Have the time of your life visiting ‘Dirty Dancing’ locales.
The great “Dirty Dancing” lake war has been raging almost since that much-loved movie came out 30 years ago this August. It’s one of those rare wars in which both sides can claim a victory of sorts, as I learned this spring when I explored the two main locations where the film was shot.
They’re about 235 miles apart, and each is well worth a visit, especially in this anniversary year. Couple the two and you have the makings of an enjoyable four-day weekend, one that might make you feel the same wistfulness for things loved and lost that is invoked by the movie itself.
“Dirty Dancing” is one of the great sleeper hits in film history, a dance-filled love story starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey that moviegoers, especially women, latched onto with a fervor that surprised even the people who made it. (Will the remake that ABC broadcast last Wednesday generate the same affection? I’m going to guess, no.) Grey plays Baby, a teenager who with her parents and sister vacation at an old-school Catskill resort in summer 1963. There, she falls into a love affair with a dance instructor, Johnny, Swayze’s character, who introduces her to the forbidden joys of steamy, pelvis-grinding dances and more.
The fictional resort of the film, Kellerman’s, is inspired by Grossinger’s, the long-gone Catskill destination, but the movie was actually shot at two locations hundreds of miles south, at Mountain Lake Lodge in southwest Virginia and Lake Lure in western North Carolina. Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote the movie and was one of its producers, told me that the reasons were partly monetary: “Dirty Dancing” was made on a shoestring and New York state’s work rules would have made it expensive to film there.
And so the first sight of “Kellerman’s,” an impressive stone building, is actually the Mountain Lake Lodge, which sits 6 miles up one of the most winding roads you’ll ever drive in Pembroke, Va., about 60 miles west of Roanoke. The current lodge was built in the 1930s, and the property also has an assortment of cabins and other buildings. Bergstein wanted a setting that conveyed the grandeur that Catskill resorts were known for in the middle of the last century, and the Mountain Lake Lodge certainly did that. Moviemaking, though, is a disruptive process, so she also needed a second location where the crew could have more time and latitude. That was provided by a dilapidated former boys camp in Lake Lure, N.C., where there was no active resort business to get in the way of filming.
The famous lake lift
And thus the great lake war. Even if you’ve never seen “Dirty Dancing,” you have seen the gorgeous, sexy image of Swayze hoisting Grey over his head as they stand in a lake, practicing the pièce-de-résistance dance move for a show Baby and
Johnny are to perform at the story’s climax.
Both shooting locations had a lake. People in both claim their lake was the one used for this signature scene. In both, you can take tours where you’ll be shown the exact spot where the filming supposedly took place. The Rutherford County, N.C., guide I grabbed at a highway welcome area when I crossed into the state from Virginia has a photograph on the front in which a couple re-creates the famous shot in Lake Lure.
So which state’s version of events is accurate? Bergstein said she was quite sure the lake lift was shot at the Virginia location. But 30-year-old memories can be squishy, so she had me seek confirmation from David Chapman, the production designer for the film. And after some digging he came up with what he said was definitive proof that Bergstein’s recollection was correct: a sketch from his collection of storyboards for the movie, labeled “Baby Does Lift in Water.”
A doodle on the left side of that drawing indicates the pier at the Virginia lake, and a tiny symbol shows the placement of the camera, aimed at the spot where the actors stood on wooden platforms that had been sunk into the water and were held down with concrete blocks.
Sorry, North Carolina. The defining scene was shot at Mountain Lake in Virginia. And anyone who wants to recreate that scene on hallowed ground associated with the movie, as many fans do, is going to have to go to Lake Lure. Because Mountain Lake has gone missing.
Not-so-scenic gazebo
In the movie, when you see “Kellerman’s,” you see a lovely lake in front of the lodge, vacationers enjoying the water. Now, though, the lodge overlooks a dry lake bed. Mountain Lake is a rare geological specimen that, a video on the lodge’s website explains, drains itself once in a long while as a sort of purifying exercise, eventually refilling naturally. It went dry in 2008. Now experts are trying to nudge it gently back to life, but when I was there in early April it was about as empty as a lake can be.
That is certainly not the sight “Dirty Dancing” fans expect to see, but it’s eerily beautiful. There’s a gazebo on the grounds that locals say was built for the movie by engineering students from Virginia Tech. Several scenes were shot there, overlooking the water. Today, beside the gazebo is a stone memorial to Swayze, who died in 2009 of pancreatic cancer at the age of 57. The boathouse and pier leading to the now-dry ground where the lake lift was filmed is off to the right. To sit in the gazebo and stare out at the lake bed when it’s shrouded in early morning fog is profound somehow, and humbling. A quiet reminder that time passes and carries everything along with it.
The restaurant
Even without its lake, Mountain Lake Lodge makes a lovely destination. You don’t have to ask where the movie scenes were shot; at check-in you’ll get a map. Michael Richardson, the bartender, is a walking encyclopedia of the movie. When he shows you the shooting locations, he doesn’t just describe the scene shot there, he recites all the dialogue.
The lodge has Dirty Dancing Weekends every summer, special packages that provide guests with a tour, group dance lessons (with optional private lessons), a “Dirty Dancing” scavenger hunt and more. Three are scheduled this year — one each in June, July and August — but fans of the movie come all the time. A small cabin in front of the main lodge has an exhibition devoted to the movie and a guest book full of ardent inscriptions.
“I cannot believe I am here, in this place,” someone from Chile wrote recently.
Richardson keeps a list of the different countries fans have come from, and it grows every summer.
“Last year I managed to scratch off Singapore, India and Taiwan in one weekend,” he said.
For some fans, passion for the film leads to petty crime. Richardson said the lodge used to have signs on the property marking the filming spots, but they kept disappearing. And Room 232, where Swayze is said to have stayed?
“The shower curtain has been stolen out of that room I don’t know how many times,” he said.
But one thing every fan can do guilt-free is eat in Harvest, the lodge’s restaurant, where a number of scenes were filmed. It’s an excellent one with a farm-to-table sensibility.
If you’re lucky, the executive chef, Michael Porterfield, who was there during the filming, will stop by your table and tell you about the time he took Swayze to Blacksburg on his motorcycle, down that frightfully winding access road.
The staircase
After two relaxing nights at the lakeless Virginia location, head down Interstate 77 and across North Carolina on Interstate 40 to Lake Lure, where there’s more to do but, for the “Dirty Dancing” fan, somewhat less to see. The lake was created in the 1920s by damming the Broad River, and today it is an active tourist destination that embraces “Dirty Dancing” every bit as much as the Mountain Lake Lodge does.
But the boys camp where most of the filming took place is long gone; it was on the way out even when the film crew was there. Chapman recalled that one of his biggest challenges was to cover up the scar where a road had just been ripped for the start of construction.
“It became a movie about growing grass, because we had to cover that bloody hill with something,” he said. “We got a highway contractor, because they deal with that kind of thing all the time to prevent erosion.”
Those private homes now occupy the filming site, and in the backyard of one are the remnants of a stone staircase that is said to have been used in two of the movie’s best known scenes: one in which Baby helps another character carry watermelons to a dance party, another in which, alone, she gets in touch with her inner dancer on a white bridge at the staircase’s base.
This part of the lake is known as Firefly Cove, and unless you’re a homeowner there it’s now accessible only by a boat tour. On such a tour you might hear that the lake-lift scene was shot in the cove. It wasn’t, but certainly this is the lake to go to if you want to try your own lake lift. This year, come on the weekend of Aug. 18 and you can do it more easily.
That’s when Lake Lure’s annual Dirty Dancing Festival will be, and it includes a lake-lift competition: Whichever couple holds that iconic pose the longest wins. There will also be watermelon-related events, dance competitions and a screening of the movie.
Michelle Yelton, a founder of the festival, said the 2016 edition drew more than 2,000 people. Because this is the film’s 30th anniversary (which Lionsgate marked with a rerelease of the DVD in a commemorative edition), the 2017 festival will no doubt be all the bigger.
The 16th green
One location from the Lake Lure filming that still exists is the green of the 16th hole at the Bald Mountain Golf Course, part of the Rumbling Bald Resort.
In the movie, the green is made to look like a practice green and Baby interrupts her parents, Jake and Marjorie (played by Jerry Orbach and Kelly Bishop), as they’re working on their games to hold a pivotal conversation with her father.