Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey
Continued from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 and Part 9
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Chapter 12, titled "Reasons to Be Cheerful" tells Grey's life from the beginning of her acting career in 1980 until 1986, when she auditioned for Dirty Dancing. I am summarizing this one chapter in a series of four blog articles. This is the fourth.
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Grey does not specify when she auditioned for Dirty Dancing, but I figure it was in the spring of 1986. When she happened to bring some photographs to the office of her her agent Philip Carlson, he told her he had just received a "casting breakdown for a very low-budget movie, with a part I could be 'really right for.'"
The "casting breakdown" was a two-page summary of the storyline and of the cast of characters. Grey read it and recognized immediately that the description of the female lead seemed to be "written for exactly me". The one discrepancy was that the character was 17 years old, whereas Grey was 26.
(Not in the book: Since Grey turned 26 on March 26, 1986, she must have read that casting breakdown after that date. The movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off opened in the theaters on June 11, 1986. In that movie Grey played the younger sister of a high-school senior, and she looked young enough for that role.)
Both Baby (aka Frances Houseman) and I were raised in upper-middle-class, Jewish New York families. Both of us were born-and-bred daddy's girls. father was a successful family doctor, mine a revered actor. And like Baby's, my parents were liberals, passionate about social justice, pillars of their community. I was trained to be just like them, and to make sure to never embarrass them. ....
Like Baby, I, for a long time, didn't feel compelled to rebel, or even question my parents' authority, which was easy for the better part of my childhood, as they were pretty much perfect in my eyes..
My dad was my hero and he, in turn, idealized me, which was easy for me, good as I was at playing by the rules. But when I got older and would do something he didn't approve of, it didn't go so well. His tsunami of adoration would vanish. It was frightening and confusing to feel the balmy atmosphere suddenly frost over. Baby experiences that same big chill when she finds herself having to make the choice between her allegiance to her father and his polar opposite ...
The character of Frances "Baby ' Houseman was decidedly more "interesting-looking" than traditionally pretty. It was actually a plot point. Not only was Baby Jewish, but she had to look Jewish. ...
Grey writes at length about her dance training, which she had begun at the age of five.
I took tap, jazz, modern, and ballet from some of the greatest teachers in New York — the Alvin Ailey School, Broadway Dance Center, Finis Jhung, Maggie Black, and David Howard — and though I could never keep up with the "real dancers," I loved class just the same. I guess I had enough natural talent, or something, to blend in and not completely stick out.
Like Baby — mesmerized by the otherworldly grace of the dance pros Johnny and Penny doing their show-stopping dance routine — I understood firsthand this deep longing, an almost animal hunger to be inside the experience of a great dancer, to live and breathe that rarified air.
Grey's audition took place in Minskoff studio, in a skyscraper at Times Square. That studio was the audition location for many Broadway shows. Grey had taken dance classes in the same building.
I had worked on the couple of scenes, and if the reading went well, I was told to bring along some music I liked and be prepared to dance.
I don't remember much about the scenes or who I read with, except that it was for a handful of people, I assume the usual suspects: Emile Ardolino, the director; Eleanor Bergstein, the writer; Linda Gottlieb, the producer; and Bonnie Timmermann, the casting director. They seemed very pleased with my reading and asked me to dance.
I was thrilled that I could pick my own music and that there would be no choreography to learn. I'd brought along my boom box [and] ... my cassette of Jackson 5 Greatest Hits. My song was "I Want You Back."
I knew I had to have a song I could depend on to take me where I needed to go, to that place I was very familiar with, that place where I'd just go off into my own dance trance.
Something about that song, even today, involuntarily plugs me into my body and ... transports me to my wildest, unchained happy place. ...
I remember turning my back on the group, and the awkward silence as they waited for me to pick up my boom box, position it in the middle of the immense rehearsal hall, and bend down to press play. I can't tell you what happened after that, because the next thing I knew it was over. I had no idea what I'd done. I'd had no plan or choreography, no moves I was particularly fond of or knew to be crowd-pleasers. I just went there.
And when the song was over, my heart felt like it might explode from the intensity of exertion. I stood there sweating and shaking, and I pretty much knew without even looking at anyone that I had the part.
I'm not sure if it was the next day or a few days later after my audition for Dirty Dancing when I got the call from my agent saying that they loved me, that I basically had the part, as I was the only one that would be screen-testing with their top choices for the guy's part.
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Continued in Part 11
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