Five years ago, my family spent several days at Kellerman’s Resort. (You know, the place where Frances “Baby” Houseman took part in that fabulously dirty dance and ended up jumping into the up-stretched arms of Johnny Castle.)
For those of you too young or too cinematically snobbish to have seen “Dirty Dancing” — the surprise movie hit of 1987 — you can quit reading and go check out some opera special on Public Television. For the rest of you who know never to “put Baby in the corner” or that she once said, “I carried a watermelon,” read on.
My wife, Ann, loves that movie.
So, for her 70th birthday celebration, our children and their spouses gave her a surprise family vacation at Kellerman’s — depicted in the movie as a family resort in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York where all the dirty dancing took place.
Our daughter Rachel searched the internet for some Catskill resort where the movie might have been shot. But, when she finally located “Kellerman’s,” it was at the top of a mountain high above Pembroke, Virginia, and was called Mountain Lake Lodge Resort.
Nevertheless, when our cars reached the top of the mountain — to Ann’s total surprise — there it was — Kellerman’s Resort in nearly every detail from the movie filmed 30 years earlier.
Seems the Catskills had proven too expensive for the producers of the low-budget movie, but they found Mountain Lake Lodge a cheap alternative. Even at that, finances were so tight they could only afford to rent it for six weeks to film outdoor scenes and scenes inside the lodge. The filming of most of the interior scenes had to be moved to an even less expensive location — Camp Chimney Rock for Boys and Girls at Lake Lure, North Carolina.
And the problems didn’t end there.
Big movie stars were not in the budget, so the producers had to go with Patrick Swayze to play Johnny Castle. Swayze had previous supporting roles in movies and on television, but was far from famous.
After an extensive search, producers found Jennifer Grey to play Frances “Baby” Houseman. Grey’s only film experience of note had been in a supporting role in the teen comedy, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” released in 1986.
Grey was not a dancer. Swayze was a trained dancer but had not danced for many years after suffering an injury that nearly required the amputation of his left leg at the age of 18. Both were odd choices for a movie built around dancing, but they could be worked into the budget.
And — about all that music accompanying all that dancing — there was none. A deal with the owner of the music chosen for the dance scenes was not reached until nearly the end of filming. Dancers danced to the beat of a metronome and the real music had to be added later.
Oh, yeah — “Dirty” had to be removed from the working title of the production in order to close the deal to film at Mountain Lake Lodge. The owners feared a rebellion from Baptist fundamentalists in the surrounding communities if word got out about “Dirty Dancing.” The title was changed to “Dancing” — also a sin to many of the Baptists, but considered a “forgivable oops” rather than an immediate trip to hell.
As for Ann’s birthday celebration at “Kellerman’s,” everything was nearly perfect — the iconic stone lodge, the spacious dining room with food wealthy guests from New York would have enjoyed and reminders of the budding, rebellious romance between Baby and Johnny around every curve of the footpaths.
The lakeside gazebo where guests danced was still in in good shape. A few canoes still lined the shore where the lake used to be.
WAIT. Used to be? No lake?
Yep, it seemed the 50-acre lake — only one of two fresh-water lakes in all of Virginia — had disappeared in 2008, draining out through fissures into an underground aquifer. While we were there, it was totally dry.
(Geologists say the lake fills and drains on regular 400-year cycles, for reasons not totally understood. By 2020, I am told, a third of the water was back and Mountain Lake is expected to refill completely in a few years. But, if you plan a visit, don’t wait 400 years or it is likely to be totally dry again.)
After breakfast at the lodge on the day we left, I asked Ann to “dirty dance” with me to commemorate the trip. I felt the request was daring for a United Methodist minister’s daughter to accept, but she agreed. (Since we had been married 49 years at the time, I doubted even fundamentalist Baptists could muster a protest march.)
So we danced as dirty as we could and at the end I suggested we try the famous “lift” where Baby leapt into the uplifted arms of Johnny and he lifted her high over his head.
I braced myself and flexed my knees as if I was about to shoot a basketball from the 10-second line, figuring the momentum of her running jump would make up for my 72-year-old arm strength.
Turned out her foot speed was questionable and her jump lifted her only about four inches. Her body slammed into my chest like that of a football fullback going “through the line” and we both banged into a wall. But, I am proud to say we did not fall down and I suffered only a minor injury to the forefinger on my left hand when I tried to gasp her by the waist.
Sometimes people have to take chances to reach fame and glory.
The producers of “Dirty Dancing” accomplished that against all odds.
Ann and I? Not so much.
Still, what better place to fail than at Kellerman’s in the beautiful Catskill Mountains?
