Dirty Dancing (I part) is a 1987 romance film credited as being one of the most watched films of all time. The story details the moment of time that a teenaged girl crosses over into womanhood both physically and emotionally, through a relationship with a dance instructor during a family summer vacation.
In the summer of 1963, 17-year-old New Yorker Frances "Baby" Houseman (Jennifer Grey) is vacationing with her affluent Jewish family at Kellerman's, a resort in the Catskill Mountains. Baby is planning to attend Mount Holyoke College to study economics and then to enter the Peace Corps. She was named after Frances Perkins, the first woman in the U.S. Cabinet. Baby's father, Jake (Jerry Orbach), is the personal physician of the resort owner Max Kellerman (Jack Weston).
Baby develops a crush on the resort's dance instructor Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze), part of the working-class entertainment staff. When Baby is invited to one of their parties, she observes for the first time the "dirty dancing" that the staff enjoys. Later, Baby discovers that Johnny's dance partner Penny Johnson (Cynthia Rhodes) is distraught over being pregnant by Robbie Gould (Max Cantor), the waiter whom Baby's sister Lisa is dating. When Baby learns that Robbie plans to do nothing about the pregnancy, she secures the money from her father to pay for Penny's illegal abortion. In her efforts to help, Baby also becomes Penny's fill-in for a performance at the Sheldrake, a nearby resort where Johnny and Penny perform annually.
A scene from the dancing finale, as Baby overcomes her fears, and trusts both in Johnny, and in herself, to allow him to lift her high in the air. This has been described as "the most goosebump-inducing dance scene in movie history," and the pose is one of the most recognizable images of the film.
As Baby becomes Johnny's pupil in dance, tempers flare and a romance develops. Their performance at the Sheldrake goes reasonably well, though Baby is too nervous to accomplish the dance's climactic lift. When they return to Kellerman's, they learn that Penny's abortion was botched, leaving Penny in agonizing pain. Baby brings her father, who is a doctor, to help, but he assumes that the pregnancy was caused by Johnny, and forbids Baby to have anything to do with him or his friends. Baby, however, defies her father and continues the clandestine affair. The relationship is revealed after Johnny is accused of stealing a wallet from one of the resort guests; to save him from being fired, Baby confesses that he could not have been responsible as she was with him in his cabin that night. Johnny is eventually cleared of the theft charge, but is still fired for having a relationship with a guest. However, Baby's selfless act inspires Johnny to realize that "there are people willing to stand up for other people no matter what it costs them.
