This was not surprising, but sad – pancreatic cancer is a painful disease I’ve witnessed firsthand. Rest in peace.
Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into viewers’ hearts with “Dirty Dancing” and then broke them with “Ghost,” died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.
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I’ve already heard from different people who have met him in varying ways – and each confirms what I have always sensed: that he was a humble, classy, stand-up kind of guy!
R.I.P. Dirty Dancer…May God comfort his beautiful wife.
Very sad. May he rest in peace.
…here is a nice memory from Don Barrett at laradio.com 9/16…
I met Patrick Swayze during the marketing of MGM’s Road House. Patrick was a tough bad-ass bouncer in the movie who in real life happened to be a pussy-cat, gracious, kind and professional at all times. I’m guessing he treated us marketing folk like he did his friends.
A press junket is a looooong weekend where a studio invites 150 press people to one central location, usually New York or Los Angeles for marathon interviews. They are grueling as one tv person after another sits in a hotel make-shift studio for 5 – 10 minutes with each principal. Think KTLA/Channel 5′s Sam Rubin when he broadcasts his interviews sitting face to face with the personality and some giant poster between them. On our last day of this weekend, Patrick had 43 separate tv interviews. It was a particularly long day because of technical problems.
Ira Miller, MGM’s marketing guru in New York, had two teenage daughters who were huge Swayze fans. They had seen Dirty Dancing and Ghost dozens of times. We marketing people rarely integrate our personal lives with the task at hand. But Ira wanted to bring his two girls to the hotel that Sunday just to hang around and maybe get to say hello at the end of the day.
After a weekend of working with him, we all fell in love with Patrick. Even though the weekend was long and we were winding down late Sunday afternoon, we decided to bring in the girls for an interview pretending to be from a youth-oriented show. Within a minute Swayze knew that something was up. He stopped the interview and wanted to know who they were. When Ira introduced his daughters, Swayze beamed and told the girls to join him. Meanwhile, the cameras were still rolling. Patrick teased them, posed with them for photos, gave them autographs and stayed an extra 15 minutes. We knew how tired he was but it was just the kind of guy he was. He knew he had been treated with professionalism all weekend and instinctively knew that we would not have needlessly delayed the end of his task if it didn’t mean so much to the girls.
We all became big fans of Swayze that weekend. I’m sure all of us who spent that press weekend with him twenty years ago are especially sad that one of the good guys died far before his time.
That actually brought a tear to my eyes, Johnny. (Especially that last line.) Thanks for sharing!
Maybe if he didn’t smoke two packs a day, he would still be with us. Self inflicted.
and passing judgement on others will give you a longer happier life?