I first saw Dirty Dancing when my sister and I went to Space Camp. The counselors needed something to occupy the dozens of pre-teens milling about the camp’s main room, restlessly waiting until our dorms were ready, so into the VCR went this movie I had heard about but never seen. Of course, it’s pretty hard to concentrate on dialogue when a bunch of sweaty, bored kids are yelling and talking and singing along, so the only part I really remember was when Johnny and Baby started making out and a camp counselor leapt to the TV and held a piece of paper over the screen. Naturally, that only served to ensure that all of us were now focused on the screen and very curious about what was behind that sheet of loose-leaf notebook paper.

But the most controversial aspect of the movie unspooled without interference: Penny’s abortion. Which, as Eleanor Bergstein, the film’s writer and co-producer, pointed out in an interview earlier this year with Gender Across Borders, was an integral plot point:

Right before we opened, we were told there would be a national sponsor, and we were very excited, because we thought that meant big time – and that meant a tube of acne cream on every poster. And I was horrified. And I couldn’t do anything about it. And then the sponsors found that there was an illegal abortion, and they were worried that there would be a backlash, or that the Catholic Church would protest, so they came to me and said, “We’ll give you money to go back into the editing room and take the illegal abortion out.” And I said, “Oh, I’d be so happy to, but as it happens, it’s so into the plot that if I took it out, there’s no reason for Baby to learn to dance. There’s no reason for her to dance with Johnny, to dance at the Sheldrake, to fall in love with him, to make love with him, so the whole plot falls apart, so I can’t do it.” And they said, “Oh jeez, too bad,” so the tube of acne cream disappeared, to my joy, and [the abortion] stayed in.”

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