Death of a Dance Whore

by Pa Rock
Obituariest

Patrick Swayze referred to himself and his beautiful wife, Lisa Niemi, as a "couple of dance whores," ostensibly because they loved to dance and they were really good at it. The couple met at his mother's dance studio in Houston when he was nineteen and she was fifteen. They married four years later, and remained married for the remaining thirty-four years of his life. That in itself was quite a Hollywood accomplishment!

Swayze, who died earlier this week after a two-year struggle with pancreatic cancer, grew up wanting to be a professional ballet dancer. Injuries put that goal beyond his reach, but even so his athletic prowess and sheer ability to move his body to music made him the most memorable Hollywood hoofer since the likes of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. (Sorry, Travolta, you are nowhere near their league!)

Patrick Swayze was able to regroup after the loss of his ballet dream and establish a very successful career in film. He was an acknowledged member of the "brat pack" that included such young Hollywood favorites as Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, and C. Thomas Howell. Swayze had a wide ranging acting ability, playing characters as diverse as a bad boy dance instructor, a ghost, a drag queen, and a pedophile.

There have been polls all over the Internet yesterday and today rating the public's favorite Patrick Swayze films. I have seen polls proclaiming Ghost, Dirty Dancing, Red Dawn, Point Break, and even Road House as the best Swayze films ever.

My own personal favorite Patrick Swayze movies are: #5: To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar; #4: Ghost; #3: The Outsiders; #2: Red Dawn; and, #1: Dirty Dancing. It was in Dirty Dancing where Patrick Swayze uttered one of the most famous lines in filmdom: "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

Baby is out of the corner, and Patrick is out-of-body, probably much as he was in Ghost. Regardless of his current ectoplasmic makeup, however, Patrick Swayze is out there somewhere - and he is dancing! Once a dance whore...always a dance whore!