Dirty Dancing - Legacy

Legacy

Jennifer Grey had a rhinoplasty in the early 1990s, which changed her nose and made her face nearly unrecognizable from her "Baby" character. To this day she has never been able to find a role which matched the success that she had in Dirty Dancing.

As for the studio, despite the film's huge monetary success, Vestron followed it up with a series of flops, and ran out of money. Vestron's parent company Vestron Inc. went bankrupt in 1990, and was bought out in January 1991 by Artisan Entertainment for $26 million. The rights to Dirty Dancing now rest with Lions Gate Entertainment, which purchased Live Entertainment (by then named Artisan Entertainment) in 2003.

Jerry Orbach, already known as a successful Broadway actor, continued in different genres. He was the voice of the candelabrum "Lumiere" in the 1991 Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast, before taking on his best known role, detective Lennie Briscoe on the TV crime drama Law & Order, which he played from 1992 until his death in 2004.

Choreographer Kenny Ortega went on to choreograph other major pictures such as the 1992 film Newsies and starting in 2006, the High School Musical series. He also became a director of film and television, including several episodes of Gilmore Girls, in which Dirty Dancing's Kelly Bishop had a starring role.

Lake Lure celebrated its Dirty Dancing legacy in the 1980s with the Dirty Dancing Revue featuring the A-Lure Dancers, legendary soul singer Maurice Williams who is best remembered for his Dirty Dancing hit "Stay", and Billy Scott and the Party Prophets. Today, fans can recreate their favorite Dirty Dancing moments at the annual Dirty Dancing Festival at Lake Lure, which includes a lakeside film screening, 1960s soul bands, watermelon games, dance lessons, performances and the highly-entertaining lake lift competition.

Kellerman's Hotel is the Mountain Lake Hotel, and it now offers "Dirty Dancing Weekends". While little is left to see in Lake Lure, fans can enjoy a cruise on the Lake Lure Tours covered pontoon boat that takes them by the Firefly Cove development pointing out the scene locations and the location of "the lift." The Bald Mountain Golf Course is open for golfing and fans can visit the placard dedicated to the film site on hole #16.

Various images and lines from the film have worked their way into popular culture. Johnny Castle's line, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner", has been used in song lyrics, and as the title of the "Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner" episode of the TV series Veronica Mars, and the title of a Fall Out Boy song. It was also parodied in the webcomic Looking for Group where Richard, one of the primary characters, uttered a variation involving his own name, and in Family Guy, where the scene is parodied by Baby's parents questioning Johnny due to her youth. Family Guy parodies the scene where Baby first sees Johnny dancing with the staff. "Nobody puts Baby in a corner" was quoted in Supernatural, when Dean says the line concerning his beloved Impala and his brother Sam retorts that the line is from a Swayze movie, Dean responds: "Swayze always gets a pass". In the TV series How I Met Your Mother, Barney Stinson attempts to pass off the Dirty Dancing story as the story of his own loss of virginity because he is ashamed of his actual story; the original "Love is Strange" scene is shown with Barney replacing Johnny. Following the 2012 U.S. presidential debates, the line sparked the popular internet meme "No one puts Baby in a binder", alluding to Republican candidate Mitt Romney's remarks regarding commissioning "binders full of women" candidates for government positions.