Dirty Dancing Analysis: Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 13

Continued from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11 and Part 12

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Chapter 13, titled "The Time of My Life" tells about events in 1986, when the movie Dirty Dancing was produced and filmed. This is the third in a series of my blog articles about that chapter.

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The filming of Dirty Dancing lasted 43 days. Those days were preceded by two weeks when director Emile Ardolino, Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze studied and revised the script. During those two weeks (as I understand the book), Grey studied and revised her wardrobe.

When you have your initial costume fitting, the designer lays out the road map for your character's arc, as told through the clothes you will be wearing. In this instance, Baby's entire wardrobe would be limited to whatever items she'd fit into her suitcase for her family vacation. Her look was 'bookish daddy's girl," with a dash of "Peace Corps" for flavor. ...

Unfortunately, the reveal of the costumes the designer had assembled for Baby freaked me the fuck out. ... I could see that the outfits required for Baby to make this pivotal transformation just weren't there. All I had to amend the situation were the contents from my own suitcase. ... Trying to mask my distress, I knew it was on me to step in and collaborate to make Baby's look work. ... The only way to change this costume situation was to hustle.

Just a few weeks before, while vacationing on Martha's Vineyard with my friend Tracy, I'd made a mental note about a pair of shorts Tracy had worn. She had bought some jeans from the vintage store in Oak Bluffs, and cut them off just below the knee and cuffed them up to hit right above the kneecap. I asked the designer if she wouldn't mind getting some high-waisted jeans that we could turn into long shorts. ... On Baby's clothes rack of vintage pieces, I saw your basic, white button-down that could easily be turned into a midriff-baring top if I knotted it above the waist.

The jeans long shorts and the midriff-baring top
that Jennifer Grey selected for the movie Dirty Dancing

One of the tops I'd brought along with me was my L. L. Bean red-striped sailor shirt. I loved Jean Seberg's look in Godards Breathless, which I figured Baby could've easily been enamored of.

Jean Seberg in the 1960 movie Breathless

The striped shirt that Jennifer Grey selected
for the movie Dirty Dancing

And nothing said sixties to me like tight, high-waisted white Levi's cropped to just above the ankle. I asked the designer if we could get some of those and some of the old-school white lace-up Keds we all used to wear.

The designer and her assistant made a trip to the nearest big city, returning with boxes of the classic sneakers and a pile of jeans. She was such a good sport, and I was very grateful.

I believed that Baby could have owned and packed these pieces, and that as she became more comfortable in her own skin, she could gradually modify them to reveal more, and the more Baby risked exposing, the more willing she became to be seen, the more vulnerable and attractive she would become. Wardrobe solved.