Benny Bernstein's Dancing School

As Baby Houseman and Penny Johnson were going to a dressing room to prepare Baby for the Sheldrake performance that evening, they saw Sylvia Schumacher accidentally drop her handbag. As the three women began to gather the spilled items back into the handbag, Sylvia said to Penny:

Such junk. Such junk.

Benny Bernstein's Dancing School, Avenue B, that's where I went. George Burns was a teacher.

Thank you.

Sylvia was aware that the spilled items included several stolen wallets, so she wanted to distract at least Penny, a dance instructor, by babbling about a dancing school.
Benny Bernstein's Dancing School existed from about 1908 to perhaps about 1916. A newspaper article has reported George Burns's memories of the school.

George Burns was Nathan Birnbaum, born January 20, 1896, ... in New York's crowded lower Est Side. He was the fourth rung from the bottom in the stepladder ages of the 12 Birnbaum children.

When George was seven, his father died, and from then on, the young Birnbaums -- seven sisters and five brothers -- all pitched in to help pay the rent and buy food.

"First I sold papers," recalled Burns. "Then I sold crackers -- broken, stale cake, but we called them crackers. We got them bakeries and sold them eight for a penny.

"We danced on street corners for pennies. I never had dancing lessons -- who could afford lessons?

"We came from a dancing street. All the kids in the neighborhood could dance.

"Then I started the Pee Wee Quartet. We sang in saloons.

"We divided the pennies and nickles we got. A couple of pennies would buy too big Vienna rolls. We took those home for supper. Sometimes we got paid in Vienna rolls.

"I never finished school. I was out hustling to eat." George paused reflectively.

"Yeah, I've been a success in spite of not much education. but whatever you do, you can do it better with an education.

"I suppose I did get an education in show business. I spent years opening and closing acts in vaudeville. But if I'd gone to school longer, maybe I might have skipped some of those years.

"My mother didn't do anything to me for not going to school. I had to work, that was all there was to it.

[....]

George Burns (on the left) dancing with Gracie Allen and Fred Astaire
in the 1937 movie A Damsel in Distress

"When I was about 12 [in about 1908], a pal and I started the B and B College of Dancing in a second-floor loft of an old building in our neighborhood. The other B was Benny Bernstein. He was 25 and could speak five languages.

"We had quite a gimmick. We nabbed the immigrants right off the boat. Our neighborhood was full of them. We told them dancing lessons were required for citizenship.

"Benny brought them to the school. I taught them to dance. Sad part of it, they couldn't dance with anyone but me when they got through.

George chuckled over the memory. "No citizenship if they couldn't waltz. I still think it was a clever idea.

"We did pretty well at $5 a lesson for a couple of years. We even opened a second school in Brooklyn. But then the cops closed us up.

"They said we had too many hangers-on. They called them "lounge lizards" in those days. They were like gigolos."

The schools gone, George started to haunt amateur nights at New York's vaudeville nights. ....

"My first vaudeville act was ballroom dancing. The Vernon Castles were big then -- it was just before World War I [began in 1914; USA entered in 1917]. ...

It's very unlikely that Baby and Penny ever heard of this dancing school, which was closed at least 45 years before the Dirty Dancing story took place in 1963.

=======

Of course, Baby and Penny did know who George Burns was. He had been a famous entertainer already for several decades. During the years 1950-1958 he had hosted a weekly television show, The George Burns Show. After that show ended, Burns continued to perform as an entertainer almost until his death in 1996, at the age of 100.

The below video shows an hour-long television special that he hosted, at the age of 64, in 1960 -- just three years before the Dirty Dancing story took place.

======

Off-Topic

That George Burns special included two performances (beginning at 9:45 and 36:25) by the brilliant Bobby Darin. He was a very popular singer and actor in 1963. He died in 1973, at the too-young age of 37.

I love Darin's rendition of the song "Alone Again, Naturally".

I could watch Bobby Darin videos all day! Here are a few more:

A 2004 movie, Beyond the Sea, starring Kevin Spacey, tells the story of Darin's life.