Eleanor Bergstein's movie Let It Be Me, released in 1995, was (I speculate) intended to be a sequel to the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing. Very few people have watched Let It Be Me, because it was not shown in movie theaters or provided in a DVD. It's my understanding that the producer maliciously caused the movie to disappear because he quarreled with Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote and directed it.
You can watch Let It Be Me on YouTube. The visual and audio qualities are poor, but otherwise I think the movie is excellent. I suggest that Let It Be Me be re-done as the new sequel to Dirty Dancing.
In 2017, published a blog article titled Eleanor Bergstein's Third Movie, "Let It Be Me". There I summarized the plot as follows:
When the story begins, Emily and Gabriel have been acquainted for seven months. They love each other and live together and are planning their wedding.
The character Emily is 29 years old (the actress Jennifer Beale was about 31 years old when the movie was made in 1994). Emily is keeping a secret from Gabriel. Twelve years previously, when she was 17 years old, she got pregnant from a high-school classmate named Bud (last name not mentioned). Emily and Bud were dancing partners in some program that is not explained in the dialogue. When Emily learned she was pregnant, she was not able to contact Bud, who was touring with a dance troupe. Therefore Emily had an abortion, and she had no contact with Bud for the following 12 years.
About a third of the way into the movie's story, Emily and Bud happen to meet again. Bud owns a dance studio where Emily's fiancé Gabriel, an incompetent dancer, has been taking dance lessons to prepare for the post-wedding party of Gabriel and Emily. Emily visits the studio to join Gabriel in his dance lessons, and there she meets Bud. Although 12 years have passed, Emily and Bud recognize each other immediately. They explain to Gabriel that they had known each other and danced together in high school.
When they meet each other again in Bud's dance studio, he still does not know about Emily's pregnancy and abortion. Emily does not tell Bud until much later in the story.
The character named Bud -- the owner of the dance school in Manhattan -- corresponds to Johnny Castle. (In real life, the actor Patrick Swayze was called Buddy by his close friends.)
In a new sequel, Johnny Castle could be made into Bud easily, but Baby Houseman could not be made into Emily so easily. To do the latter, the Let It Be Me plot would have to be changed fundamentally.
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In a new sequel, the actress Jennifer Grey could play an older character named Marguerite. Furthermore, this character might be changed easily into an old Baby Houseman.
In my 2017, I summarized the Marguerite subplot as follows:
Let It Be Me includes a subplot involving a couple of older characters, played by Patrick Stewart and Leslie Caron. Stewart plays his role superbly, delightfully. Caron -- a French actress who became famous as a young woman for dancing opposite Gene Kelly in An American in Paris -- plays the role of an old woman who dances poorly.
Patrick Stewart and Leslie Caron dancing
in a scene in the 1995 movie Let It Be Me.
Unfortunately, Bergstein used this subplot to inject her liberal political concerns into the movie. In this subplot there are many snide comments about rich people and there is a long line of starving poor people receiving free soup from a charitable organization. I suppose that some people in test audiences would have been annoyed by Bergstein's gratuitous liberal propaganda.
At the movie's end, this older couple marries, and the post-wedding party assembles all the characters again in the dance studio. Although Bud and Corrine have broken up and Gabriel and Emily have broken up, the two couples dance again and begin their reconciliations. Thus the movie ends nicely.
A new sequel like this would have a major anachronism. Johnny Castle (Buddy) would have aged perhaps only three years after the Dirty Dancing story, but Baby Houseman would have aged about three decades. If that anachronism is unacceptable, then that female character could remain Marguerite (i.e. not Baby Houseman), but the role would be played by the now 72-year-old actress Grey.
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In a future blog article, I will tell some other sequel ideas of mine.
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