How Baby Became the Magician's Stooge

At the movie's beginning, while the Houseman family is unloading its luggage from their car, Billy Kostecki is specially helping Baby. The following dialogue is heard (emphasis added):

Max Kellerman
[Addressing Baby and Lisa Houseman]
I want you girls to know, if it were not for this man, I'd be standing here dead.

[Addressing Billy]
Billy, get the bags.

Billy Kostecki
[Addressing Jake Houseman]
Right away, Doc.

Max Kellerman
[Addresssing Jake Houseman]
I kept the best cabin for you and your beautiful girls.

Billy Kosekecki
[Addressing Baby, who is lifting luggage out of the car]
Hey, thanks a lot. Do you want a job here?

The job Billy intends to offer Baby -- if she indicates a desire to earn some money -- is to act as the magician's stooge. Because of the money, Baby will agree to do the job.

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The website Magic Secrets Explained includes a webpage titled Basic Techniques: Stooges, which includes the following passages.

A stooge is magician's confederate who pretends to be a spectator. A stooge may fake amazement, deny his previous personal contact with the magician, behave in a certain way, say certain things, lie about something. ....

The main purpose of a stooge is to make a trick look less possible than it really is. He may pretend that the magician has read his mind, made him levitate or cut him in half. He may confirm magician's statements which are untrue (e.g. The box is empty, We haven't met before...).

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In the evening of the Houseman family's first day at the resort, Baby leaves her family cabin and goes to the main building in order to meet the magician, who will teach her how to act as his stooge. Baby peeks into a back door and overhears Max Kellerman telling the waiters to flirt with the young female guests and then prohibiting the entertainment staff from flirting with the young female guests.

After Baby overhears Max, she meets with Billy, who works in the entertainment staff. Billy introduces her to the magician, who teaches her how to act as the stooge in the magic show. The magician spends considerable time teaching Baby to act as the stooge for two magic tricks. In one of the tricks she will be sawed in half, and in the other trick she will end up holding a chicken.

For the sawing-in-half trick, Baby learns how to get into the box and then draw her feet up into the head half of the box while fake feet emerge from the box's feet half.

Later that evening, when the Housemans sit down at their dinner table in the restaurant, Max Kellerman introduces them to their waiter, Robbie Gould, and to Max's grandson, Neil Kellerman. Later in the ballroom, Lisa dances with Robbie, and Baby dances with Neil.

Neil already knows that Baby has been recruited by Billy to act as the magician's stooge. Neil manages the hotel's entertainment events. For example, because he manages the talent show, he orders Johnny Castle to teach the employees to dance the pachanga. As the entertainment manager, Neil manages likewise the magic show.

While the band is resting in an intermission, the magic show is performed. The magician looks at the guests and pretends to see Baby for the first time. The magician invites her up onto the stage. Baby pretends to be surprised and reluctant when invited, but she does go up onto the stage, where she pretends to be a random guest who is ignorant about the tricks.

Then, under the magician's guidance, Baby gets into the box, which Moe saws in half. The box is rejoined, and Baby gets out of the box with her body intact.

The successful result of Baby's learning
how to act as the magician's stooge

Then Baby continues to act as the stooge in the second trick, with the chicken. Then she walks off the stage with the chicken, and Neil is seen supervising the show and waiting for Baby to rejoin him for more dancing after the band's intermission.

By that time, Baby knows that Neil knows that she is the magician's stooge. This mutual knowledge is one element in the subsequent, friendly relationship between Baby and Neil.

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The other members of the Houseman family did not know that Baby was acting as a trained stooge in the magic show. They did not know that Baby had been introduced to the magician and had spent considerable time with Billy, the magician, and perhaps some other members of the Entertainment Staff.

When Baby is questioned by her family members about her participation in the magic show, she insists that she really was selected randomly and that she herself does not understand how the tricks were done. Normally a stickler for truthfulness, Baby enjoys a secret thrill from this first deception -- harmless and playful -- of her family during their vacation.

I suggest that a sequel movie be made -- titled Dirty Conjuring -- about the magician's activities during the Dirty Dancing story.

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In the following video, the magicians Penn and Teller reveal the secret of the sawing trick.

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The following video teaches a magic trick in which a drawing of a man is cut in half.

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On April 2, 2018, I made major changes in this article.

See also my article Billy Kostecki and the Magic Show.