#Eddie jemison in dirty dancing movie#

People say, ‘Oh, do I remember those days, they were the best of times.’ This is all I keep hearing. People saw it as real, during a time that they may have lived, coming up to the Catskills where there was this hotel and all the others.

#Eddie jemison in dirty dancing movie#

Why did this movie about a Catskills resort resonate? There was enough stuff that went on, they could have given the movie an R rating. There were some things that went on! More that we didn’t put in. Nearly every line I said to Eleanor they put in there. I knew every single moment of that movie. So you’ve only seen the 1987 original movie once? I can’t dance and look at the person they got to replace Patrick Swayze.′ The real “Baby” (Eleanor Bergstein) calls me up the night (it aired), and says thank god we had nothing to do with it.

I wrote as much as I could.ĭid you see the television remake of “Dirty Dancing”?Įverybody told me how horrible it was. I showed her all the things that happened and where they happened and how it happened. We walked all around the Grossinger grounds. That summer I took her all over the place. You’re still here?′ She said she had an idea. She says, `After all these years I’ve been looking for you. I get a call from Paul Grossinger, who says, ‘Jackie, you got to come up to the office.’ This is 1985. I said, `Oh my god, that’s the one taking money out of the cabana and stealing.’

One night we go to the Evans Hotel, in the movie they call it the Sheldrake and the Evans was in Loch Sheldrake, and I see her take a fur coat off a chair. Both of us had been teaching this couple. We caught the little couple that was stealing also. He was the one that was also blamed for all the robberies. He’d been dancing since he was a young guy. That was Steve Schwartz, but he went by Steve Sands. Her love of the Catskills, dancing and a little film she'll helped inspire.īelow are excerpts from my 2017 interview with Jackie on the 30th anniversary of the film: That's the way most of us will remember Jackie. When I spoke to Jackie in 2017 she was still giving dance lessons every Monday night at Liberty Fitness Center and talking of old times. Jackie provided the stories of a life working in a Catskills hotel, balancing the needs and relationships of both guests and staff.īorn Elizabeth Horner in Gallipolis, Ohio, Jackie started dancing at 3 and eventually became a June Taylor dancer. The characters of Baby and Johnny were influenced by both Bergstein and Horner. It was a job that allowed her the chance to meet and give dance lessons to the greatest stars of show business and sports, as well as tens of thousands of guests, including Eleanor Bergstein, who decades later wrote the screenplay for “Dirty Dancing.”īergstein was the real life “Baby” in “Dirty Dancing” and took lessons from Horner at Grossinger’s. Jackie said she cried the first and only time she saw the film.įrom 1954 until the hotel closed in 1986 Jackie was the dance instructor at Grossinger’s resort. “Dirty Dancing” is a coming-of-age story about how a nice Jewish girl in 1963 meets a warm-hearted gentile dance instructor at an idyllic Jewish resort in the Catskills. Jackie herself was a beloved dance instructor, early on in the Catskills, and later in life at Liberty Fitness Center.ĭespite the film’s popularity - and her association with it - Jackie said she couldn’t watch it. Jackie Horner, who was the inspiration for one of the most beloved films of the 1980s, “Dirty Dancing,” died Saturday at Orange Regional Medical Center.