The Time of My Life

Our tour down editing error lane is about to conclude, as we’ve reached the big dance, the final show, where people bring their own arrangements. But there are a few more bloopers to come, starting with Johnny commandeering the stage. If you pay close attention, as Baby stands alone in the middle of the stage and Johnny walks the microphone stand to the curtained edge, he begins to remove his leather jacket. A second later, as Billy hurries to place the record on the turntable, Johnny is still wearing the jacket and begins to remove it again, this time succeeding.

Next, as Johnny and Baby are dancing in earnest on the stage, which is the focus of everyone’s attention, there’s a brief moment when his shirt comes untucked, exposing the flesh on the side of his midriff. Then his shirt is again fully tucked back into his pants, though the pair haven’t skipped a beat in their dance routine. Perhaps the magical belt helped. This gaffe is quickly followed by the sweaty-head moment. Looking at Patrick Swayze’s head as he and Jennifer Grey glide across the stage, you’ll notice that his hair is quite dry. Yet after his dramatic leap off the stage, as he turns to look back at Baby and dance solo down the aisle, his hair is quite drenched in perspiration. This anomaly dates to Patrick Swayze’s fall from the log in Virginia. As mentioned previously, the leap was the last scene he filmed, though it did take him several tries to land it right, each one more painful than the last. His head is sweaty because he has been doing everything but leaping to get those shots. The stars and crew of Dirty Dancing worked long hours to complete the film in a relatively short amount of time.

Last are the dirty knees. Johnny, having danced his way down the aisle, falls to his knees, pivoting and gyrating on the floor for a moment. When he pops back up to his feet, if you look at the knees of his pants, there’s a whitish residue on both his knees. Moments later, as he dances back up the aisle toward Baby, followed closely by the staff kids, his pants are back to a pristine state. Then, briefly, his shirt once again becomes untucked in the same place it had earlier, once more exposing skin, before retucking itself just in time for him to catch Baby for the movie’s climactic and iconic lift scene. Johnny truly did own one magical belt.