Tragic Details About The Cast Of Dirty Dancing

When most people think of the 1987 film "Dirty Dancing," they think of Patrick Swayze lifting a triumphant Jennifer Grey over his head while "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" plays. They think of Swayze in his leather jacket uttering the instantly iconic line, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner," which might just be one of the most swooningly romantic lines ever spoken on film. They think of a summer vacation in the Catskills, an idyllic forest lodge with tennis courts, swimming pools, and all the relaxation you could want.

Rewatch, though, and you'll realize there are things you only notice about "Dirty Dancing" as an adult. The movie is about Baby Houseman (Grey) and her family staying for a few weeks at a resort owned by a friend of her father, and while they're there, Baby gets drawn into the resort's dance culture. There are a number of men who are jerks, to say the least, and there's even an abortion subplot that involves Baby taking money from her father to pay for someone's procedure.

Off-screen, the cast of "Dirty Dancing" have encountered their own troubles. They've nearly all gone on to lead some pretty tragic lives, encountering all sorts of difficulty as they tried to move on in the wake of starring in such a demanding film. Several key cast members are dead, and the ones who are still alive have faced tragedy after tragedy. These are all the tragic details about the cast of "Dirty Dancing."

Patrick Swayze led the cast of "Dirty Dancing" as the ultra-cool Johnny Castle, a dancer who has all of the girls at Kellerman's wrapped around his finger. Everyone wants to be his dance partner because, I mean, look at him. He had the hair, the leather jacket, the muscles, and the kindness, all of which added up to the perfect '80s romantic icon. Swayze later told People that he learned how to be a leading man on the set of this film. "'Dirty Dancing' taught me how to do a love scene," he said. "It's not about a man and a woman jumping each other's bones, it's about two people not being complete until they look into each other's eyes. ... This is why these romantic movies in my life succeeded."

Swayze would go on to quite the impressive career. He led films like "Road House," "Ghost," and "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar," proving that he had dramatic chops far beyond the role of Johnny Castle.

Unfortunately, Swayze was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2008. Speaking with Barbara Walters for ABC News a year later, Swayze reflected on whether he was scared of dying. "I will be so either truthful or stupid as to say no. But then I immediately, when I say that, I have to say yes, I am," he confessed. "You can bet that I'm going through hell." Swayze died later that year at the age of 57.

As Baby Houseman, Jennifer Grey was the other main lead in "Dirty Dancing." She's a teenager who comes of age over this summer, helping a friend seek an abortion and falling desperately in love with Johnny Castle. Grey is still proud of the movie's storyline and told Entertainment Weekly that she carries the film's legacy for all of the co-stars that she's lost along the way. "When we made this movie, it was never in anybody's wildest imaginations that this would ever resurface as a threat to all women, and to the doctors who would help them," she said. "These doctors, their whole job is to save people's lives and to take care of people — and then to turn it into a legal issue is madness. I can't think of too many rom-coms that have this much grist for the mill."

She was already a big star by the time she made "Dirty Dancing," having appeared in teen hits like "Red Dawn" (also alongside Patrick Swayze!) and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." It was on the latter set that she met Matthew Broderick, and the two fell in love, leading to his cameo in "Dirty Dancing." Because of their relationship, Grey was riding in the passenger seat when Broderick crashed his car, killing two other women just days before "Dirty Dancing" premiered. "I thought he was dead. I didn't even know there were two other women who were tragically killed at the time," she later told Entertainment Tonight. "It's just something that you just don't come back from."

Jerry Orbach played Jake Houseman in "Dirty Dancing," Baby's father. He's friends with Max Kellerman (Jack Weston), the owner of the Catskills resort where his family goes on vacation, and for the most part, he seems like a pretty good dad, if a little strict. Orbach was known for playing cops and criminals — typecasting that would lead to his iconic role as Lennie Briscoe on "Law & Order" — so "Dirty Dancing" gave him a chance to flex his acting muscles in a different type of role. As he later told Entertainment Weekly, "Nobody knew how big that movie was going to be, or they wouldn't have given us a little piece of it," he said, suggesting that he'd enjoyed significant royalty payments from the movie's success.

After "Dirty Dancing," Orbach changed "Law & Order" forever. He acted right up until his death in 2004 when he died from prostate cancer. Mourning his loss, Patrick Swayze told the American Film Institute that Orbach guided his performance on "Dirty Dancing." He recalled, "[T]he eyes I trusted — if I was real, and it worked, and I had nailed it — was Jerry Orbach's eyes. ... [H]e'd just say little things like courage, and it gives me goosebumps to say that, you know, because I really, really respected that man." He added, "I think it was a great loss when he passed."

Kelly Bishop played Marjorie Houseman in "Dirty Dancing," wife of Jake and mother of Baby. She'd initially been hired for a much smaller part, but she told The Guardian that she was offered the role of Marjorie once she got to set, and she decided it was time to play her first mom role. Bishop said the cast had no idea the movie would turn out so well. "First of all, we thought the title was really stupid. What is 'dirty dancing?'" she recalled thinking. "Actually, there were some good little stories in there, a wonderful love story, but we still didn't think it was going to be very good. Then they put the music in."

Bishop would go on to win legions of fans as Emily Gilmore on "Gilmore Girls," Rory's loving if occasionally fearsome high-society grandmother. By the time the show returned for a brief revival on Netflix in 2016, Bishop had lost her beloved co-star, Edward Herrmann. Tragically, in 2018, Bishop experienced the loss of her real-life husband, too, television personality Lee Leonard. They'd been married for 37 years when he died.

The "Bunheads" star told People that she turned to a psychic medium to cope with the loss. "[W]e have no idea whether it's true or not," she confessed to People. "But I want it to be. It gives me hope. It gives me hope for the soul."

Cynthia Rhodes was the actor who played Penny in "Dirty Dancing," secretly one of the most demanding roles in the film. Penny is a dance instructor at the resort who is Johnny Castle's dance partner. She is also Baby's friend who becomes pregnant and seeks an abortion, which unfortunately doesn't go well for her. 

Rhodes was the star of some of the most iconic dance movies of the 1980s, playing parts in hits like "Staying Alive" and "Flashdance." "Dirty Dancing," however, was the most difficult shoot she'd experienced, and Rhodes confessed on "Camp Midnite" that it was much rougher than people realized. "[W]e rehearsed every day, for about 10 hours a day," she said, pointing out that her character had been Patrick Swayze's dancing partner for years, so their chemistry needed to be believable. "It was really hard rehearsals. That's why I keep saying I'm never gonna dance again."

Tragically, Rhodes indeed gave up her film career shortly after the difficult experience of making "Dirty Dancing." She starred in several music videos in the years immediately following the movie, but 1991's low-budget film "Curse of the Crystal Eye" was her final role. Rhodes, once one of the most exciting stars of the 1980s, is now retired.

Jack Weston played Max Kellerman in "Dirty Dancing," the owner of the Catskills resort where the Houseman family comes to spend their summer. He's a gregarious guy and a great family friend, but Baby soon stumbles upon him telling the staff that they should seduce the daughters of their guests. Weston was a character actor, a man known for bit parts in hits like "The Thomas Crown Affair" and "Wait Until Dark." And as he told Boston After Dark in 1968, he felt like he'd proved himself after years of solid performances. "Today, you have to be good. You have to hit it right off the bat, or they throw you out," he said. "Acting is a hit-or-miss business."

Weston died tragically shortly after the release of "Dirty Dancing," which was his third-to-last role. He was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1990 and battled the disease for six years. We ultimately lost him in 1996 at the age of 71; surely he should've had many years left of solid, memorable supporting turns that would have made him proud.

Jane Brucker played Lisa Houseman in "Dirty Dancing," Baby's stuck-up older sister. Whereas Baby is freewheeling and excited to be sucked into the dirty dancing subculture at the resort, Lisa is a bit of a stick in the mud. Still, she stuns the resort when she performs a ridiculous ukelele ditty called "Hula Hana," which Brucker wrote herself. As he told Entertainment Weekly, she didn't realize how much the scene resonated until she attended a 10th-anniversary screening of the movie and watched as the audience got excited for her performance before it happened. "They knew what was coming and they laughed and showed appreciation," she said. "Before that moment in the screening, I thought, 'Well, I had a nice little part in a movie once, big deal.' But when that piano started and everybody started laughing, I was like, 'They noticed!'"

As you might imagine from the way Brucker talks about having "had a nice little part in a movie once," "Dirty Dancing" unfortunately didn't lead to bigger stardom for the actor. She acted only intermittently after the movie. "[T]he acting and the auditioning," she once confessed to "The Morning Show," "I just didn't have the heart to keep going out there into my middle age. It was tough and humbling." Brucker's last on-screen role came in 2010 when she had a bit part as a satirical version of herself in a movie called "Bright Day!"

Max Cantor played Robbie in "Dirty Dancing," the smug, smarmy waiter who gets Penny pregnant. He's full of himself — see, for example, the scene in which he tries to get Baby to read Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" — and Baby thankfully gets to put him in his place, over and over again. This was Cantor's first major role after a few made-for-TV movies, but it didn't lead to a massive career the way it did for some of the other stars. Cantor gave up acting in 1989 after he starred in "Fear Anxiety and Depression," his last role.

Instead, he became a journalist. In 1991, he was writing about a gruesome murder case, investigating the death of Monika Beerle at the hands of a serial killer named Daniel Rakowitz. Cantor became deeply involved in the story, telling The New York Press, "There's a lot of very dark people connected with this story and I'm not sure I have the right personality for it. I'm extremely aggressive and I can be very annoying and very persistent and it's not exactly the safest story in the world to investigate."

Naturally, conspiracy theories sprang up when Cantor was soon found dead in his apartment of a heroin overdose, reportedly with a needle still hanging out of his arm. As writer Al Aronowitz wrote, "I immediately feared murder. Hadn't Max expressed such a fear? As a one-time police reporter I knew that a so-called 'hot shot' of undiluted heroin was a standard way of murder in the criminal drug world." He eventually came to believe it was an accidental overdose, tragic either way.

The character of Stan isn't a major role in "Dirty Dancing," but because he was played by beloved character actor Wayne Knight, he's certainly a memorable one. Knight is best known for his comic relief roles in films like "Jurassic Park," in which he gets eaten by a dinosaur while sitting on the toilet, and as part of the cast of "Seinfeld" thanks to his role as Newman. At the time, though, Knight was new to the business, and even though he had a smaller part, he still got to hang out with the rest of the cast during shooting. As he told The AV Club, "All of us are staying in the same place, in this lodge. And they have trucks going down the hill to other places to bring back alcohol, 'cause there's nothing to do there except to just watch what happens when you mix young dancers with alcohol. Lemme tell ya, it's fantastic!"

Knight still acts, but these days he mostly does a lot of voice-over work. For example, in the past few years, he played the Mayor in "The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie," voiced Mr. Hodges in "Urkel Saves Santa," and played a platypus in "Back to the Outback." Knight told TMZ that he fears his loss of live-action roles came about as a result of his dramatic weight loss, explaining, "[It's affecting my career] in a bad way. It takes time. It takes time for people to accept you as you are." Here's hoping Knight finds roles soon worthy of his comedic talent, no matter his size!

Jennifer Grey's tragic car crash with Matthew Broderick isn't the only tragic thing to happen in her life. Shortly after "Dirty Dancing," for example, she got an ill-advised rhinoplasty that rendered her nearly unrecognizable, shrinking down her iconic nose until she looked like a completely different person. Fans everywhere were left wondering, whatever happened to the girl from "Dirty Dancing"? So much for years spent building a career as a recognizable face. "Being misunderstood on a global stage was very painful," she later told The New York Times. "I think people really love black-and-white thinking. I'm into gray; I couldn't have a better name."

In recent years, Grey has also dealt with the collapse of her longtime marriage to husband Clark Gregg. Without giving the public too much of a look into what led to the demise of their relationship, Grey and Gregg posted a joint statement on Instagram in 2020. They announced, "we separated in january, knowing we'd always be a family who loves, values and cares for each other. we recently made the difficult decision to divorce, but we remain close and are deeply grateful for the life we've shared and the wonderful daughter we've raised." Summing up the tragic situation perfectly, they added, "p.s. totally crying as we post this."