Billy Kostecki and the Magic Show

This article follows up an article titled How Baby Houseman Became the Magician's Stooge.

====

This article corrects a mistake I made recently about the sequence of events. The correction enables us to understand Billy Kostecki's role better.

A deleted scene (in the following video from 5:12 to 6:01) shows Baby and Lisa Houseman dressing for the first night's dinner and dance.

In recent articles, I wrote that this scene takes place after Baby overhears Max Kellerman telling his restaurant's waiters to romance the guests' daughters. In fact, the deleted scene takes place before Max's talk.

When Baby overhears Max's talk, she is wearing the same party dress that she wears later during the dinner and dance.

Baby wearing her party dress under a long sweater
while listening to Max talk to his restaurant's waiters

Baby wearing the same dress in the ballroom later that night

Therefore, after Baby tightened her bra straps in her hotel room's bathroom, she finished dressing into her party dress. Then she left the hotel room and yelled back:

Mom, Dad, I'm going up to the main house to look around.

Baby's movement across the yard is hurried and purposeful. She even trots part of the way. She is going to the main house for some reason and intends to arrive there by a certain time. She is wearing a long sweater over her party dress. She does not enter the restaurant, but she peeks through a slightly open door.

Baby has come to the restaurant's building in order to practice for the magic show that will be performed during the ballroom dance event. She had been instructed to arrive at an exact time, when the resort's entertainment staff would arrive.

Therefore, shortly after Baby arrives and peeks through the door, the entertainment staff arrives and walks through the restaurant. Max calls out to the entertainment staff's leader Johnny Castle:

Hey, hold it! Hold it. Well, if it isn't the entertainment staff. Listen, wise ass, you got your own rules. Dance with the daughters. Teach them the mambo, the cha-cha, anything they pay for. That's it. That's where it ends.

Baby's actions in this scene include the following secretive elements:

* She has covered her party dress with a long sweater.

* She hurries across the lawn, so there is less time to be seen.

* She comes to an obscure back door.

* She only peeks through the restaurant door.

Baby is secretive because she has been instructed that no other hotel guests should notice that she is meeting with anyone on the entertainment staff before the magic show. She has timed her arrival at the restaurant building to coincide exactly with the entertainment staff's arrival. She peeks through the restaurant door to make sure that no other guests are present who might see her meeting with the entertainment staff.

=======

Five resort employees are relevant in this situation.

1) Johnny Castle is the head of the entertainment staff.

2) The magician is on the entertainment staff.

3) Billy Kostecki got his hotel job from Johnny, his cousin, so Billy is on the entertainment staff.

4) Neil Kellerman himself is not on the entertainment staff, but he manages it. Johnny is directly subordinate to Neil.

5) Stan the Social Director is not on the entertainment staff, but he heads a parallel social-activities staff that likewise is directly to subordinate to Neil.

=======

When Baby's peeking-through-the-door scene takes place, she has interacted so far only with Billy. At the movie's beginning, while the Houseman family was unloading its luggage from their car, Billy specially helped 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.

In the finished movie, Billy's presence in the scene where the Housemans are unloading their car is not necessary. If Billy had not appeared in the movie until he is seen carrying watermelons, then nothing in the movie would change. When Billy is seen carrying watermelons, most of the movie's audience probably has forgotten already that he had been seen earlier, helping to unload the car.

However, in the original script, the magic show was a much more important part of the story. In the movie's original script of the final scene, Baby was sawed in half again, and when she emerged whole from the box, she danced her triumphant dance with Johnny.

Therefore, Billy's appearance in that opening scene was necessary, because in a following scene (no longer in the movie) he offered Baby the stooge job.

=======

Billy worked behind the stage, managing the props for the entertainment staff. In the finished movie, Billy is seen behind the stage putting the "Time of My Life" record onto a record player.

Billy, the Entertainment Staff's prop manager,
putting "Time of My Life" on the record player.

Billy likewise manages the props for the magic show. In that position, he recruited the magician's stooge from each weekend's new guests. As he would helped arriving families unload their cars, he would look for a teenage girl who seemed to be good candidate for the job. He would engage a girl in a conversation, evaluate her personality, find out whether she wanted to earn some money, and then offer her the stooge job.

Only employees were allowed to enter the bunkhouse, but Billy allowed Baby to help him carry watermelons into the bunkhouse, because she indeed was an employee. She was the magician's paid stooge!

======

Baby's agreement to act as the magician's stooge explains also why she tightened her bra strap to raise her breasts before she dressed for the evening. She did so not in order to attract an individual man, but rather because she knew she would perform before a large crowd that evening. She wanted to look sexy for her performance in the magic show.

After Lisa saw her tightening her bra straps, however, Baby loosened them again because she did not want to teased by Lisa for trying to look sexy.