The Malibu Film Society will remember the late actor Patrick Swayze in a benefit screening of the 1990 film “Ghost” this Sunday. The beloved actor-dancer died this month of pancreatic cancer at
age 57.
Winner of two Academy Awards (for Best Screenplay and for Whoopi Goldberg as Best Supporting Actress), “Ghost” cemented Swayze’s leading man stature as a “multitalented performer,” MFS Executive Director Scott Tallal said.
Malibu resident Bruce Joel Rubin was the award-winning screenwriter on “Ghost,” as well as some of the most critically acclaimed films of the past 20 years, like “Dead Poets Society” and “Thelma and Louise.”
In an e-mail to The Malibu Times, he said, “Patrick Swayze not only played a hero, he was one. His final year was lived as courageously as anything we have ever watched on screen.”
Tallal said Swayze’s death prompted the film society members to meet and talk about offering a screening to honor him, as well to “help raise awareness of the disease that killed him, since it has affected other members of the Malibu community.”
Actor-director Michael Landon also died of pancreatic cancer in 1991.
Proceeds from the screening of “Ghost” will benefit the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing research, supporting patients and creating hope for those affected by the disease. Representatives from the nonprofit will speak at the event.
“This is not a ‘benefit of the week’ kind of thing for us,” Tallal said. “It was just the timing with Swayze’s passing. We want to use our grant funding not just for entertainment, but also as an outreach source for our community. We take suggestions from our membership as to what is appropriate for screening and what films might be timely.”
MFS Programming Director David Lyons concurred.
“It seemed important to honor Swayze and to bring attention to his disease,” Lyons said. “‘Ghost’ is also a very interesting subject matter with great performances. We try to show a variety of films to a film-based community here.”
Swayze had appeared on Broadway and in television miniseries before landing a lead role in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film adaptation of “The Outsiders.” But it was his electrifying performance as a seductive, yet principled, dance instructor in the 1987 film “Dirty Dancing” that led to “Ghost” and People magazine’s anointment of him as the “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1991.
The road to this success began when Swayze left Texas for New York in the early ‘70s to study with the Joffrey Ballet and Harkness Ballet schools.
Former Harkness classmate and professional dancer, Laura Cameron Cutler of Dallas, Texas, remembered Swayze as being “so sweet and funny and down to earth.”
“We were both trainees at Harkness on scholarship,” Cutler said. “Everyone back then knew him as ‘Buddy,’ not Patrick. He was a good dancer, though not the very best. But even back then he had a star quality. Almost always, he was the male dancer that was picked to demonstrate something while partnering a girl in the pas de deux (dance for two) class.”
Cutler said that trainees were always scrambling to pay expenses and that Swayze ended up making his first real spending money when he modeled for underwear ads.
“He got teased a lot for that,” Cutler said. “But he always had that broad-shouldered, superhero kind of body that girls liked. I can honestly say that there wasn’t anyone at Harkness, from the dancers to the teachers to the company staff, that didn’t genuinely love him.”
Swayze’s mother Patsy Swayze, a choreographer, owned a dance studio, where he met his wife Lisa Niemi in 1970. They were married from June 12, 1975 until his death Sept. 14.
Swayze, who, except for a time when he dealt with an addiction to alcohol, seemed to maintain an ideal career and life, impacted many during his long Hollywood career.
Rubin said: “His [Swayze’s] last words in ‘Ghost,’-‘The loving side, you take it with you,’-have taken on a whole new resonance with his passing. Not only was Patrick deeply loved, he was deeply loving. He left the world with his heart overflowing. We will miss him.”
The MFS screening of “Ghost” will take place Sunday, Oct. 4 at 6:30 p.m. at the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue. Tickets can be purchased and more information found online at www.malibufilmsociety.org