"When Grey said, 'Actually, it is me,' the woman responded: 'I’ve seen Dirty Dancing a dozen times. I know Jennifer Grey. And you are not her.'... In the two hours she sat on a blue banquette in a Beverly Hills restaurant, matter-of-factly scooping a soft-boiled egg, spreading butter on rye toast and chatting about her memoir, only one person appeared to recognize Grey. The woman’s face lit up, then softened as if she’d spotted an old friend who’d survived a terrible ordeal."
What a terrible mistake it is to think that your off-the-norm feature is dragging down the rest of your good looks rather than what's making you stand out! I was just having a conversation about Gene Tierney, the 1940s actress with an overbite, who said it was in her contract that they couldn't make her get her teeth fixed. Here's her NYT obituary:
With her blue-green eyes, brown hair, prominent cheekbones and what many young men of the 1940's regarded as the most appealing overbite of the day (Miss Tierney said her movie contract stipulated that her slightly protruding front teeth were never to be fixed) she won plaudits for her patrician look but some criticism for her acting.
I think of her as the Freddie Mercury of actresses. Consider whether the thing that seems most wrong about you is your best asset! You're not hurting anyone with your big nose/buck teeth/whatever, and if you change it, you might look boring or lose your amazing singing range. People don't say leave well enough alone anymore. They want to tweak it and then tweak it again and again.
Anyway, why were we talking about Gene Tierney? Because there's a "Young Mr. Ford" collection streaming on the Criterion Channel now, and we watched "Tobacco Road." Here, it can be streamed on YouTube. I've clipped out one crazy scene that features Tierney (sexing it up with Ward Bond):
What a nutty movie. The great director John Ford was dealing with a book that made the poor people seem contemptible and disgusting, and his idea was to make it as funny as possible. It's worth watching to see what an insane mixture ensued. And this was a year after "Grapes of Wrath."
ADDED: In the novel "Tobacco Road," the character played by Gene Tierney in the movie — Ellie May — isn't beautiful at all. She has, as Wikipedia puts it, a "grotesque cleft lip." And speaking of noses, there's another female character — not seen in that clip — who has a facial deformity: Sister Bessie Rice has a nose that "contains no bone, and so when looking straight at her face one can see straight into her nostrils, like a pig." The freeze frame on the embedded video shows that character, played by the Marjorie Rambeau and looking reasonably nice.
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The actor on the porch is Charley Grapewin — he was Grandpa Joad in "The Grapes of Wrath" and Uncle Henry in "The Wizard of Oz."
There is a series on the backstory of movies. I think it is on Netflix. They did one on "Dirty Dancing." Lots of interesting stuff including the fact that the lake was ice cold when they made the movie. The screenwriter resisted many changes. It really is a great movie. But not as good as "Frankenstein, Part II."
"What a terrible mistake it is to think that your off-the-norm feature is dragging down the rest of your good looks rather than what's making you stand out!"
So very true. My wife and I have been consuming a lot of Korean TV shows as our entertainment of choice lately, and since Korea's "beauty standard" is so incredibly strict, we find it difficult to really differentiate a lot of the actresses (we call it "generically pretty") *unless* they have a "standout feature" that breaks them out of the norm, and then we see them as even more attractive *because* of their interesting feature(s), not despite them.
Yikes! At first, I thought the referred obituary was Grey's.
Tobacco Road… Jeeter Lester… “one of these days, Ma, I’m gonna plow that field.”
I remember watching that movie for the first time… during my college years… so many stereotypes and funny lines in that movie… the weed smokers REALLY enjoyed Jeeter’s procrastination, his shiftless, lazy nature and the many funny things he said.
Jennifer Grey was beautiful just the way she was, and I remember the after-pics of her surgery and marveling that she looked like a completely different person. Who knew it would so drastically affect her career.
Jennifer Grey's husband (?) and daughter.
___________
Something about Jennifer Grey... Personality wise? Is there one?
It's interesting that when Grey was on "Friends," she portrayed the old pal of another Jennifer -- an actress whose more subtle facial adjustments probably made her career. (After they both played the role of Ferris Bueller's sister, in the movie and on the short-lived TV show, respectively.)
Being recognized or not: 1. just getting going. Jay Leno as usual has a funny story. Back when he flew commercial, and he was more or less the official "guest host" on the Tonight Show, he knew very well he would sometimes get recognized, sometimes not. Either was fine. Sitting on a plane, the guy next to him makes no comment about Jay's face being familiar. Fine. A guy going by on the way to the washroom: hey aren't you .... Fine. Moving guy has moved on, now the guy in the next seat wants to be part of it. Are you famous or something? Jay: I've just recently become the official guest host on the Tonight Show--you know, Johnny Carson. Rube: I watch that show every night, and I've never seen you. So now Jay is apparently lying. He says he wanted to get the other guy back and say: here, you tell him.
2. Getting older. David Niven claimed that somebody once got into an elevator with him, did a double take, and said "Weren't you David Niven?"
3. Distorting one's appearance, either becoming more unrecognizable than ever, or uglier, or as Ann says, destroying the thing that was your meal ticket. Kurt Russell has said he would join a Hollywood person for lunch, and the person would say: do you notice any difference? Kurt to himself: Notice? You've apparently had a head transplant for Christ's sake. The desperation about looking young made it into Carpenter's "Escape from LA," starring Russell. Also changing the meal ticket, but not appearance: Bob Newhart had people on the "business" side saying a TV show was a good idea, but Bob should probably lose the stammer. Bob: That stammer has paid for a house in Beverly Hills.
The TV show "Botched" is a testament to not leaving well enough alone.
In my blog article What the Hell Happened to Jennifer Grey?, I quote another blogger, who calls himself Lebeau.
[quote]
.... Grey was never really that big of a movie star to begin with. Prior to Dirty Dancing, her biggest claim to fame was a relatively small role in Ferris Bueller. Dirty Dancing could have made Grey into a big star, but for reasons that are perfectly understandable, Grey backed away from her career to recover from the trauma of a lethal car crash [in Ireland with her boyfriend Matthew Broderick in 1987].
... one of the first rules in the movie star playbook is to strike while the iron is hot. If you want to get on the A-list and stay there, you have to capitalize on your hits.
Obviously, Grey failed to do that. But even if she hadn’t taken some time off, it’s questionable whether or not the success of Dirty Dancing would have translated to her career. Look at her co-star Patrick Swayze who continued working steadily after Dirty Dancing. He struggled to capitalize on that success as well. Three years later, he seemed to have missed his opportunity until Ghost rejuvenated his career. And even that was a temporary shot in the arm.
Obviously, things could have been different for Grey than they were for Swayze. But all things being equal, actresses have a harder time in Hollywood than their male counterparts. And Grey didn’t have the typical Hollywood look. ...
Eventually, Grey started a family and that became her primary focus. ....
[end quote]
Jennifer Grey was born to play the role of Baby Houseman in Dirty Dancing.
However, she was born also to be merely a character actress in all the rest of her movies.
I wouldn't recognize her either without her original nose.
I don’t think it’s just her nose that’s been tinkered w/. And not just her- what’s up w/Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Garner? And on and on. Their faces are all tight looking and pulled back. No flesh on anything, anywhere. That’s my observation.
That woman sexing up the old movie screen- is beautiful. Absolutely.
Read the story and requested the book from the library. She sounds too sane for Hollywood.
i had Such a Crush on Jennifer Grey.. Until she cut off her nose, to spite her face.
(truth be told; i still carry i torch for her.. but i miss her nose)
Don't call her "Baby"?
"People don't say leave well enough alone anymore."
Amen.
Do an image search of Gene Tierney...one of the most beautiful women who ever lived.
As for Grey, she was on a short-lived series called 'Red Oaks' that had a terrific cast including Richard Kind, Paul Reiser, and Gina Gershon among others.
It is a very good show that I'd never heard of before...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3973820/
I thought she looked terrific.
I had a good friend in high school who had a 'bump' in her nose. It was sexy as hell and she never had it 'fixed' as far as I know.
So Elly May of the Beverly Hillbillies wasn't the only, nor the first, Elly May character from humble beginnings to grace the screen (movie screen in this case, TV screen for the Clampetts). Interesting enough a coincidence to make me wonder if it isn't.
Gene Tierney is my favorite actress. She was great in "Laura" and "Leave her to heaven." "The Ghost and Mrs Muir" is another favorite. When I was a kid everybody knew the story of her rubella baby.
I did a picture search for Gene Tierney to check out this appealing overbite. From the front, she's lovely and no hint of an overbite, but I couldn't find a single picture in profile. On purpose, I presume.
she became more beautiful, but less attractive
Shame about Jennifer Grey. I have no issues with big noses and agree that a "flaw" can bring out a person's overall beauty in a way that more complete perfection can't.
There's even a Nathaniel Hawthorne story, The Birthmark, about the danger letting vanity decide what you do about it. Or this courageous woman who's made an unfortunate birthmark part of her signature style.
Thanks, Althouse. You helped me make up my mind.
I shall not mess with my alabaster scrotum chasing what's probably going to turn out to be a fad.
The first scripts of the movie Dirty Dancing contained a lot of ethnic elements that ultimately were removed from the movie itself. In particular, obvious Jewish elements were removed. I think that most people who watch the movie have no idea that practically all of the resort hotel's guests are Jews.
Because the movie's producers did not have enough money to pay Patrick Swayze what he was worth, they granted him great control over the script. He improved the script significantly, and his improvements included the removal of the ethnic elements.
(The producers compensated Swayze also by putting his song "She's Like the Wind" into the soundtrack. He must have earned much more from his royalties for that song than he did for playing that movie role.)
When the movie still was being developed and cast, however, the planned movie still was rather Jewish. That Jewish aspect was a big reason why Jennifer Grey was cast to play the role of Baby Houseman. Her big nose and curly hair gave her a stereotypically Jewish appearance.
Also, her father and grandfather had been actors who had played Yiddish roles famously in the Jewish entertainment world. Jennifer's family name might draw a lot of Jews to watch the movie.
Jennifer Grey herself could speak and sing a Yiddish accent quite entertainingly.
The movie does have some Yiddish dialogue, but practically nobody in the movie audience recognizes it, and most of it is spoken incongruously by a Black (not Jewish) actor.
Google Images include almost no photos of Gene Tierney smiling, so no overbite to be seen.
Yancey Ward said...
Yikes! At first, I thought the referred obituary was Grey's.
i started thinking that too; but (fortunately) didn't get past "OMG! NO!! This Can NOT Be!!"
Mike said...
Prior to Dirty Dancing, her biggest claim to fame was a relatively small role in Ferris Bueller
don't forget Red Dawn! Without Red Dawn, there never would have Been a Dirty Dancing
I've never eaten a turnip like an apple. I've never even thought to.
She had a big nose? huh?
Hollywood rots the brain and kills the soul.
@Lloyd W. Robertson
Cary Grant once told a story that was something like... when he said he was Cary Grant and got the answer "You don't look like Cary Grant," he said "Nobody looks like Cary Grant."
Renée Zellweger is another actress who ruined her looks by trying to fit in.
Meryl Streep has the best nose in all of Hollywood.
@AA
Here's the other famous Grant quote I read many years ago:
Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant", Grant is said to have replied, "So would I."
I think she looks lovely as she presently is (which is not to say that she looked bad before or that it was a good idea career-wise). She appears to be comfortable with aging, doesn't have the super-stretched look of many actresses her age. Plenty of worse plastic surgery disasters out there.
Also agree that you should watch Red Oaks, very funny.
'Renée Zellweger is another actress who ruined her looks by trying to fit in.'
Meg Ryan would like a word...
You would have thunk that they would have learned that every plastic surgeon catering to celebrities is a quack, since every job gets botched.
But they never will learn. No, you can't teach a Sneetch.
Jennifer Grey, with her lovely, glorious schnozz, was absolutely beautiful.
So was Renee Zelleweiger, pre-surgery. I thought she was the loveliest thing in Hollywood at that time.
Damn these Hollywood types for providing this shitty advice. I wonder how many other youngsters got their looks - and key differentiators - ruined by Hollywood plastic surgeons and scummy agents and advisors before they even really got their start or got known?
George Harrison looked better before he got perfect teeth, too.
My next book, tentatively titled Why I Regret Writing My First Book, will be an even bigger best seller.
Next great idea, "Hey, lets go get some face tats. They're sure to make us more appealing."
The great director John Ford was dealing with a book that made the poor people seem contemptible and disgusting, and his idea was to make it as funny as possible. It's worth watching to see what an insane mixture ensued. And this was a year after "Grapes of Wrath."
Erskine Caldwell was a great advocate of the plight of the Southern sharecropper. I never understood why he wrote novels that gave rise to so many bad stereotypes.
Responding to Mike Sylvester
One of the things I disliked about Dirty Dancing was the removal of ethnicity. As someone who was a teenager at a Catskills resort in the 60's I felt my story had been appropriated without credit. I have similar issues with Barry Levinson's movies.
A lot of lefty writers hate people for being poor and stupid. People still read Steinbeck instead of Caldwell because he really loves poor, stupid people. Of course I'd lay odds on them both being rich preppies. (I know that about Steinbeck, not sure on Caldwell.) I think contrasting Hillbilly Elegy to Grapes of Wrath shows the difference between living it and thinking about it.
About a decade ago I realized the California surfer dudes and babes were the Joad's grandchildren.
I think she was on that one dancing show a few years ago and I didn't recognize her at all. Please note: I never watched Dirty Dancing. Nonetheless, I thought she was gorgeous with her new look. Still is, apparently.
She had a nose job. Jennifer Grey not looking like Jennifer Grey was a staple on the comedy series It's Like ... You Know 20 years ago. Stupid title, but not a bad show. Chris Eigeman (Metropolitan, Barcelona) made it seem sophisticated. I wish the series had lasted longer, though maybe in retrospect it was just one long joke about Los Angeles.
Now, Joel Grey. I thought I knew you, but I guess I never really did. For every gay teen who perks up realizing he could have a future in musical comedy too, there's probably a straight one somewhere who is crestfallen to realize that he probably never can. Don't disappoint him, Hugh Jackman.
A large or unique nose, or eyes, or ears can definitely give a face more character than the same old look that Hollywood, Madison Avenue and others made the standard years ago. It's changed so much now in advertising. Hollywood is another world, however. Still trying to figure out what 'do the right thing' actually means. Jennifer Grey should have left herself alone.
Truth is that in many cultures around the Mediterranean there are peoples with larger noses, and the right 'unique' nose on the right female face is beautiful. I'm thinking Italians, Greeks, Israelis, and Arabs all around the Mediterranean. I guess I should also include Christian Lebanese, and some Syrians. You get the idea. There are beautiful women all around the Medi and they are not standing in line to cut themselves up.
"You would have thunk that they would have learned that every plastic surgeon catering to celebrities is a quack, since every job gets botched."
80 percent of attractive celebrities who look like they've never had plastic surgery are actually attractive celebrities with excellent plastic surgeons.
Do what you can, when you can, within reason. That said, the normal distribution, while narrow, may not meet everyone's expectations. Case-in-point: elective abortion, transgender conversion therapy, and other choices to process...normalize corruption.
I always get her mixed up with Jennifer Gray.
80 percent of attractive celebrities who look like they've never had plastic surgery are actually attractive celebrities with excellent plastic surgeons
I know a lot of older people who have never had plastic surgery - and never would - who are quite attractive.
People are aging better these days.
A couple of words about Hollywood plastic surgery...Meg Ryan.
This slight imperfection thing only works if the rest of you is preternaturally beautiful. Most of us are the sum total of minor imperfections.......I read the Gene Tierney bio on Wiki. Her life certainly had its high points and blessings. Born beautiful to wealthy parents. Early success in a glamorous career. Love affairs with JFK, Ali Khan, and several Hollywood stars. But then mental illness, a severely disabled child, chronic ill health, occasional suicide attempts. She died of emphysema at seventy one....I'm not sure how the bookkeeping works. Maybe it was, in total, a good and enviable life.
Jennifer Grey, the daughter of an Oscar-winning actor, Joel Grey, and granddaughter of Mickey Katz, a comedian, and musician who might have performed at Kellerman’s had it been a real place.
Everyone knows that "Dirty Dancing" was filmed at Mountain Lake Lodge (not called Kellerman's) off of U.S 460 in Giles County, VA near Pembroke (which serves as the post office), halfway between Pearisburg (the historic marriage capital of the South) and Blacksburg (which used to be home of the Gobblers). A beautiful place with the George Washington National Forest and the New River nearby and the Appalachian Trail if you are up to it.
I lived in Pembroke (Pembrook to the locals) in 1966. My telephone number was 87M - ring three longs and a short.
One of the things I disliked about Dirty Dancing was the removal of ethnicity. As someone who was a teenager at a Catskills resort in the 60's I felt my story had been appropriated without credit. I have similar issues with Barry Levinson's movies. <
The Jewish/Catskill thing was still pretty obvious. Had it been more emphasized, I think the appeal would have diminished. The movie that was mutilated by the removal of ethnic back ground was "A Hole in the Head." Maybe anti-Semitism then was still enough to change the story. It was ruined as the whole story was obviously a Jewish family comedy.
Jennifer Grey looks like a lot of women you see around Rodeo Drive.
I think I missed, which is to say regretted the lack of, borscht belt atmosphere in Dirty Dancing. Could have been a bit, to emphasize the cultural differences between the guests and the regular folks down in staff accomodations with their unrepressed lifestyle(s).
Seen some actresses, and even on ads, who look pretty young even though they've been around for a while. Likely had some work done. But for closeups, they need hand doubles.
Kind of surprising that scene with Tierney made it past the censors. That is a hot scene.
Going to take a cold shower.
>>Gene Tierney . . . was great in "Laura" and "Leave her to heaven."
Gene Tierney was stunningly beautiful in Laura and stunningly beautiful/evil in Leave Her to Heaven.
I read the book version of Laura a few years ago. A bit bizarre. Told by a sequence of point of view characters, including the murderer. A bit reminiscent in that regard of Christy's Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which I also read for the first time just a few years ago.
--gpm
Nobody who was alive in the Sixties would have missed the ethnic element in Dirty Dancing or Barry Levinson's movies. They didn't have to spell it out any more explicitly. The German actor (and Olivier's widow) in Avalon may well have confused younger people though.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel season 2 episode 4 "We're Going to the Catskills" is probably the most authentic (and Jewish) depiction ever of that time and place.
The Gene Tierney scene was definitely sexy but there was a kind of Christina's World to the yearning in her pose. She inspired the male gaze, but she herself was looking to some vision beyond the horizon. ....Jennifer Gray missed out on a few roles, but she did get to mount the winner's podium for awhile. You have impossibly high standards if you expect more than this out of life.
Tobacco Road and scores of books and movies like it were porn for people to mock poor southerners, and they gained in prominence precisely as it became less acceptable to make such mockery of blacks. Hollywood's gotta eat, after all, and so you saw more Ellie Mays and fewer Pinkies. Even highbrow writers got in on the act: Faulkner with Sanctuary, Harper Lee with Mockingbird, and Dickey with Deliverance.
Movies like Poor White Trash and eugenicists, including in the FDR administration, didn't view Crackers, Peckerwoods, etc. as redeemable types: they literally believed they were genetically different from other whites. The eugenics movement focused most of its efforts on sterilizing the offspring of such undesirables. And slave holding and the Klan always were middle and upper class persuits.
Years ago, Mad magazine had a cartoon strip based on what must have been a Hollywood joke from years before. There's a producer (or casting director) talking on the phone in each panel and several years pass between each panel. The producer is saying more or less:
"Who's Jennifer Grey?"
"Get me Jennifer Grey!"
"Get me a Jennifer Grey type!"
"Get me a young Jennifer Grey!"
"Who's Jennifer Grey?"
Now we have a new last panel, Jennifer in an Uber saying:
"No, I really am Jennifer Grey."
She's married to the guy from all those crummy Marvel movies.
At least they aren't starving.
And she didn't bloat up like poor Bridget Fonda.
FDR and Virginia Democrats did clear out the the Blue Ridge to make Shenandoah National Park. Not a great moment in the history of American liberalism. Ditto for the flooded valleys of Roosevelt's TVA.
The 'Dirty Dancing' star opens up about rhinoplasty gone wrong
Why "gone wrong?". It worked. Now she looks "normal," "like everyone else.". She may not like it, but "Mission Accomplished."
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