| Eleanor Bergstein | |
| Birth Name: | Eleanor Bergstein |
| Birth Date: | 17 April 1938 |
| Birth Place: | New York, New York, U.S. |
| Subject: | American film |
| Alma Mater: | University of Pennsylvania |
Eleanor Bergstein (born 1938) is an American writer, known for writing and co-producing Dirty Dancing, a popular 1980s film based in large part on her own childhood.[1]
Bergstein was born in 1938 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. She has one older sister, Frances, in her Jewish family. Their father, Joseph,[2] was a doctor who left much of the care of the girls to their mother, Sarah. The family spent summers in the luxury resorts Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel in the Catskill Mountains; and, while her parents were playing golf, Bergstein was dancing.[3]
Bergstein was a teenage Mambo queen, competing in local competitions. While at college, she worked as a dance instructor at Arthur Murray dance studios.[4] Bergstein graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1958.
In 1966, she was married to Michael Paul Goldman and worked as a novelist, including Advancing Paul Newman. This novel contains many of the themes of her famous movie. She also tried her hand at scriptwriting and had success with It's My Turn, a film starring Michael Douglas and Jill Clayburgh. During production, the producers cut an erotic dance scene from the script. That sparked Bergstein into writing a more extensive story, focusing on "dirty dancing".
The movie Dirty Dancing was released in theaters in 1987.[5]
In 2004, Bergstein also adapted the movie into a stage version of Dirty Dancing, which became a musical.[6] The show opened in 2004 in Australia.