By: Joe D'Angelo
Although I never met Patrick
Swayze, I can't help feel a great sense of loss. I admired his talent
and was always awe struck by his abilities. I will miss him. He was
born the same year as my Brother who also passed away in 2006. I think
that maybe why I feel a closer connection to Patrick. What ever the
case. I will miss him and I will always remember the way he influenced
my life.
joe@wolfspider.biz
---------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------
By: Anita Gates
Patrick
Swayze, the balletically athletic actor who rose to stardom in the
films “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost” and whose
20-month battle with advanced pancreatic cancer drew wide attention,
died Monday. He was 57.
His publicist, Annett Wolf, told The Associated Press in Los Angeles that Mr. Swayze died with family members at his side.
Mr.
Swayze’s cancer was diagnosed in January 2008. Six months later
he had already outlived his prognosis and was filmed at an airport,
smiling at photographers and calling himself, only half-facetiously,
“a miracle dude.”
He even went through with
plans to star in “The Beast,” a drama series for A&E.
He filmed a complete season while undergoing treatment. Mr. Swayze
insisted on continuing with the series. “How do you nurture a
positive attitude when all the statistics say you’re a dead
man?” he told The New York Times last October. “You go to
work.”
The show, on which he plays an undercover F.B.I. agent, had its premiere in January and earned him admiring reviews.
A
week before the series began, Mr. Swayze was the subject of a one-hour
“Barbara Walters Special” on ABC, in which he talked about
his illness. “I keep my heart and my soul and my spirit open to
miracles,” he told Ms. Walters. But he said he was not going to
pursue every experimental treatment that came along. If he were to
“spend so much time chasing staying alive,” he said, he
wouldn’t be able to enjoy the time he had left.
“I want to live,” he said.
Shortly
after the interview, he was hospitalized for pneumonia. At least one
tabloid newspaper ran photographs of him in April with reports that the
cancer had metastasized and that his weight had dropped to 105 pounds.
Mr.
Swayze rose to stardom in 1987. He had received attention in several
early movies and in the mini-series “North and South,” but
the coming-of-age film “Dirty Dancing” established him as a
romantic leading man. He starred opposite Jennifer Grey as a young
working-class dance instructor at a Catskills resort who proved to have
more heart, integrity and sex appeal than many of the wealthy guests
with whom he was forbidden to fraternize.
He exhibited
similar emotional intensity in the supernatural romance
“Ghost” (1990), an enormous box-office hit. His character,
a loft-living yuppie banker, is murdered early in the film and spends
the rest of it as a spirit, desperately trying to communicate with his
fiancée (Demi Moore) with the help of a psychic (Whoopi
Goldberg). The film, which also showcased his physical grace,
solidified his stardom.
Mr. Swayze was proud of
“Ghost,” as he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1990.
“I needed to do something that will affect the audience in a
positive way, make them feel better about their lives and appreciate
what they have,” he said.
Patrick Wayne Swayze was
born on Aug. 18, 1952, in Houston, the son of Jesse Wayne Swayze, an
engineer and rodeo cowboy, and Patsy Swayze, a dance instructor and
choreographer. He began dancing as a child and was often teased about
it. But he was also a student athlete, and his dancing career was
hampered by a football injury.
After attending San Jacinto,
a community college in Texas, Mr. Swayze moved to New York to study
dance, becoming a member of Eliot Feld Ballet. He made his Broadway
debut in 1975 as a dancer in “Goodtime Charley” and was
cast in the original Broadway production of “Grease,”
taking over the lead role. (He returned to Broadway almost three
decades later, filling in as the razzle-dazzle lawyer Billy Flynn in
“Chicago” in 2003.)
He made his screen debut in
“Skatetown, U.S.A.” (1979), a roller-disco movie starring
Scott Baio. Looking back on that film, he told the Toronto newspaper
The Globe and Mail in 1984, “I saw that with not too much trouble
I could become a teenybopper star, but I knew if I accepted that, it
would take years to win credibility as a serious actor.”
His
first notable film was “The Outsiders” (1983), a drama
about teenage gangs that starred other newcomers like Tom Cruise, Rob
Lowe, Matt Dillon and Emilio Estevez. The same year he was cast in a
short-lived television series, “Renegades,” a sort of
updated “Mod Squad” about young gang leaders turned
deputies.
His public profile grew steadily, especially with
his appearances in “Red Dawn” (1984), a film about
small-town high school students fighting the Soviets in World War III,
and in “North and South” (1985), a 12-hour mini-series in
which he played a conflicted Southern soldier.
“People
don’t identify with victims,” he said in an interview with
The Associated Press, discussing his “North and South”
character, originally written as a more passive man. “They
identify with people who have the world come down on their heads and
who fight to survive.”
After that came “Dirty
Dancing” and then, just three years later, “Ghost,”
with a few largely forgotten movies in between.
During the
1990s he was a bank-robbing surfer in “Point Break” (1991)
and a drag queen with the daunting name Vida Boheme in “To Wong
Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar” (1995). “To Wong
Foo” earned him his third Golden Globe nomination. (The others
were for “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost.”)
His
portrayal of a noble doctor in Roland Joffé’s “City
of Joy” (1992) was not well received. But then, critics rarely
praised his acting ability. At best he was commended for his athletic
presence and stalwart demeanor.
From 1995 to 2007 he made
more than a dozen feature films, including “Donnie Darko”
(2001), in which he played an obnoxious motivational speaker. In 2006
he surprised many by starring in London as the streetwise gambler
Nathan Detroit in the musical “Guys and Dolls.” His last
film was “Powder Blue,” a drama with Lisa Kudrow that was
released on DVD this year. As a young unknown, Mr. Swayze met Lisa
Niemi, a fellow Houstonian, in one of his mother’s dance classes.
They married in 1975. She survives him, along with his mother; two
brothers, Don and Sean; and a sister, Bambi. Another sister, Vicky,
died in 1994.
Mr. Swayze said more than once that he was
determined not to be typecast. In a 1989 interview with The Chicago
Sun-Times, he said, “The only plan I have is that every time
people think they have me pegged, I’m going to come out of left
field and do something unexpected.”
He also expressed
concern about the dangers of Hollywood superficiality. “One of
the reasons I bought my ranch was because I didn’t want to hear
the hype,” he told The A.P. in 1985, referring to his horse ranch
in the San Gabriel Mountains. He added, “Your horses don’t
lie to you.”
This article "Patrick Swayze, Star of
‘Dirty Dancing,’ Dies at 57" originally appeared at The New
York Times.Patrick Swayze