mother Lebetta Jane Whittle is still alive, according to the Globe article. Her death date is not on this photograph of her late husband's tombstone.

Big Rock Church and Cemetery is located between Versailles and Barnett (where Bonnie Kay died).

(Click the image to enlarge it.)
Morgan County includes Barnett, Big Rock, Versailles and Stover.

Since the gravesite of Milvon and Lebetta is in Big Rock Cemetery, I assume that the lived in that vicinity and attended Big Rock Church. If so, then that is where Bonnie Kay spent at least some of her childhood and attended church.

Below are photographs of Big Rock Church and Cemetery at the intersection of Big Rock and Mule Drive, northwest of Barnett in Morgan County, Missouri. (It looks to me that this church has been replaced by a business complex called Scotty's Super Services.)







Following are photographs, taken in 2000, of the church's interior.







I that Bonnie Kay Whittle attended this church when she was a girl. Maybe she sometimes took her son Jason James Whittle to services there too.

This religious upbringing might explain why Bonnie Kay decided not to get an abortion when she became pregnant, even though she was only 15 years old -- and also why she decided to just repent her sin, get on with her life, raise her child and not spoil Patrick Swayze's life.

On the other hand, why did Bonnie Kay go and have sex with Patrick Swayze when she was only 15?

An interesting movie -- a pro-life movie -- could be made about the life of Bonnie Kay Whittle and her affair with Patrick Swayze, who became world-famous for making a pro-choice movie.

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This is the second article of a series.

The first article is titled Patrick Swayze's Unknown Son.

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"

Lesbian "Dirty Dancing" Drawings and Videos

Foley is a lesbian artist who has drawn a couple of drawings with her own fantasy based on the movie Dirty Dancing. I like the drawings, and I hope she will do some more.

Click on the images to enlarge them.



At her website FoleyPDX, Foley describes herself as follows.
Foley grew up a Navy kid in the California Bay Area before migrating to the Pacific Northwest.

She has been a scenic painter for theater, an art teacher for juvenile delinquents, a manager for a sex shop, a plumbing specialist, a warehouse manager, a set designer, and a photography MC.​ Those have been her jobs.​

What she does is write, draw, paint, pet her cats, kiss her wife, and tinker with their Portland, Oregon home.

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Patricia Pino Salazar has made this lesbian poster of the movie's lift movement.


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Below are a couple of compilations of lesbian video clips accompanied by the Dirty Dancing songs "Hungry Eyes" and "She's Like the Wind".




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Here is a video clip from the television show Fuller House. Two of the show's leading female characters dance in a night club to the song "Time of My Life" (begin watching at 1:40).


The scene is described disapprovingly in an article titled ‘Luscious Lesbians’: Candace Cameron Bure Takes Part in Racy ‘Dirty Dancing’ Scene in ‘Fuller House’, in the conservative religious website Patriationary.

Yes, that is Max and Val Chmerkovskiy -- of Dancing With the Stars -- in that Fuller House dance scene.

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Earlier in this blog, I featured a fan-fiction story, titled Dirty After Dancing, written by lesbian author Broke Perception.

Baby Houseman was 17 years old

How old is Baby Houseman in the movie Dirty Dancing?

The answer is mentioned in article by Carrie Nelson, titled An Interview with Eleanor Bergstein: On Dirty Dancing, Feminism and the Film Industry, published in 2010 by the website Gender Across Borders.

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On whether or not Dirty Dancing is autobiographical:
.... I was called “Baby” ‘til I was 22, I went to the Catskills with my parents, I was dirty dancing from the time I was 10. I got dirty dancing trophies that would turn your hands green if you touched them.

There’s not a second in it that isn’t in some way part of my life and my history, but I’m in all the characters, as most writers are. Everything about it I hope is truthful, and a great deal of it came from particular elements of my life. But, you know, that’s different from saying I sat down to write my 17th summer.

On Dirty Dancing’s political backdrop:
I wanted to use that world, which was my parent’s world – what I would call “The Last Summer of Liberalism” – when the world had one foot in either camp, but it was about to change, as Max says at the end.

The following summer, the summer of ’64, you couldn’t have told that story, because all that music was above ground then, and all the guests would have been doing that kind of rock band thing, so perhaps not as erotic as the dirty dancing ... This was the last summer there could be an upstairs and a downstairs in that way.

I’m always very anxious to be in those moments just before transition. I was enormously interested in bringing back that time, both politically and socially in America, when everybody really believed that the world had been made safe by World War II, and the only thing left to do was to make it safe for everybody. So, the large Jewish community gave lots and lots of money to SNCC and CORE and supported the Freedom Riders. ...

On Dirty Dancing’s abortion subplot:
What I wanted was to have something like that in a mainstream movie, even though we didn’t think many people would see it. If you do a documentary on coat-hanger abortions, the only people who see it will be those who agree with you anyway. If you put one in a wide-based musical with pretty clothes, and lots of romance, it may surprise people and make them think of things they didn’t think of before. ...

I always thought if you were going to put any kind of message in, it has to be as carefully plotted in as that,
because if it’s at all adjacent, it’s going to end up on the cutting room floor. So that was fine. Not many people talked about it, except that we got a very, very big feminist audience.

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In the article, Bergstein remarks also on the following two subjects:

On the state of women in the film industry today

and

On discovering the feminist blogosphere

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

The Re-Writing of Eleanor Bergstein's Script

In 2010, the Dirty Dancing screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein wrote a Letter to Fans, in which she claimed that the original script no longer exists. She indicated, however, that the movie matches the original script so closely that the movie's dialogue transcript is, for all practical purposes, the original script. Her "Letter to Fans" includes the following passages:
No single "original script" of Dirty Dancing exists today. Anyone who shows you one will next be selling you the Brooklyn Bridge.

Not all the scenes I wrote are here, or could be found. What I retrieved from my trunks is a collection of fragmented pages, different typefaces, coffee stains, holes from staples removed with my fingernails.

They were originally on different colored paper, green pink, blue, yellow, representing different drafts, but we ran out of colors and finally used whatever paper was around.

The represented changes were because we didn't have enough money, lost our location, lost the light, replaced an actor. ....

What amazes me most looking over these annotated pages was how much everything remained the same.

So many things changed, but almost never the words. The dialogue in almost all cases is identical with what is on the screen. [Director] Emile [Ardolino] and I were very specific about no words being changed. Occasionally after hearing a speech in an actor's mouth, I cut a few words -- less is more.

But most important things remained exactly the same, from "Ma, will you look at that," through "and most of all I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you," to "Sit down, Jake." ...

There was a long discussion on set about "a little head in the woods" instead of "go down on" which the crew was very opinionated about in terms of which was the correct period expression.

"It's hopeless" changed from "I wish you hadn't found me" ...

There's a different typescript for the scene where Penny tells Baby she doesn't sleep around. This scene was a request from Cynthia, which I typed on my bed with my portable Olivetti the night before, while the splendid David surprised us with a locker room at dawn.
Bergstein's account here is nonsense. Of course there was an original script, and copies were given to many people. However, each such person signed a non-disclosure agreement and still will be sued now if he is caught providing a copy of the original script to the public.

 Bergstein does not want any student of the movie to compare the movie to the original script, because the differences certainly are enormous.

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In addition, most of the people -- especially Bergstein -- involved in making the movie enjoy wallowing in a fantasy that they proved all the other professional movie-makers to be wrong. Supposedly, all the other movie-makers who had rejected Bergstein's original script were stupid fools.

This fantasy is told by, for example, film critic Carrie Rickey in an article titled Dirty Dancing: Panned as a dud, but dynamite, which includes the following passages:
The worst day, as screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein remembers it, was when [the production company] Vestron executives brought in movie producer Aaron Russo to advise how to salvage Dirty Dancing.

"Burn the negative and collect the insurance money," he reportedly suggested. ...

Every studio in Hollywood passed on the screenplay. The indie outfit that produced it considered it a straight-to-video release. After all these false starts, the movie no one wanted leaped into the hearts of film-goers around the world. ...

Though [MGM executive Eileen] Maisel advocated on behalf of Dirty Dancing, she lost her job in a corporate regime change. Linda Gottlieb, another MGM exec and the film's ultimate producer, also fought for it. But in the end, new management put it in turnaround, trying to unload it. ...

MGM dropped its option. Bergstein's agent sent the orphaned screenplay to a video distributor called Vestron. To stay alive, the little video company had decided to make low-budget movies and distribute them itself.

At a time when the average cost of making a movie was between $15 million and $25 million, Vestron offered $4.7 million for the film. Bergstein and Gottlieb jumped at it. ...
The fantasy is that countless professional movie-makers were too foolish to recognize the brilliance of Bergstein's original script. All those fools were proved wrong by the movie's cast and crew, who followed the script precisely to make the movie that turned out to be so hugely successful.

The likely truth, however, is that Bergstein's original script was rejected by so many professional movie-makers because it was lousy. The script had had to be re-written drastically for the movie to succeed. That truth is why 1) the original script has been suppressed and 2) Bergstein's fans have been told told falsely that the movie is almost exactly like her original script and 3) Bergstein in advance tries to discredit any future appearance of the original script as "selling you the Brooklyn Bridge".

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Before Bergstein wrote her Dirty Dancing script, she had written one other script that became a movie -- It's My Turn, which had been released in  1980. In a previous blog article, I wrote that this previous movie was lousy -- an opinion I expressed in the following passages:
The movie turned out to be lousy, but we watched it to the end. ....

A major reason why the movie is bad is that the story is implausible.

Kate [the heroine] is a character with whom very few female viewers would identify. ... I didn't believe in this Kate character for even one second.

For me as a male viewer of the movie, I even thought that the Kate character was morally repugnant.

* Attending the preparations for her widowed father's wedding, Kate has a sexual affair with the son of the father's new bride. If this affair had been exposed, her father's wedding and marriage could have been ruined.

* Kate treats her father's new wife meanly.

* Kate asks Ben to continue their affair long-distance after he returns home to his wife and she returns home to her now cuckolded boyfriend.

* Ben refuses to continue the affair because he is married. Nevertheless, he sends her a present by mail, and she seems to be happy and hopeful that her affair might continue after all.

* After she returns to Chicago, she dumps her boyfriend Homer because, she complains that he has not been paying enough attention to her. So, it's Homer's fault. She does not admit to Homer that she already has become a baseball player's groupie.

In general, men do not admire such women and do not consider movies featuring such women to be romantic comedies.

Since [Michael] Douglas and [Jill] Clayburgh were expensive actors, the movie's investors must have lost a ton of money.
I regret now that I did not use the word "atrocious" when I reviewed It's My Turn.

In that same blog article, I quoted someone who saw the movie and reviewed it astutely on the movie's Amazon webpage.
The whole film, It's My Turn, from beginning to end, is jive. Watching this film was a truly hateful experience.

... The characters portrayed in It's My Turn seem about as real as the two-dimensional cardboard likenesses of film stars that one might see in the lobby of a theatre. The whole concept behind the movie is laughable. It's full of campy 70's feminist rhetoric, and about as deep as a soap opera about Barbie and Ken. .... The dialogue sounds like a series of mindless jokes. ....

I saw this film at the local cineplex over twenty years ago, and since then, have never forgotten the experience. Upon the conclusion of the film I felt that I had wasted two hours of my life. I was so irritated that I seriously considered breaking into the projection room, taking the film from the projector and burning it with some lighter fluid and a match. ....
In view of this preceding movie, everyone should be skeptical of any assumption that Bergstein's next script, for Dirty Dancing, was brilliant.

(After Dirty Dancing, Bergstein wrote the script for a third movie, Let It Be Me, which I do like.)

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Patrick and Lisa Swayze jointly wrote an autobiography titled The Time of My Life. Anyone who thinks that Bergstein's script was not rewritten drastically should read the following passages (pages 130 - 137) from the chapter about their experience in the filming of Dirty Dancing.
I [Patrick] read the script for Dirty Dancing one evening in our new house. Right away it filled me with emotion — but not the kind it was supposed to. I didn’t like it. It seemed fluffy — nothing more than a summer-camp movie. Lisa read it, too, and she felt the same way. ....

Even though the screenplay was weak, with some work it could explore all those elements through a strong story filled with compelling characters.

Potential is a wonderful thing, but would the writer and director be open to rewrites? The next morning, as Lisa and I worked on remodeling our kitchen, we talked about how the script could be better. And despite our initial reservations, we began to get a little excited about it. ... I also wanted to find out if we could really turn this into a great movie or not. ...

... I still had reservations about going for the role of Johnny Castle, for one big reason. Even if the script could be vastly improved, I wasn’t sure this movie was the right step to take in my career. ....

I was scared to say yes, scared I’d be undoing what I’d worked for the last eight years to build. Rut at the same time, both Lisa and .1 believed that Dirty Dancing had the potential to be wonderful. ...

Once I’d been cast as Johnny, Lisa and I started looking at how the script might be improved. Eleanor, Emile and others were doing the same thing, so it definitely was a group effort, but I was as grateful as ever for Lisa’s insights. ....

I want to know what’s weak, so I can work on improving it. Whenever we worked on a script or scene for a movie, we’d always play devil’s advocate with each other, switching positions and thinking through every angle but Sunday. What does the writer intend here? What does the director see? Could the story have higher stakes? Is this how my character would react? Do these characters talk like real live flesh-and-bone human beings? Once you’ve gone through every possible scenario with a script, when you get back down to the words on the page you know right away what works and what doesn’t.

That’s how Lisa and I work together: We find the intention and emotional flow of a scene, and the words follow naturally. ....

The draft of the script we’d read only hinted at deeper sociological and emotional currents, but we all knew that if we could just push the characters a little further, and explore them a little more deeply, we’d really have something. So everyone jumped right in, working day and night to tear apart things that weren’t working and deepen the parts that were. Eleanor’s script had strong bones, but now we were adding the flesh to them — and we’d continue doing so all the way through filming. And by the time we were done, we had a beautiful script.

Some of what Lisa and I suggested made it into the film, and some didn’t. We inserted the fight scene between Johnny and the cad waiter, Robbie, to give Johnny the rougher edge his character needed. We wrote it so Johnny would stop before knocking the guy out, though, since he’d be wary of getting fired — something that had no doubt happened to him before.

Lisa and I also stayed up the entire night before filming the final scene, where Johnny grabs the microphone in front of everyone at the resort, so we could rewrite his big speech. Sometimes we’d be working on new dialogue right up to shooting — and then continue fixing it between takes. We never stopped trying to make it better. ....

We did a lot of rewriting for the big final scene ....

Throughout the filming, we kept inserting little touches to help flesh out the characters and their relationships. ....

The more we added and revised, the stronger the characters got. ....
I think that Swayze's account of the drastic rewriting is believable, whereas Bergstein's account of her screenplay remaining almost unchanged is not believable.

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As the producers began to develop this movie project, they surely understood that the movie's success would depended on convincing Patrick Swayze to play Johnny Castle. He was perfect for the role, but he initially resisted the offer. The budget was rather small, so the producers could not offer him a large amount of money. The producers were willing, however, offer him three concessions:

1) One of his songs would be included in the soundtrack.

2) He would be granted great authority in changing the script.

3)  His wife Lisa would be cast as Penny Johnson.

The third concession was kept secret, as a last resort to convince Swayze to accept the role. As it turned out, the first two concessions sufficed to convince him. In his autobiography, Swayze wrote (page 134):
As perfect as the role of Johnny was for me, the role of Penny was equally perfect for Lisa. She auditioned for it, and wowed everyone. But ultimately, Cynthia Rhodes was cast as Penny. Cynthia was also a good choice, but what tipped the scales was the fact that she’d had a starring role in Staying Alive, with John Travolta. Cynthia had some momentum, and momentum sells in Hollywood.

What we didn’t know, but found out much later, was that Eleanor expected me to insist on casting Lisa as a condition of I getting me. But I really didn’t think of myself as having that kind of power as an actor, so it never even occurred to me to ask. As Lisa now jokes, because she and Cynthia are both slender and blond, half the time people think it’s her in the movie!
In addition to Lisa's lack of career "momentum", I assume that movie producers routinely avoid casting married actors together on the general business principle that nepotism often causes serious problems. In addition, I think that Lisa Swayze -- despite her beauty and talent -- had a troublesome personality that impeded her career as an actress. (When I write an article about the Swayze autobiography, I will explain that idea.)

The above passages from the Swayze autobiography indicate that as soon as Patrick decided to do the movie, he and Lisa immediately -- "the next morning" -- began to develop script changes, apparently exercising an extraordinary and explicit authority to propose script changes.

I'm sure that Swayze eventually earned much more money from his soundtrack song -- "She's Like the Wind" -- than he earned for acting the role of Johnny Castle.

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The producers' concession that Patrick Swayze could change the script opened the floodgates for the director, choreographer, other actors -- and even Patrick's wife Lisa -- to propose changes. Swayze's autobiography indicates that the group process of changing Bergstein's original script could be described as a feeding frenzy. The original script was turned into the "collection of fragmented pages ... on different colored paper" that Bergstein described in her "Letter to Fans".

As a result, Bergstein's original script was dramatically changed and improved -- and the movie turned out to be brilliant.

In a following article, I will speculate about what was in the original script and what was changed.