DORKY DANCING

DIRTY DANCING (1987)
dir: Emile Ardolino

DORKY DANCING
MAD # 278, April 1988
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

The movie begins with Baby (Jennifer Grey) recalling her summer at a Catskill resort in 1963. Her voiceover narration only appears at the beginning of the movie. As Baby is walking around the grounds of the resort where she's staying, she comes across a bungalow where the entertainment staff dances after hours. Dirty dances, if you will. She meets Johnny (Patrick Swayze) who dances with her for one song. She later finds Johnny's public dance partner Penny (Cynthia Rhodes) is pregnant. The father is a waiter at the resort and won't do anything about it. Penny needs an abortion, but has to travel a long distance to get one (remember, this is 1963) and won't do it because she can't afford it and she'll miss the big mambo show at the resort. Ever the altruist, Baby offers to pay for it and stand in for her.

The image on the shirt Baby is wearing is of performer Joel Grey, Jennifer Grey's father.

Johnny teaches Baby to dance and takes her out to a field to teach her some moves. They do the dance performance hoping she isn't recognized. On the drive back, they realize they're falling in love.

At the staff bungalow, Penny is in pain from the botched abortion, and Baby gets her father (Jerry Orbach), a real doctor, to save her. After he does, he tells Baby not to hang out with trash like them anymore. She disobeys him and starts seeing Johnny, realizing he's not the tough guy everyone thinks he is.

Johnny is falsely accused of stealing from the resort by management and Baby says it wasn't him. She has to confess that she knows this because she was with him when it happened. Her father won't talk to her now and Johnny gets fired anyway for sleeping with the guests. On the final night of the talent show, Baby's father finds out Johnny didn't impregnate Penny either and has to admit he was wrong all along, and that Baby is now growing up. Johnny comes back and crashes the talent show, bringing Baby up on stage and showing what she can do. Everybody in the room starts dancing in sync to the anachronistic music now playing.

"Nobody puts Baby in a corner" has become the most famous line in the movie, which is weird because it goes by so quickly and is mumbled so you'd hardly notice it was there.