THE FANS' LOVE STORY: How The Movie 'DIRTY DANCING' Captured The Hearts Of Millions! (5 page)

So as far as the
Dirty Dancing
is concerned, there were all kinds of dynamics that went on in the dance studio. You work for an hour or a half-hour with a woman and her husband, or a woman alone, or a man alone . . . And you’re dancing close to each other and all kinds of possibilities start to come up—which you can imagine . . . which was an ongoing thing. It was ridiculous. The husbands would go away during the week, and they’d come up for the weekend. The wife would be running around—carrying on during the week. That was one of the major activities.

Oh, so that part of the movie is true?

Oh, without a doubt.

Bungalow Bunnies?

Oh definitely. The two major hotels up there were Grossinger’s and the Concord. Very tight security. So the “Bungalow Bunnies” were not allowed to come on the grounds . . .

“Bungalow Bunnies” were not guests at the hotels. They lived for the summer in bungalow colonies which were a much lower economic situation than the hotels. The husbands, working men, came up on weekends. They tried to sneak into the hotels for the entertainment, dancing, and mid-week sex. There were little or no bunnies at Grossinger’s or the Concord since the security was very tight. At the smaller hotels, they were a factor. They made the staff (waiters and busboys) very happy. A very small number of bunnies may have gotten into the bigger hotels, but very few.

I’m talking about the guests at the hotel. The guests at the hotel conducted themselves as much or more so than the “Bungalow Bunnies” . . . And who else but with the dance instructors because the waiter staff and bellboy staff at these hotels were not permitted to mingle with the guests . . . At the small hotels, it was a free-for-all . . . Here, all you had were people on the athletic staff, or the dancers or the musicians, office people for the ladies to get involved with, or the ladies’ daughters or sons. That was a major activity. A lot of that went on. And you can imagine, a seventeen–eighteen year old kid—who wasn’t too bad looking.

WOW . . .

. . . the kind of education I got . . . The women offering money and all that. That’s all very true. It all happened. Big time. Big time.

So because of the Security at Grossinger’s and the Concord, there weren’t the Bungalow Bunnies, but it was the wives and the daughters.

Let me tell you a few stories about the Baby situation . . . Baby checked in every Friday and checked out the following Sunday, and new Babies checked in. And it wasn’t just Baby. It was Baby’s mother who took a lesson and we got involved with, and it was Baby’s aunt, and it was Baby’s grandmother . . . And this went on every week. Sometimes they stayed two weeks, sometimes they stayed a month. But there was always a fresh crop. I’m telling you this is what it was like.

The guys took much more advantage of it than the female guests . . . The girls weren’t anywhere as near promiscuous as the working guys were.

And the scene with the dance kids—the last dance at the end of the year—that’s a made-up thing . . . I’m sure Jackie told you that . . .

We didn’t get into that . . .

She (Jackie) told me about the watermelon though—how it was laced with Vodka.

Yeah . . . Where we, the dancers went after work, most of the time was a restaurant in Liberty, New York called Corey’s. Corey’s had the best Chinese food you ever tasted in your life, and they had the best band in the world. It’s owned by Betty and Marty Corey . . . We would go there and we would dance until the sun came up . . . Dancing and working and eating all day, having three meals a day at the hotel. We’d go and have Chinese food later and dance some more . . . All the dancers from all the different hotels . . . On Thursday night, they had a marvelous jamboree there.

You talked about the last dance. What about the lift scene—when Johnny lifts Baby up in the air? You know, they practiced in the lake.

It’s interesting that you mention that—that’s what Mike Terrace gave to Eleanor Bergstein. The broken window in the car—Mike Terrace. The lift in the water—Mike Terrace . . . I think he gave her four to five scenes.

In Jackie’s stuff, I think there was something about Shelly Winters telling her, “Why are you practicing the lifts here, you can get hurt? Why don’t you practice in the water?” Maybe they could have both had input into it.

I wasn’t there. Mike didn’t go down there with them. Mike didn’t get any credit. Mike didn’t get any mention. Jackie got a full screen credit . . . that’s big time . . . There’s a lot of Jackie in there . . . You know it’s fifty-four years . . . memories . . . Again when you ask Eleanor Bergstein who the character of Johnny was, she’ll say Mike Terrace. You ask Jackie Horner who the character of Johnny was, she’ll say Steve Schwartz/Steve Sands . . . I only met Eleanor a few years ago. Mike and I are working on a movie script about the Palladium in the fifties—which we’ve been working on for the last two years . . . You know dancing has become very popular.

That’s another question I had. I read all over the place—newspaper articles, magazines—after
Dirty Dancing
came out, a lot more people signed up for dancing lessons
.

Yeah, sure. I am quite sure they did. Look at the biggest shows on television.
Dancing with
the Stars
or
So
You Think You Can Dance
. They are marvelous shows, absolutely marvelous. To me especially
So You Think You Can Dance
. I think you see the most wonderful dancing and most exciting dancing.
Dancing with the Stars
is also a terrific show which is exciting. It is more publicly doable . . . the public can do what they’re doing on
Dancing with the Stars—
the public is inclined to take lessons and learn how to dance. That’s bigger than ever. Bigger than our years because our years were limited to the resorts in the Catskills or Miami Beach or LA. Predominantly, it happened no place else for all those years. It was very, very big in those places. It was the major activity—watching it or taking lessons or you know—all that stuff . . .

What years would you say that occurred?

The fifties.

I have another question. Why do you think—from your perspective—
Dirty Dancing
is still so popular? It is on all of the time. People are into it.

You know what Shakespeare said: “The play’s the thing.” It was just a terrific story. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back . . .

It really is a formula movie and formulas work. The dancing was simple enough and easy enough for people to associate it with it and say gee, I can do that . . . There was summer romance.

Just think about it. Jennifer Grey . . . you know who her father is . . . She looked terrific in the movie. There was a little bit of sex, but it really wasn’t heavy sex. It just had those little components—those feelings of being away in a hotel and not being around your normal surroundings . . . It just rang the bell in different directions. You had a villain—the guy who got the girl pregnant. You had a hero—Johnny. He was very attractive in that film. He was most dynamic in that movie—just wonderful. You know with the leather jacket and the collars turned up and the hair popping over—which we looked like.

Really?

To some extent. You’ll see the pictures . . . Why so popular? It was believable. I think that was it more than anything else . . . The old couple stealing something.

I heard that was true. That’s another thing, Jackie Horner said you would get blamed for things.

That’s correct . . . I was a little kid. In fact, I had one woman—she accused me of trying to come on to her, and I mean—she was a season guest, came for years and years, and season guests were like god-fare . . . Most people came up for the weekend or a week.

There was a stealing thing also?

It wasn’t stealing—it was more I was making advances to her. It was absolutely not true. And she went to Jenny Grossinger, you know the big boss, and tried to get me fired. Lucille stood up for me and I didn’t get fired . . . I was a sixteen–seventeen year old kid in a highly sophisticated adult world.

There’s a similar issue in the movie. He (Johnny) was becoming a plasterer or something in construction. Well, I wound up in construction. That part of it is true. The dancing afterward at night is very true . . . The girls and the Baby part is very true—where there were relationships with girls, and girls getting pregnant.

Mr. Schwartz then e-mailed me pictures of himself dancing at Grossinger’s and other Catskills hotels, and other major dance hotels in Miami Beach and LA from about 1953–1957. We looked at the pictures (on our respective computers).

The next one is the Champagne hour . . . We had a champagne hour every Friday night. We were the show on Friday night. First, we would do some exhibitions. Then we’d have people come up and we’d have a contest—they’d dance different dances and have applause and whoever won got a bottle of champagne. All the hotels did that . . .

I thought this would give you the flavor of what it was like for Johnny—what his life was like . . .

Mr. Schwartz asked me to tell him about myself. In the course of the discussion, I told Mr. Schwartz about my involvement in The Official Patrick Swayze International Fan Club. Mr. Schwartz commented that he knew that during the ’40s and ’50s, there were a lot of fan clubs for movie stars.

I didn’t know that still existed.

I don’t think there is another club like this one . . . Patrick and Lisa personally send pictures and information to the club . . . Many of the fans are very good friends . . .

He comes across as a very, very fine young man . . . He’s such a lovely young man, and I think this [pancreatic cancer] to happen to him is so, so terrible . . .

We talked some more about various subjects. At the end of the interview, I thanked Mr. Schwartz, and he thanked me because he said it brought back years that were very, very special to him.

Obviously, Ms. Eleanor Bergstein did indeed capture the special time that took place in the Catskills heyday and all of the information that was given to her by all parties involved. Finally, let us not forget that Ms. Eleanor Bergstein also spent summers there.

Per Veronica Lee in her article, “There’s a secret dancer inside us all” (
Guardian News
and Media, 2006
) regarding
Dirty Dancing
:

“For Bergstein, much of it is autobiographical. ‘I was a teenager in 1963, we were New York Jewish, I was a doctor’s daughter with one older sister and we took holidays in the Catskills . . . My father practiced in a poor area and charged only a dollar a consultation,’ she says.”

(Me: Now here comes something else to think about pertaining to the creation of the character of Johnny.)
Eleanor Bergstein, “So we never had much money. Johnny who comes from the wrong side of the tracks and scratches a living as a dancing teacher represents the ‘otherness I felt.’”
¹¹

How can one write a book on
Dirty Dancing
without visiting the film location at Mountain Lake Hotel in Pembroke, Virginia?

So off I headed to the famous site where the Houseman family pulled up in their car to the main lodge, Johnny entered the dining room and told the college boy where to put the pickle, Penny crouched down crying on the floor in the corner of the kitchen, Baby and Johnny practiced their lift in the lake, Johnny danced with Vivian in the gazebo, and on and on . . . If only I could have had this idea in the summertime or maybe even spring. No, not me—I ventured out in four below zero weather (January 12–14, 2009) trekking through the snow taking in the sights and atmosphere of Mountain Lake. Mr. H.M. “Buzz” Scanland Jr., General Manager (known as Buzz) at Mountain Lake Hotel was gracious enough to be a host to me for two days showing me the famous spots and archives regarding
Dirty Dancing—
including a script, pictures, videos, and documents, and most helpful of all telling me stories about all that went on during the filming of
Dirty Dancing.
I will be forever grateful to Mr. Scanland for his participation in this project.

It was just totally amazing being on the grounds of the property where much of
Dirty Dancing
was filmed. In a sense, it was very surreal and at the same time, it was like it was meant to be—that I had come home. It was also very bittersweet because I was still so totally blown away by Mr. Swayze’s performance in
Dirty Dancing
(watched excerpts in the videos there on a big screen) and still so very sad about his illness. (I was glad that I was watching the
Dirty Dancing
clips by myself, so that I could cry as much as I wanted.) It all came back to me as to how much the movie has done for me and how much of a classic
Dirty Dancing
has become for me and countless others. First, the movie helped me get over the hurdle of the end of the relationship with my so-called soul mate, and then it became like an old friend in times of need or just a great, feel-good time. Coming to Mountain Lake was like taking one more step of living my dream of writing this book. I can’t resist saying that one of the messages in
Dirty Dancing
is
to
go after what you want and stand up for what you believe in. There is a similar message in
One Last Dance
(the movie written, directed, starred in, and produced by Ms. Niemi and starred in and produced by Mr. Swayze) which is—it is never too late to make your dreams come true. The essence of these messages really hit home while I was at Mountain Lake.