KEY POINTS:
When Dirty Dancing opened in New York on August 17, 1987, screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein turned up to make sure at least one person was in the audience.
In fact, she was so convinced the independent film, made with a budget of just US$5 million, was going to be a complete flop that she went to every screening for five days.
But then, at a cinema on 84th St, her husband pointed something out to her - the girls sitting in the front row knew all the words off by heart.
"Do you know what that means?" he asked. "It means that it's only the fifth day, and they must already have seen it enough times to know the words by heart."
A huge hit was born. Dirty Dancing went on to make an enormous US$170 million worldwide, became the first video to sell 100 million copies and has since been adapted into a stage play-cum-musical that is sold out for months. And it took £10 million at the box office before it even opened in the West End.
But the numbers are only half the story. Dirty Dancing has become a shared rite of passage for every generation of teenage girls since its release.
Its music has been the soundtrack to a million crushes. And its one-liners - "nobody puts Baby in a corner"; "spaghetti arms"; "I carried a watermelon" - so often repeated that they became unassailable totems of adolescent pop culture. Even the laughable 2004 sequel, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, did not dent its appeal.
Which is surprising, given that the original Dirty Dancing is a distinctly middling film. Its plot surrounds Frances "Baby" Houseman (Jennifer Grey), the youngest member of an affluent Jewish family from New York who are holidaying in the Catskill Mountains in the summer of 1963.
There she meets Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze), a dance instructor from the wrong side of the tracks.
Baby soon finds out that after dark these lithe folk get up to all sorts of dirty dancing in the staff quarters.
On its release Roger Ebert, the Chicago Sun-Times' film critic, noted in his one-star review that although "Swayze is a great dancer, and Grey, who is appealing, is also a great dancer ... the movie plays like one sad compromise". Twenty years hasn't dimmed the critics' derision.
But what do the critics know? This film, seldom cited as a masterpiece of alternative cinema, has always been carried on the shoulders of its messianic female fans. The movie sold so many videos because it is the sort of film - think Point Break or Star Wars for boys - that is watched again and again.
Of the dozens of women surveyed for this piece, almost all admitted to watching Dirty Dancing at least 10 times in their life. These are women who are otherwise sane - who hold down nice, middle-class jobs as lawyers and stockbrokers and doctors - but over whom this one film holds extraordinary power. Why?
"I think the secret of the film is that it ends where it does," says Delia Williams, 26, a trainee barrister. "We all know Johnny and Baby won't last.
"But that's fine. Girls like it when something comes full circle and their Dad finally realises they are not such a bad kid ... When Dr Houseman [Baby's Dad] turns to Baby and says "you looked wonderful up there", we all tear our hair out and cry tears of joy ... we're very shallow."
Columnist Claudia Winkelman, one of the first generation of teenagers to fall in love with Dirty Dancing, has a simpler theory. "I used to watch it a lot. What I loved about Jennifer Grey was she wasn't drop-dead gorgeous. And she has no makeover.
"It's a seminal film, just as Top Gun is a great film and The Breakfast Club is a great film. People talk about Citizen Kane, but they're just trying to show off. Everyone knows, deep down, that Dirty Dancing is the greatest film ever made. It's formulaic, but it's a good formula: gawky girl falls in love with cool guy. Cool guy falls for gawky girl. It's cute."
Fans can espouse any number of strong theories about why the film holds such unique appeal. But is it actually the movie itself that keeps the girls coming back for more? Or is there something more interesting at work in the cult of Dirty Dancing?
The West End production holds some clues. Dirty Dancing has been one of the greatest successes in the West End's history. It has become a cult, a fetish, a participation event - a girls' night out.
In the past three months, the Aldwych has become a top stop for hen parties.
Dirty Dancing may not be loved by all of womankind, but its constituency is large enough to support two decades of video and DVD sales and spawn a West End hit. Right at the heart of its appeal is the in-built clubbiness that comes with cult movies.
The phenomenon shows no signs of slowing down, much to the exasperation of its star. "This", said Swayze recently, "is the movie that will not die."
- INDEPENDENT
JOHNNY AND BABY AT A GLANCE
Best one-liners
Johnny: Nobody puts Baby in a corner.
Johnny: Look, spaghetti arms. This is my dance space. This is your dance space.
Baby: I carried a watermelon.
Penny: Oh, come on, ladies. God wouldn't have given you maracas if he didn't want you to shake 'em.
Trivia
The famous scene where Johnny and Baby are practising their dancing and they are crawling towards each other on the floor (pictured above) wasn't intended to be part of the film; they were just messing around and were warming up to do the real scene. The director liked it so much he kept it in the film.
Goofs
Revealing mistakes: When Baby and Johnny are driving, you see their silhouettes in the car, but not their faces. It's obviously a stunt double wearing a bad wig.
Awards
The song (I've Had) The Time of My Life won an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song, and a Golden Globe for Best Original song.
Source: www.imdb.com
