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

by Tabashnik, Sue

  Funny, I was teaching the little couple that was stealing, and my partner was blamed for all that too. (Jackie told me that she saw them stealing money and reported them, and of course she didn’t get paid for sixteen lessons that she had taught them.)

  And I have a photo with Van Johnson who was here on a 1963 summer weekend. What a dear person, and of course loved to dance. All the “greats” in every field and walk of life graced the portals of Grossinger’s.

  Lou (Lou Goldstein is Jackie’s husband and is a legendary figure in his own right) and I have done a documentary on Grossinger’s … It’s almost finished. The crew filmed all over.

  Last Sunday I did the DD lecture at a museum up here—lovely turn out, and they showed the film.

  And now it’s the Bi-Centennial for the Catskills area. They showed the movie in our outdoor Park Pavilion last Saturday and I introduced it.

  Last week, I spoke to the cast (actors, dancers) and the tech crew here at our fabulous Forestburgh Playhouse—summer stock at its best. They opened with the 1952 Wish You Were Here—the first Catskill musical done on Broadway years back. A super cast—all wanted to know about “those” years. It was fun to tell them stories about the “Activities Directors.” It was my husband, Lou’s job at the “G.” In fact, in the film I have a “hair style wig show.” I did that for him some afternoons when it was popular and still have those hairpieces. So theater is still strong here too. Did All Shook Up—Great! Last night I saw Les Miserables, and we do Showboat next, then Rent and Hairspray … Super season. Lots still to do here.

  By the way, TNT did a filming for a few days up here while I was working at the Raleigh Hotel, and my partner and I recreated many scenes from the film and sequences, like walking on the log, watermelon bit up the steps, dance class (Merengue) at the pool, dancing Mambo in the night club. They inserted all the scenes in between the film DD where commercials would normally be. Was first shown December 19, 1999. And my interview as well.

  So my dear Sue, I could go on and on. It was quite a time and still a good life continues. It was a special time, and so many still remember those perfect, sunny, happy days.

  Ms. Horner sent me a copy of an article: “Film thrills Horner” from the Times Herald-Record, August 18, 1987, in which she was interviewed about Dirty Dancing. Here is one of the many interesting things that she told the reporter: “Several lines Penny says are mine.” Also, she spoke to the reporter about what 1963 was like. “You could say 1963 was the last beautiful, innocent time.” She also commented, “There was some sex among the hotel workers, but nothing like the movie showed. Honey, we were too tired to fool around … But we did do ‘some dirty dancing’ of our own after hours.”9

  ADDITIONAL BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ON JACKIE HORNER

  Here is an excerpt from: “Biographical Sketch—Jackie Horner.”10

  “Jackie Horner was born in a small town in southern Ohio to parents who were both active in musical endeavors. While she was engaged in modeling at the age of four, she, and her parents became increasingly aware of her love for music accentuated by the beat of her dancing feet. They knew that her future would be transcended beyond the sphere of the posing little Miss Horner.

  Hence, the dance was soon to capture Jackie’s total interest. She was to study beyond the norm under such celebrated dance masters as Grace Bedell, Deborah London Hoffman, Henry Le Tang, Jose Limon, and Jack Stanley in New York; and Carol Linn of the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore.”

  The sketch also states that Ms. Horner was a Rockette and a member of the June Taylor dance company. “Ms. Horner has danced throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and South America in night clubs, theaters, and television’s top variety shows … At present, she teaches dance here in the Catskills, colleges, regional theaters, and choreographs musical theater productions as well as appearing in some … The Catskills are her magical mountains, where her happiest moments have been spent teaching the stars of Hollywood, television and all the guests who come on vacations these many years.”

  STEVE SCHWARTZ (Steve Sands—professional dancer name)

  Lives in New York, NY.

  August 1, 2009 (telephone interview).

  August 17, 2009 (e-mail follow-up question).

  Ms. Jackie Horner had told me that the character, Johnny in the movie, Dirty Dancing was based on you. Is that true?

  Well, you know, much of the film was things that were involved with Jackie …

  A lot of the what we call shtick, a lot of the stuff—that he did was my stuff—which I didn’t recognize … Everybody’s telling me that there’s a movie about a dance teacher in the Catskills, that I should go see it. So I went to see it. And I sat down and I watched the movie. You know, it’s like if Julio went to see a movie about Julio. He says yeah, that’s the way it was, that’s the way it was. Absolutely nothing registered with me.

  At the end of the film, I get up to leave and my wife said, “Let’s look at the call. I don’t recognize the hotel.” ’Cuz she and I met in the Catskills. So I’m sitting there and all of a sudden I see a full screen with special thanks to Jackie Horner. And I go my God, I know what this is—this is about Jackie and I. The next morning I call Liberty … I get Lou Goldstein’s and Jackie’s telephone number. Lou gets on the phone … “Lou, this is Steve Schwartz, Steve Sands (I used the name Sands when I was a dancer). He said to me: “Oh, how’d you like the movie Steve?” OK …

  Now, conversely, I was up in the Catskills with Jackie for a few dance weekends and she introduced me as the guy that Johnny was based on. A great part of that film—the essence of that film—was the information that Jackie gave to Eleanor Bergstein.

  Uh-huh.

  However, there was another dancer (another very well known dancer probably better known than I was) by the name of Michael Terrace. Michael and I are very close friends and partners in a film venture that we’re working on. We go back many, many years. And Eleanor Bergstein says that she developed the character of Johnny from Michael Terrace. And Michael Terrace gave her different ideas about the film as well. So if you ask me, I think it is a juxtaposition of Michael and I … They had a thing on TV about Dirty Dancing. Eleanor Bergstein was on, the producers were on, and Michael was on, and she said it on television: “I based the character, Johnny on Michael Terrace.” Subsequently, I’ve been with Eleanor Bergstein … We talked about it … She said, “Yeah, you know I don’t know if it was you but you know, it was somewhere in the stuff, the stories that Jackie told me.” So I think Johnny is a juxtaposition of Michael and I—which is probably news to you.

  Yeah—definitely.

  I can put you in touch with Michael as well … And Michael is convinced that he is, you know, he’s the guy …

  Wow, that’s amazing. I wonder why more people don’t know about it.

  Well, people really don’t know about anything. They really don’t know about Michael. They really don’t know about me or Jackie … I am giving you what I believe is the real story relevant to who the film was based on—the male character … Even the dance steps in there that are my steps …

  Oh, my gosh!

  Jackie had a lot of influence. The stuff that came from Jackie which she got a full screen for—was about she and I. Michael never had a screen and didn’t have a full credit on it. So Jackie really was the major influence relevant to the information that went on.

  OK. Wow. So looking at your background what was it like being a dancer, being a male in those times?

  Well, you know everybody you’re talking to—Jackie and Lou, and even Mike—they were at least ten years older than I am. I got my first job as a dance instructor at a place called Laurel Pines in Lakewood. I got there and I had just turned sixteen. I told them I was nineteen or twenty and I took a leave from school. I ran away from home. I never went to high school or anything like that. I was a terrific dancer. So when I finished the season—you know the name, Tisch? This was their first hotel and first venture—Bob and Larry Tisc
h … They became world renown, very philanthropic and everything. I was going to their summer resort—a place called The Grand at Highmount, Highmount, New York, which is near Fleischman in the Catskills. And I did a show at Roseland … This is the spring of 1954 … I was seventeen …

  So we did the show, and I came off stage and a dance couple by the name of Tony and Lucille (Colon) come over to me. They were really famous … They are really very high class, and they said to me, “How would you like to come to work for me at Grossingers?” It was like they said to me how would you like to go to work at The Palace? Top of the top—of the top. I went to work at Grossinger’s in the spring of 1954, at the age of seventeen—telling them that I was twenty.

  When I got to Grossinger’s, they put me together with Jackie as my partner. What was it like? First of all, I thought I died and went to heaven. Here I am a kid from Brooklyn. My father had passed away when I was twelve years old … I was lying my way through my life as far as my age and what my background was, and here I wind up in the number one luxurious place in the Jewish American world … If I may say so, I was probably the better dancer there … I was really a very good dancer … By the way, Mike Terrace is also a brilliant dancer. The activity was getting people to give lessons to, rehearsing for Friday night’s champagne hour, and winding up with girls at night. That was the major activity.

  Are you still teaching dancing?

  No, the last forty odd years, I own a construction company.

  Do you still dance?

  Very, very rarely. Once in awhile I’ll go with Mike Terrace … It’s rare. I would say if I go half a dozen times a year, at a max ten times a year. I made a video with Barry Manilow about ten years ago called “Hey Mambo” … that I was the lead dancer on …

  So how old were you when you first started dancing?

  When my father was alive, we used to spend the entire summer in the Catskills. My father was a dental oral surgeon. And we were pretty well off … My father and mother were wonderful dancers—as well as my sister. My sister was four years older than me. So I used to watch them dance, and I danced. I was put on stage the first time when I was four or five years old … I sang. I danced. I did all that stuff. As I got older, I used to go with my friends, to different dances with the girl. I was always the best dancer—that was before the time of the Mambo … I did the Lindy Hop … The girls would say, “Can you show me how to do the Lindy Hop?”

  So my identity started to develop as a dancer. When my father passed away when I was twelve, I lost it. I was very, very close to my father. I didn’t go to school … No one wanted to hang out with me. Parents didn’t want their children to play with me ’cuz I was a bad influence, etc. etc. And a great insecurity grew in me … I had little going for me. And dancing seemed to be the only thing that I was admired for … I left home when I was sixteen. All of a sudden, I was somebody special. I was a dancer—better than anybody else. And being exposed to the level of people because of the hotels I was at—Laurel Pines, Concord, Grossinger’s, hotels in Miami Beach, Americana—all those big hotels. I was with the wealthiest, most cultured people in the world. The exposure to them, plus some of the friendships I made over the years afforded me a different type of education and sophistication, which I never could have obtained had I not been a dancer. My dancing was a vehicle to my growth and education. I was demeaned by my own thoughts of myself, plus people would say to me, “What’s a nice Jewish boy like you being a dance instructor? … You should be in school—you should be a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist.” So that became my raison d’etre: what I wanted to do, what I wanted to become, as opposed to being a dancer.

  By the way, I write poetry. I write lyrics. I do many, many things which really I should have stayed in show business all these years because that’s what I was meant to do. I have had success in my construction career. I have lived a very nice life. So that’s what dancing did for me. Dancing was my college. People say where did you go to school, and I say Grossinger’s … I said I went to graduate school at the Fountain Bleu, Eden Rock … I left dancing at the end of the fifties. You know—started developing my skills in my construction business and moved on.

  So you were not like Johnny in the movie. You did not teach at Arthur Murray’s?

  Arthur Murray was the dancing school for almost everybody in the cities and the towns …

  So what dances were popular during that time period?

  During the period of Dirty Dancing?

  Yes.

  Well the big dance was the Mambo, and the Cha-cha, and the Merengue … Mambo number one. The Cha–cha came along—I would say about 1953–54. Mambo was first—originally, it was the Rhumba. The Mambo started around 1948—places like the China Door, and then of course the place where the Mambo really was fantastic was the Palladium. I was going to the Palladium when I was thirteen years old in Roseland. I was a precocious kid … The Merengue came out of Santa Domingo around the same time. That’s a cultural dance of [the] Dominican Republic. You know, it’s been there a hundred years … The Mambo came out of Cuba … Now what we are talking about is not what happened—or the Dirty Dancing era if you will … The dancers from our time were all very creative. Everybody had a different style … Everybody did different steps. It was a great era. The Mambo jamborees and all the hot stuff that was going on between New York and Miami was fantastic and it created tremendous excitement …

  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, so
metimes 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.