“Dirty Dancing” star Jennifer Gray joins the LA Times Book Club on July 27 to discuss her best-selling memoir, “Out of the Corner.”
Gray will chat with the Times senior entertainment writer and author of “Bachelor Nation” amy kaufmann starting at 7 pm (Pacific time). You may attend book club night in person at the Montalbán Theater in Hollywood. Gray will meet with readers and sign copies of his book.
You can also join virtually at Twitter, Youtube Y Facebook.
In a recent interview with reporter Yvonne Villareal, Gray opened up about the film’s sequel and how her own abortion changed her life. “Dirty Dancing,” set in 1963, a decade before Roe vs. Wade, presents a pro-choice message within her coming-of-age story. A dancer at the resort where Frances “Baby” Houseman (Grey) is staying and her family faces an unplanned pregnancy. Baby borrows money from her unsuspecting father to pay for an illegal abortion.
“I love that part of the story because it was really a feminist movie in a romantic comedy.” gray says. “It was a perfect use of history.”
Here are five things you might not know about Gray and “Dirty Dancing.”
1. Jennifer Gray and her co-star Patrick Swayze had a history. Before “Dirty Dancing,” Gray and Swayze appeared together in the 1984 action movie “Red Dawn.” She played a badass guerrilla. She played a big-hearted cowboy from Texas.
two. what are you reading the way to Kellerman’s. At the beginning of “Dirty Dancing”, Baby, an aspiring Peace Corps volunteer, has her nose buried in a book in the backseat of the family Oldsmobile. She is an accessory called “The situation of the farmer.”
3. “Dirty Dancing” was considered a bold name for a movie in 1987. Gray recalls a long-running contest on the set “to see who could come up with the new title for the movie because ‘Dirty Dancing’ was probably It was never going to last.” she writes in “Out of the Corner”. “In the eighties it sounded too scandalous to be able to reach its main target audience. Censorship officers assumed it was a porn movie.”
4. The soundtrack of the film surprised everyone. “The album should have been the last thing any teenager wanted to buy in 1987: it was a hodgepodge of old songs from the early ’60s, Latin instrumentals, and new material from veteran artists… who hadn’t had Top 40 hits in years.” . wrote rolling stone. But the “Dirty Dancing” soundtrack topped the charts for months, spawning classic hits: “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life,” Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes; “Hungry Eyes, Eric Carmen; “She She She’s Like the Wind,” Patrick Swayze; and “Do You Love Me”, The Contours (1962).
5. Nobody expected a successful movie either. After seeing a disappointing early screening of the low-budget “Dirty Dancing,” his agent told Grey, “No one is ever go see this movie. So you don’t have to worry.”
More than three decades later. The Baby Houseman is still alive, and Gray plans to direct a sequel to “Dirty Dancing.”
“The seemingly timeless and universal appeal of the Baby Houseman story in ‘Dirty Dancing’ is perhaps due to the seismic shift he must go through to discover and reclaim a more authentic and up-to-date self,” writes Gray.
Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray in “Dirty Dancing.”
(live entertainment)
“Out of the Corner” is the LA Times Book Club July Selection.
In August, we will read “California Soul: An American Epic of Cooking and Survival” by Los Angeles chef Keith Corbin. We partnered with Arizona State University to host a book club discussion on August 23 at the historic Herald Examiner building in downtown Los Angeles. Get tickets.
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