Wednesday, August 31, 2022

More Reader Comments About "Robbie Gould's Philosophy"

In December 2008 I published a blog article titled Robbie Gould's Philosophy. In April 2017, I published a blog article titled Reader Comments about "Robbie Gould's Philosophy".

Since I published the latter blog article, a couple more comments have been written, and so I will discuss them here.

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In my 2008 article, I wrote that Robbie had brought the novel The Fountainhead into the restaurant to give to Lisa (not to Baby) to read. Robbie hoped the novel might persuade Lisa to have sex with him. I described Robbie's reasoning as follows: 

Apparently, Robbie had brought the novel into the dining room with the intention of giving it not to Baby, but rather to Lisa, whom he expected to serve as a waiter at the imminent meal. He and Lisa had quarreled the previous night when he had become sexually aggressive at the golf course. Lisa had refused to submit to him, and he had refused to apologize. Robbie had not given up in his efforts to seduce Lisa, however, and he intended to lend Lisa The Fountainhead as his next step.

If Lisa would only read The Fountainhead, then Lisa would understand and appreciate Robbie better. The novel was written by a famous female author with a female perspective that Lisa should share. Lisa should understand that Robbie Gould was similar to the novel’s hero Howard Roark. Robbie Gould was working now only as a waiter, but Howard Roark had worked for a long time only as a stone cutter in a quarry. Eventually, however, Robbie Gould would become the world’s greatest medical genius, just as Howard Roark became the world’s greatest architectural genius. And Lisa should identify with novel’s beautiful and intelligent heroine, Dominique Francon:

Lisa Houseman should adore the genius Robbie Gould just as Dominque Francon adored the genius Howard Roark.

Lisa Houseman should submit to and then forgive Robbie Gould’s sexual aggression just as Dominique Francon had done submitted to and forgiven Howard Roark’s rape.

Lisa Houseman should feel flattered that Robbie Gould would adore her nude body, just as Howard Roark had designed a huge monument to Dominique Francon’s nude body.

Lisa Houseman should be willing to wait patiently until Robbie Gould was ready to marry her, just as Dominque Francon had waited – even through two marriages to other, mediocre men – until Howard Roark was ready to marry.

We don’t know whether Lisa actually read The Fountainhead. It’s a long (750 pages) and high-minded novel. Perhaps she just started and then asked Robbie to tell her the story. Robbie certainly pointed out the sexy parts – the scene where Dominique was raped and the scene where the married Dominique had sex with the wealthy man who then was so pleased that he paid Dominique’s husband to agree to a divorce so that Dominique could marry the wealthy man and the scene where Dominique left the wealthy man and reunited with Howard Roark, who had raped her many years ago.

When I wrote that blog article in 2008, I had not actually read the novel myself. Rather, I just based the above passage on summaries of the novel that I had read.  

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On March 20, 2020, commenter HBinswaner wrote:

My credentials: Ph.D. in philosophy, personal friend of Ayn Rand (see Wikipedia).

Your post gets The Fountainhead completely wrong, wrong about the characters' motivation and their ideas.

First, THERE WAS NO RAPE. Dominique wanted Roark -- she even invented pretexts to get him inside her bedroom, as Roark was aware.

Roark was in love with her. >> "We never need to say anything to each other when we're together. This is for the time when we won't be together. I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist."

That nude statue of Dominique by Steven Mallory? Dominique posed for it! And in one scene she poses for it while Roark is watching her.

Your article simply invents things:

"The hero did not marry until he achieved extraordinary professional success, because marriage impeded his professional efforts in the meantime. Lisa did not understand that the heroine was supposed to satisfy herself with a couple of marriages to other, mediocre men in the meantime. The hero had time to satisfy his own sexual desires only with an occasional rape in the meantime."

1. It was she who wouldn't marry him, not the other way around. 2. Dominique married the worst people she could find because she wanted to kill her desire for greatness -- convinced that great men die of slow torture, 3. Roark was very hurt by her 2 marriages. 

[ ... ]

And that part about Roark satisfying his sexual desires by an occasional rape? The novel suggests that he never even touched another woman.

Dominique's basic motivation? Fear for Roark's fate.

[ ... ]

The philosophy of The Fountainhead is stated very clearly in the novel. E.g., Roark's courtroom speech:

"The issue has been perverted.... As poles of good and evil, [man] was offered two conceptions: egotism and altruism. Egotism was held to mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism — the sacrifice of self to others. This ... left him nothing but a choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake of self. When it was added that man must find joy in self-immolation, the trap was closed. Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal — under the threat that sadism was his only alternative. This was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind....The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence."

For the sake of brevity, I removed two parts -- [ ... ] -- where HBinswaner provided more evidence for his argument. You can read his entire comment at the above link. I appreciate his strong argument that Roark did not rape Dominique.

However, plenty of readers get the impression that he forced himself on her. She accepted it -- and even enjoyed it.


That is the impression that Robbie wanted Lisa to get from her own reading of the novel. Sure, Lisa might agree with HBinswaner that the incident was not forcible at all, but that is not what Robbie hoped Lisa would think.

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On August 4, 2020, commenter grbfrog wrote:

I just finished The Fountainhead today after 20 years of being on my "to do" list so I could better understand the reference. I'm glad I read it. And my appreciation for the artistry of Dirty Dancing grows.

The criticism of Robbie's character is straightforward. I did find the suggestion that in that era all men fancied themselves to be Howard Roark interesting. I wasn't alive then so I don't know that cultural context.

But to me, Robbie doesn't fancy himself Howard Roark but rather Peter Keating. Peter Keating's struggles came from his incomplete self awareness; he strove for success as measured by others but was only vaguely aware of his actions and motivations, much of it being driven by his mother. However, I think Robbie has learned from this and embraces being Peter Keating unashamedly for the power, money, and women it will bring. And despite still being in college, he's already achieved much, such as his Alfa Romeo, being encouraged to date rich well connected daughters, and very nearly a fat check from a stranger, Baby's dad.

It is an interesting idea that Robbie was carrying the book to convince Lisa, but I feel strongly that this isn't the case.

One, Lisa would've never read it.

Two, it would not be the most effective way to get her in bed.

And three, Robbie doesn't care that much about it anyway; I think he would put Lisa squarely into the "some people don't [matter]" category.

He respects Baby for her intellect, but to Robbie, Lisa is just a cheap thrill and a possible networking connection with her dad, not worth the effort if it doesn't come easy. And this is shown that as Lisa struggles with her decision whether to sleep with him, he's already with someone else, not concerned about Lisa's decision one way or the other.

But I do not think The Fountainhead's criticism is only directed at Robbie. Much of The Fountainhead focuses on criticizing altruistic acts by the rich, and as uncomfortable as it may be, this criticism finds Baby in its aim. Well intentioned as she is, Baby has led a life of comfort and privilege, preparing to study economics of under developed countries to help those facing hardships she has never faced.

This is consistent with the movie's gentle criticism of Baby at the beginning; even her name is meant to suggest her naivete. Had her summer at Kellerman's never happened, she may have followed that path, feeling self righteous for her work "helping" those less fortunate but not actually contributing much to the world, then settling down and marrying someone of her social class. Baby herself spells this out as the intended plan during her "but you let me down too" soliloquy to her dad.

However, it is her relationship to Johnny that forces her to be a little more like Howard Roark, fighting for a cause no matter what it costs, and it is hard for her. In the end, she leaves those around her better people because of her willingness to fight for what she believed in, perhaps making more a difference than she would've in the Peace Corp., paralleling The Fountainhead theme.

I would even suggest Jake, Baby's dad, is subtly targeted by The Fountainhead reference. He either gets fooled or enjoys playing the game with the smooth guy Robbie (Peter Keating). And his willingness to give money to Robbie after dating Lisa has shades of Guy Francon encouraging Peter Keating to marry Dominique because he doesn't know what to do with her.

I am not equating Lisa with Dominique; two characters could not be more different. However, Lisa's dad is unable to relate to Lisa like he does with Baby. Bribing a rich successful guy like Robbie to take care of her so he doesn't have to learn to understand her is similar to Guy Francon and his hoped for solution with his daughter and Peter Keating.

I am glad I read the book; I didn't think it was possible to appreciate Dirty Dancing even more, but it has happened. Thank you for creating this blog to share opinions and insights to further understand the greatness of Dirty Dancing!

Thank you, grbfrog, for writing such an interesting comment!

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I still intend to finish my series called "The Development of Lisa's Political Rebellion", which begins with this Part 1. That series includes much discussion of Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead.

Monday, August 29, 2022

Dirty Dancing 35th Anniversary

 Dirty Dancing opened in the US movie theaters on August 21, 1987. 


Tuesday, August 23, 2022

Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 24

Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey


Continued from Part 1,  Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7Part 8,  Part 9Part 10Part 11Part 12Part 13Part 14Part 15Part 16Part 17Part 18Part 19Part 20Part 21Part 22 and Part 23

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Chapter 22, titled "Unbridled", tells about events into 2021, when she and her husband Clark Gregg divorced.

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Grey's book is not much about the movie Dirty Dancing. Rather, the book mainly tells about growing up in a family of actors, about her effort to become a successful actress, about her romantic experiences with men, about her addictions to intoxicating substances, about her physical and mental disorders and about her joy in being a married mother. That movie did play an important part in her life, but now that she is in her sixties and looks back, that movie was only a minor part.

In her book's final chapter, she shares some of the wisdom that she acquired during her 60+ years. She ponders particular problems of being a woman.

I came from a long line of women who became mothers and wives at the expense or the career they'd wanted. The story my mother's mother told was "I didn't get to be a pianist." And my mom knew she didn't want to be like her depressed mother, so she was going to do it all differently, but then gave up her career to be a mother and a wife to my Father.

There was something imprinted on me by my foremothers that I was resolved to outfox. I thought I'd be able to override the system. I decided I'd be like my dad and not my mom and would somehow not fall prey to her undesirable epigenetics, and yet, there I was. A domestic goddess/mother superior. There'd never been a woman in my family lineage who got out from under that destiny I didn't know how to get from under, either, and began to doubt it could be done.

Women have an uncanny ability to adapt to please others, to refrain from privileging themselves out of fear of what might ensue. It takes a certain fortitude to tolerate the risk involved in stressing an established relationship to see if it can handle accommodating some much-needed change.

And if in time we become angry or depressed or just feel like we're somehow slowly withering on the vine from adapting so much to the lives of others, we are promptly shamed, either from within or from without. To give voice to our desire to free ourselves from our habituated reflexive over-adaptability to others might render us unlovable to our mates or bad mothers, right? That's what we think. So we disappear into servicing and raising our young, muting our dissatisfaction, because it feels shameful to be ungrateful when you're being taken care of. ...

I'm struck by how many married women I intimately, especially mothers of small children, are right now feeling hopelessly stuck in their lives. They don't dare let themselves consider what they might wish for or what they would want their lives to look like if they could make a change. ...

And I have become willing to tell the truth in the second half of my life like I never had before. There's an exhilarating relief in my willingness to face my fear of the unknown. I've relinquished the dollhouse as destination, as container of the dream, and it's really all the unknown all the time now. ...

... when I look in the mirror today — a softer, wiser, albeit perhaps not quite as sharp version of myself, due to the natural aging process -- can I just hold on to myself, my inherent value, and accept myself even now?

Even in the face of these turbulent times: When I feel tossed about, struggling to get my bearings in this changeable landscape, where change is the only constant? The inevitable impermanence of everything. Career peaks and valleys, other people's opinions of me, marital status, financial ebbs and flows, body image, aging. With every new chapter, we are faced with fresh challenges to our sense of identity and self. Every phase. As far as I can tell, every age is rife with struggle as well as with incomparable delight, and every end is pregnant With a new beginning.

Although Jennifer Grey played the movie role of Baby Houseman, those two lives are different. Houseman would attend college and study some subject like international relations. Maybe she would spend a couple years in the Peace Corps. Then she would develop a life-long professional career in academics or government. Houseman would not become addicted to intoxicating substances.

Perhaps Houseman, like Grey, would marry late in life, become the mother of one child, and eventually divorce her husband. In that regard, the two women's lives might become similar, in their forties.

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The book does not say anything about any sequel to the movie Dirty Dancing.

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I enjoyed reading the book. I recommend it to anyone who loves the movie.

Readers of the book have rated it on the Amazon website as follows:


This is the end of my series of blog articles about Grey's autobiography.

Monday, August 8, 2022

Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 23

Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey


Continued from Part 1,  Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7Part 8,  Part 9Part 10Part 11Part 12Part 13Part 14Part 15Part 16Part 17Part 18Part 19Part 20Part 21 and Part 22.

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Chapter 22, titled "Unbridled", tells about events into 2021, when she and her husband Clark Gregg divorced.

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The chapter title "Unbridled" is a pun on the two words "bride" and "bridle". 1) Since she has divorced, she no longer is a bride. 2) She was freed like a horse whose bridle has been removed.

In her book she writes only positively about Gregg. He had not pressured her to marry him -- to become his bride. On the contrary, she had become pregnant deliberately and then pressured him to marry her. She does not insinuate that he "bridled" her -- in the sense of controlling her. She does not tell the cause of the divorce.

Marrying Clark gave me the opportunity to experience what it is to start a family of my own. Because of him, I got to become a mother to a child who is now a woman, an experience that has far exceeded my wildest dreams.

Clark and I were together for twenty years, married for nineteen, and are partners in raising our incredible daughter. Pretty extraordinary for two people who had been rolling solo for the first thirty-eight and forty years of our lives, respectively.

The good news is our marriage was something we both had needed to let go of. We knew that it had served its purpose. The three of us will always be a family.

I perceived some clues, however, that Grey left her marriage in order to live in a romantic relationship with a woman named Tracy, who has been her "best friend for decades".

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In her book's Chapter 7, titled "Gypsies, Tramps and Sleaze", Grey told how she became friends separately with two high-school girls, Maggie Wheeler and Tracy. (Grey writes Maggie's full name and even Maggie's parents' full names, but never writes Tracey's last name.) 

The Grey family had moved from California to New York in late 1974, when Jennifer was 14, because Joel Grey had been hired to star in the Broadway musical Goodtime Charley. Jennifer attended Manhattan's Dalton High School. Very soon, she became friends with Maggie, who had transferred from Dalton to another school but still hung around Dalton.

Maggie and Jennifer misbehaved together. They smoked cigarettes and marijuana, frequented a bar that served alcohol to minors, and watched adults-only movies. 


Grey writes that they snuck into a movie theater to watch the soft-porn movie Emmanuelle, which featured a lot of lesbian scenes.

The actresses were all small-breasted European beauties. The film made quite an impression on us. Emmanuelle was hot, and women from all over the city were lining up around the block, snaking around Bergdorf Goodman to get into The Paris movie theater for their fix of something they might be turned on by. ...

After getting our first taste of sexy magic, Maggie dragged me along to check out one of those hard-core porn movies in Times Square ....

We were two uptown teenagers who had gone to great lengths to try to pass for grown women, but could've just as easily been mistaken for young prostitutes. ...

That time we found ourselves in that seedy porn house, she lost one of her diamond earrings, dropped down the drain of the grimy bathroom sink. Was it The Devil and Miss Jones or Behind the Green Door?

Once we took our seats and our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we were shocked to realize we were the only females in the sparsely attended showing. We had crashed a party that clearly had not been thrown with us in mind. It was tailored to suit the needs of these shadowy men with overcoats covering their laps. As the opening credits rolled, all I could think was, "This is not where my parents would want me to be," and I wanted out. Maggie made me stay a bit longer, but I eventually got us the fuck outta there.

Right after writing about that incident, Grey writes her attraction toward homosexual men.

When I was fourteen, I developed a killer crush on Mark Baker, the twenty-five-year-old playing the title role of Candide on Broadway. .... I got to go backstage with my dad to meet the cast. ... Meeting Mark Baker in his dressing room triggered this phenomenon of craving, whetting my whistle for more. I repurposed that access and returned repeatedly to see the show with Maggie. ...

For me, my aggressive pursuit had a built-in safety net. There was no risk because there was no chance of anything happening between us. I was much more powerfully drawn to him than to any straight boy my age. ... Were gay men what I was programmed to be attracted to for some unconscious reason?

Maggie was my partner in crime for all things intense, dark and gay. She and I were like two stage-door Jennies, basically stalkers, inviting ourselves to join in whatever after-show festivities Mark Baker was up to. As it turned out, this charismatic young actor was up to all kinds of underground shenanigans. ...

Maggie and I followed him everywhere he went, to every skanky venue, and more than once to the sketchy Bowery neighborhood to see his good pal from back in Baltimore, Divine, in Women Behind Bars. At fifteen and fourteen, Maggie and I were more than willing to cavort with drag queens, fascinated and feeling very grown-up to be able to hold our own in this particularly adult underbelly of New York in the seventies. ....

I would introduce Maggie to the Broadway gay boys so I could share with her the torment of crushing on on the impossible-to-attain but super charismatic who felt infinitely more interesting and somehow safer than the heterosexual rich boys we had easy access to. And Maggie, more than game, gave me courage. ....

Because I felt distinctly different from girls my age, more highly awake sexually, I identified with the way openly gay guys expressed their sexual feelings and horny crushes. The soundtrack of my budding sexuality was in tune with their anthem. ... My erotic feelings didn't necessarily go hand in hand with having a boyfriend or being in love. ....

In "girl sexuality" as I saw it ... the goal seemed to be to get a boyfriend. ... For other girls, randiness begat getting a boyfriend. .... I felt alone and perplexed about why my relationship to desire felt so different.

Beyond that point of the book, Grey does not write any more about Maggie. I assume that they broke up. I speculate that Jennifer wanted that friendship to become a lesbian affair, but Maggie refused to go that way.

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Jennifer's friendship with Tracy likewise involved alcohol:

.... she was without question one of the prettiest girls in the school. .... This angel ... and I sat nursing our Heinekens on the front porch, laughing our asses off. ....

They told each other that they did not want boyfriends.

.... in all the heavy-petting action currently in full swing, we were the only two outcasts left standing in this high school make-out game of musical chairs. ... There wasn't anyone [male] there that either of us were into. Or at least that's what we told ourselves. I remember the palpable shift in perspective, that fortuitous moment when I knew I was not alone. ....

Like me, Tracy wanted to be an actress, and we shared a similar sense of humor, liked the same food, and were both Jewish.

Her family conveniently lived in a Park Avenue apartment building down the block from school, so we went there for our free periods or after school to study and do homework. ... Tracy became my best friend at Dalton [high school], like a sister to me.

Jennifer and Tracy in high school
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The above descriptions of Jennifer's adolescent friendships with Maggie and Tracy were in the book's Chapter 7. Now I will return to its Chapter 22, which ultimately addresses the divorce in 2021, when Grey was 61 years old.

Grey begins Chapter 22 by writing that, from a young age, she was obsessed secretly with erotic female beauty.

I was a weird kid, knew I wasn't typical, and that was how I liked it.

I had a secret file, a manila envelope, where I kept a stash of photographs, slyly excised from my mother's Vogue magazines. Avedon's black-and-white editorial closeup of a soaking wet form of a woman on the beach .... Her back arched, head thrown back, in a fully unbuttoned black bodysuit, with one bared breast, mit nipple, the sunlight bouncing off her shiny goose bumps. This was the kind of artsy, feminine erotica that fascinated me. I collected images of sexy women not because I wanted to date one or one day marry one, but because I wanted to feel the way they looked. That was what resonated with me. ...

It appealed to me to be doing something subversive and forbidden, something considered grown-up and somehow naughty, and I took a certain guilty pride in my secret stash of sexy. I'd sequester myself inside a fort I'd fashioned by stretching an Indian print bedspread between my high brass bed and built-in Formica countertop desk. In the light filtered through the colorful pattern. I'd take out my oversized manila envelope, the color of muddy sunshine, from its hiding-in-plain-sight spot inside one of the desk cupboards, and I'd pore over these gorgeous images, appreciating my keen, curatorial eye, like a nerd gazing in wonderment at their glorious stamp collection.

Jennifer and Tracy developed a petting "routine", which they continued into their adult years.

When I was in high school, my best friend. Tracy, and I had a routine we probably started when we were in ninth grade, and even though we might have looked like we were too old for such childish games , we continued it well into adulthood.

It was a form of prayer, or wish fulfillment .... Usually when just hanging around, maybe bored, one of us would instigate with a request, "Fantasize me?" ...

The physical piece that accompanied this fantasizing hobby involved the age-old girls' pastime of arm tickling. The one receiving the fantasy would lie back, after making sure her sleeve was rolled, or pushed up well above the crease of the inner elbow, exposing the soft underside of her inner arm ... She'd close her eyes, completely relax, and submit, as one donates blood.

The other one, all business, settling into a comfortable seated position at her friend's side, would begin tracing the softest possible tracks with her fingertips, maybe a hint of fingernails, rhythmically dragging up and down the tarmac of this most vulnerable of real estate ...

Tracy and I were able to conjure and make believe far bigger, wilder happily-ever-afters for each other than for ourselves, freed from whatever sensible constraints kept the lid on our own dreams, which were somehow kept in obeyance, more muted, humble, and mindful to never be too outlandish. The highlights of the friend's offering would always involve a very exciting and robust career as an actress, a vision that never failed to quickly, almost immediately shift gears into marriage and family. ....

It seemed that once we were. married off and had begun the business of bearing children, it would be our husbands who would continue with thrilling, artistically rewarding careers. We would be happy and content to have finally found what we were looking for, having landed in frothy and sumptuous domestic bliss. The end.

During these petting routines, they foretold heterosexual relationships to each other -- not lesbian relationships.

I was "boy crazy". ... From the moment my brain could figure out how to obsess over some boy, that's exactly what I did. My body was made to be with boy bodies. ... we want to have a baby ...

Motherhood did -- astonishingly -- happen for me. The aftershocks of that are what this episode is about.

I interpret that last remark to mean that after Grey's motherhood years had passed -- after her daughter turned twenty -- her "boy crazy" years also had passed. The later passing caused "the aftershocks" that caused her divorce -- which she calls "this episode".

Chapter 22 contains only one photograph, which I assume shows Tracy and Jennifer walking arm-in-arm during their young years. The photograph -- on the chapter's third page -- is not explained. The photograph is placed right before the passage that describes their petting ritual.

Tracy and Jennifer

Grey writes about her divorce only in two of the chapter's last three paragraphs. I quoted most of that passage above ("Marrying Clark gave me the opportunity ...")

In the chapter's last three sentences, she describes her post-divorce life as wild and as fulfilling her fantasies:

It's the Wild West, baby! With no illusion of "the known, the plan the way it's supposed to look, or be." And my excitement about the adventure, along with my limitless ability to "fantasize myself", is now officially unbridled.

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Continued in Part 24

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 22

Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey


Continued from Part 1,  Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7Part 8,  Part 9Part 10Part 11Part 12Part 13Part 14Part 15Part 16Part 17Part 18Part 19Part 20 and Part 21

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Chapter 21, titled "Dancing With the Scars", tells about events in 2010, culminating in November, when she won the Dancing With the Stars competition.

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During the years from 2002-2009, Grey was happy and busy raising her daughter Stella.

Every single day, every month, every year, I woke up when Stella woke up. .... Made breakfast and the dreaded school lunch, did school drop-off and marketing, then school pickup, snack, homework, dinner, dishes, bath time, and limping toward the finish line, through that stickiest of wickets, the bedtime ritual.

I was in charge of arranging all of Stella's after-school activities -- swim class, dance class, art class, playdates -- and her dentist and doctor appointments. ...

I looked after our beloved dogs. .... I went to Pilates a few times a week after drop-off and before grocery shopping, and I never stopped going to my regular [Alcoholic Anonymous] meetings.

During those years she was diagnosed as suffering from an anxiety disorder, which was treated with a regime of anti-depressant medicine.

She did occasional acting jobs, but the opportunities and offers declined as her career drive waned and as she became an older woman.

Meanwhile, Grey never watched the Dancing With the Stars television show. She sometimes received suggestions and even invitations to participate, but she did not have the time or interest. She had not danced seriously since filming Dirty Dancing in 1986.

In 2008, her close friend Marlee Matlin, the deaf actress, participated in Dancing With the Stars and felt: "It's one of the most powerful experiences I've every had. It's life-changing." Matlin subsequently pushed the show's producers and Grey toward Grey's participation in the show. In 2009, the producers invited Grey to watch the live show, which convinced Grey to participate.

That decision triggered Grey's anxiety, although she continued to take her anti-depressant medicine. As an additional treatment of her anxiety, she began to visit a professional hypnotist. Grey tape-recorded her hypnosis sessions and then listened to them twice a day.

Because of her occasional neck pain following her 1987 car accident, Grey's husband suggested that she Grey get her neck examined by a neurological spinal surgeon before she did the show. The surgeon studied the MRI and then told her, "You may have one of the worst necks I've ever seen."

Grey's spinal canal should have been about one-and-a-half centimeters long, but it had been crushed to just a few millimeters.


He warned her:

If you're dancing and you get jolted pretty good -- not to mention if you were driving and got rear-ended -- you'd be permanently paralyzed from the neck down.

You shouldn't even be in a car, in my opinion.

I would do this [neck surgery] yesterday. To get out of danger, I need to fuse levels C4 and C5. Once I've jockeyed bck C4, the vertebra that's slipped forward, I'd stabilize the two levels with a titanium plate and four screws. That alone should alleviate a lot of your pain. ...

The ballistic impact from the whiplash years ago tore the interspinous ligament and facet capsule. This created instability at C4 and C5. And where there's supposed to be a natural curve to the neck, your neck not only lost the curve and became straight-up-and-down, but over time, has progressed to the point where it's bending in the other direction.

Grey got the surgery and then did the physical therapy, which lasted six months. The treatment was successful, and she ultimately felt much better. The surgeon cleared her to dance on the show.

The neck MRI revealed that her thyroid gland was enlarged and perhaps cancerous. A biopsy revealed that the gland indeed was cancerous, and so she had it removed. Grey figures that her decisions to participate in the show and then to get her neck examined saved her from thyroid cancer.

Eventually Grey did begin to participate in the show, with professional dancer Derek Hough. Now she had to wear high heels, which she had not worn for many years, and suffered much pain. She was taken to a podiatrist, who diagnosed her with Morton's neuroma, a trapped nerve on the ball of her foot, between her third and fourth toe. During her participation in the show, that problem was treated with cortisone shots. (After the show ended, the podiatrist removed the neuroma surgically.)

Because of her anxiety and physical problems, Grey almost dropped out of the show, but her husband and daughter persuaded her to continue.

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Grey's telling of her participation in the show is quite interesting, especially if you have watched the show a lot, which I have done. She tells about the show's routine and about its backstage activities. She tells how she and Hough rehearsed and how they progressed through the competition, week by week, as the other contestants were eliminated, couple by couple. Eventually she and Hough won the competition.

The experience was physically difficult and exhausting for Grey. Despite the cortisone shots, her foot continued to hurt. On the very last day, she began to suffer a hip pain that was so bad that went to a hospital emergency ward. An MRI revealed that she had ruptured a lumbar disk in her spine. She was able to participate in the show's final night only because the hospital doctors injected steroids into her spine.

The challenge of Dancing With the Stars requires an inordinate of courage for anyone. For me? It took everything I had. ...

Doing the show rewired me. I had spent so much of my life not advocating for myself, refusing the call. But taking on this adventure put me in the center of my story.


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Derek Hough is engaged!



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Continued in Part 23

Monday, August 1, 2022

Jennifer Grey's Autobiography -- Part 21

Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey


Continued from Part 1,  Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7, Part 8,  Part 9Part 10Part 11Part 12Part 13Part 14Part 15Part 16Part 17Part 18Part 19 and Part 20

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This blog article does not summarize any part of Grey's book.

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Despite the huge success of her movie Dirty Dancing, Grey failed to develop a successful movie career. One reason for Grey's failure is that Vestron -- the movie-production company that made millions of dollars from Dirty Dancing -- failed to use Grey in further Vestron movies.

In a previous blog article titled "My 1,500th Post in this Blog -- Part 5" my list of my blog articles about Vestron included the following. 

Vestron Video and Dirty Dancing

Vestron to produce movies for video

Vestron's Gamble

Dirty Dancing was structured as a negative pickup

Selling Dirty Dancing II

The Collapse of Video Prices and Vestron's Collapse

Dirty Dancing -- Vestron's First Production

The Vestron Test

Dirty Dancing struts its stuff on videotape

The Cross-Promotion of Vestron and Nestle

The Dirty Dancing Sequel and Security Pacific National Bank

Vestron bites the dust

Video's Bonanza for the Entertainment Industry

The Acquisition of Vestron by Live Entertainment

How People Watched Old Movies Before VCRs

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 1

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 2

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 3

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 4

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 5

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 6

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 7

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 8

What did Vestron do with its Dirty Dancing earnings -- Part 9

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Continued in Part 22