Fun Facts About the Movie

‘Dirty Dancing’ is loosely based on the screenwriter’s life

While Dirty Dancing is not autobiographical, the film was inspired by many elements from screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein’s real life. Bergstein did spend summers in the Catskills with her parents — though she wasn’t there in 1963, the year the film is set — her father was a doctor and she went by the nickname “Baby” until she was in her early twenties.

“There are many, many, many things about my life that are in it — my family, my sense of this resort that I saw as a 12-year-old with my nose pressed to the dance studio, and I imagined the rest — but this is not the story of my 17th summer,” Bergstein told Woman’s World in 2024. “It’s not an accurate story of my life, it just uses lots of elements of my life.

And, yes, Bergstein did like to dirty dance.

“I was dirty dancing from the time I was 10,” she told blogger Carrie Polansky in 2010. “I got dirty dancing trophies that would turn your hands green if you touched them.”

Patrick Swayze co-wrote “She’s Like the Wind” for a different movie

Among the film’s original songs were three that went on to become huge hits.

Swayze co-wrote and performed one of them, the ballad “She’s like the Wind.” Though he originally intended the song for his 1984 film Grandview, U.S.A., it didn’t make that cut. But he brought it to Gottlieb, who loved it.

Eric Carmen’s “Hungry Eyes” and Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes’s “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” were two of the others, and the latter went on to win an Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy.

As for the rest of the mega soundtrack, the crew had to scramble to afford the music that Bergstein insisted on including. Eventually, all of the songs she asked for made it into the film, thanks in large part to the help of music producer Jimmy Ienner.

Since its release, the Dirty Dancing soundtrack has sold over 30 million copies.

“(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” was chosen just before the finale scene was filmed

It was down to the wire when the filmmakers picked “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” for the film’s final scene.

The night before shooting the finale, they went through a bag of cassette tapes that had been sent over to them, all of which contained original songs submitted for the movie.

“The last cassette….Well, that was it,” choreographer Kenny Ortega told Netflix’s The Movies That Made Us in 2019.

The song was co-written by singer-songwriter Frank Previte, who also wrote “Hungry Eyes.”

Patrick Swayze’s eyes were a big reason he was chosen to portray Johnny Castle

The filmmakers went through tons of photos of actors’ eyes to find their ideal Johnny Castle.

“I wanted hooded eyes,” Bergstein said in The Movies That Made Us. “So we went through picture after picture and I said, ‘Ah! Those are the eyes I want.'”

But they kept auditioning other actors because Swayze’s resume stated “no dancing” — despite the fact that his mom was one of the best-known dance teachers in Texas and he was a professionally trained ballet dancer. The note was there because Swayze had suffered a knee injury playing high school football and didn’t want to audition as a dancer due to that.

Jennifer Grey was 26 when she portrayed 17-year-old Baby

Dirty Dancing is a coming-of-age story about 17-year-old Baby, but Grey was 26 when she nabbed the leading role. Despite that age gap, Grey was convincing as a teenager.

“Jennifer Grey was pushed into the audition room by her father, and we were in love,” the film’s producer Linda Gottlieb told The Movies That Made.

“As she walked in, she said, ‘Wish me luck, Daddy,’ and she just closed the Baby’s face in my mind, and from that moment on, she was the only person I wanted,” Bergstein added.

Sarah Jessica Parker was up for the role of Baby

Before Grey became Baby, the casting director looked at 127 other people for the role. Winona Ryder was considered for the part, and Kyra Sedgwick was among the screen-testers, but the final two actresses considered were Sarah Jessica Parker and Grey. Ultimately, Grey and Swayze’s chemistry during their screen test sealed the deal.

Billy Zane was up for the role of Johnny Castle — but the screenwriter always wanted Patrick Swayze

Among the actors who auditioned were Benicio Del Toro, Val Kilmer, Adrian Zmed and Billy Zane. The Titanic star got to the final screen-test stages, but Bergstein told The Movies That Made Us that he “danced like someone who looked like he had learned to dance wonderfully for his bar mitzvah.”

But Bergstein always wanted Swayze, telling Cosmopolitan in 2017 that “it was always him and only him.”

“We went after him, and when I met him, I said, ‘Now that I know you, if you decide not to do this, it’s hard for me to think that I’ll make the film.’ I really felt that way and I still do,” she said. “So it was always Patrick, only Patrick, the only one we offered it to, and a wonderful, brilliant, good man.”

Patrick Swayze had to convince Jennifer Grey to act opposite him in ‘Dirty Dancing’

Grey and Swayze had worked together on the 1984 film Red Dawn and had not gotten along.

“She begged us to have anyone but Patrick,” Bergstein told The Movies That Made Us of Grey’s animosity toward her co-star.

During an appearance on The View in 2022, Grey explained that Swayze had played “macho” pranks on her and others on set, and she had “enough with him.” Grey was opposed to having Swayze sign on opposite her until he took her aside during their screen test for a heart-to-heart.

“He pulled me down the hall and said to me, ‘I love you, I love you, and I’m so sorry. And I know you don’t want me to do the movie,’ ” Grey said. “And he got the tears in his eyes. And I got the tears in my eyes — not for the same reason. I was like, ‘Oh, this guy’s working me.’ And he goes, ‘We could kill it — we could kill it if we did this.’ ”

Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey’s clashes helped fuel Johnny and Baby’s onscreen portrayal

Though they worked things out enough to film together, the pair still clashed on and off-screen.

Swayze had been a dancer for his entire life, much like his on-screen character, while Grey had very little experience. That meant that all of their pent-up frustrations were channeled into their roles.

“He felt like she was a wimp,” Gottlieb told HuffPost in 2012. “She was genuine, naïve; you would do a take eight times and Jennifer would do it differently every time. Patrick was a pro; he would deliver the same thing again and again. She would cry easily, she was emotional and he sort of made fun of her. He was a macho guy.”

Their more lighthearted moments were caught onscreen too. The famous “Love Is Strange” scene, for instance, was improvised after director Emile Ardolino saw the pair fooling around on the floor during a warmup.

“Both of them brought so much every day,” Ortega told PEOPLE in 2017. “Sometimes, it was conflict; sometimes it was love. There was something there between the two of them that was unexplainable. They were human fireworks.”

Kelly Bishop was not originally cast as Baby’s mother

The film was set in New York but filmed in the South

The lake they filmed in was dangerously cold

Though the film took place in the summer, the movie was filmed during October. Leaves were changing colors and had to be painted green, and the water was so cold that the actors’ mouths were blue, which is why there are no close-ups on them.

“It was fall in North Carolina, and that water was really cold,” Ortega told PEOPLE. “Jennifer actually got hypothermia.”

Patrick Swayze hated the film’s most iconic line

“Nobody puts Baby in a corner” has become such an iconic line, it’s nearly as famous as the film itself. But not everyone is attached to those six words — including the screenwriter.

“I think it’s really something that I was not deeply committed to. I don’t think it’s a great phrase,” Bergstein told The Movies That Made Us, adding that Swayze “thought it was the stupidest line in the world, and I think he was right.”

Bergstein’s fellow filmmakers weren’t all sold on the line either, citing everything from it being “ridiculous” to the fact that there wasn’t a corner but a pillar behind Baby.

As for Swayze, he’s said directly that he “hated that line,” explaining to the American Film Institute that was “only because I didn’t understand what was behind it.” Once he dug below the surface, “when I went up and said that to her, I truly believed it. But up until that point, and up until I found that background and that passion as an actor, I hated that line and I was going to do anything in my power to get it cut.”

The screenwriter was asked to cut the abortion subplot

When a national sponsor was set to come on board, Bergstein was asked to cut the subplot of Johnny’s first dance partner Penny Johnson (Cynthia Rhodes) getting an illegal abortion. The screenwriter refused, telling the producers that “everything will fall apart” if she did so, as the storyline was integral to Baby meeting Johnny and all the dominoes that fell from there. With that, the sponsorship fell through.

“My sense is if you’re going to put something like this in, you better rhythm it so precisely into the plot that when the day comes — I sound like The Godfather, the day will come — when they ask you to take it out, you can’t without the movie falling apart. Because if it can be taken out, it will be,” Bergstein told Cosmo.

Patrick Swayze hurt himself during filming

Swayze refused to use a body double during the scene when the pair dance on a log over a ravine. His injury ended up holding up production for the film, which already had a minuscule budget. It also aggravated a knee injury he sustained while playing football in high school, making that final dance all the more difficult for him.

The big lift at the end was never rehearsed

Grey was “too scared” of the big lift at the end, so she wouldn’t practice it.

“I only did it on the day I shot it,” Grey told The Guardian in 2015. “Never rehearsed it, never done it since.”

She explained her logic to E! News in 2024, noting that she gave a “hard no” to running through the move because back then, she was “really scared and protective” of her body. But when it came to filming, Grey had no choice but to, well, film.

“If you’ve ever tried it, you’d understand what it means to do it,” she told the outlet. “It was one of those game-day things.”