"Last week I took a girl away from Jamie the lifeguard" -- Part 2

This article follows up Part 1.

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The Houseman family arrived at Kellerman's Mountain House on Saturday, August 10, 1963. On that evening Baby Houseman and Neil Kellerman became acquainted and danced in the ballroom together.

Some days later, in a scene a gazebo, Neil told Baby: Last week I took a girl away from Jamie, the lifeguard.

In Part 1, I argued that Neil said so on Friday, August 23 -- almost two weeks after Baby arrived at the hotel. So, Neil took the girl away from the lifeguard during the week of August 11-17.

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I could be contradicted by an argument that Neil said his lifeguard remark during the week of August 11-17 and that therefore Neil took the girl away from the lifeguard before Baby arrived at the hotel.

I myself used to think that the gazebo scene happened on Friday, August 17. However, my careful study of the story's chronology has convinced me that the scene happened on Friday, August 23.

If my chronology is correct, then Baby and Neil were not involved with each other during the week of August 11-17. That's why Neil felt free to mention that he had taken a girl away from a lifeguard "last week".

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The movie's screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein intended to include a subplot that revolved around a swimming pool. The subplot was not included in the final movie. One reason why this subplot was eliminated was that the movie's producers could not find a resort hotel with a swimming pool that could be used as a filming location. In an earlier article, I wrote.

When the producers were selecting a resort as a location for the movie, they looked for a resort with a swimming pool, because the movie was supposed to show that the swimming pool was racially integrated. The author Eleanor Bergstein in her running commentary mentioned that the Jewish-owned resorts racially integrated their swimming pools before the other resorts did so, so apparently her original script included a reference to that fact.

However, the producers could not find an available resort with a swimming pool (we do see guests swimming in a lake). Therefore none of the movie’s dialogue refers to the racial integration of the swimming pool, although the dialogue refers several times to the Civil Rights movement that was developing in the South in the early 1960s.

We can suppose that the African-Americans in the planned swimming-pool scene would have been the orchestra members, who were idle during the days.

A swimming pool in a Borscht Belt resort hotel in the early 1960s
(click on the image to enlarge it)

The subplot had something to do perhaps with ....

* swimming pools being racially integrated at Jewish resort hotels

* Martin Luther King's March on Washington during the movie's story

* the big band's black musicians

* Neil's friendship with two Negro employees who would travel with him to the South

* Neil's intention to participate soon in a Freedom Ride in Mississippi

* Billy Kostecki's romantic relationship with a Negro female employee named Elizabeth

* Jamie, the lifeguard.

This subplot was at least in Bergstein's mind in her early development of her Dirty Dancing story. One relic of that extinct, swimming-pool subplot is the finished movie's mention of Jamie, the lifeguard.

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The swimming-pool subplot was supposed to be placed in the story between:

* the ballroom dance of Baby and Neil

* the "dirty dancing" party in the employees' bunkhouse.

Baby would know who Jamie the lifeguard was, but she would not know -- until Neil told her at the gazebo -- that Neil took a girl away from Jamie.

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The stage musical includes more relics of the extinct, swimming-pool subplot. For example, the stage musical portrays Billy and Elizabeth as an interracial romantic couple. You will see Billy and Elizabeth singing together in this video, beginning at 1:14.

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I will continue this article in Part 3.