“The best place to practice lifts is in the water” - Johnny If you are hoping to visit the place where Baby and Johnny fell in love, helpful staff have marked out some of the significant locations so guests can pose for a picture-perfect photo of their favorite recreated scenes. The very table the Houseman family dined at is even available for guests of the hotel to sit at. Some scenes were filmed inside the hotel too, although this was mainly only in the kitchen and restaurant. The hotel exterior wasn’t changed for the film and looks no different today than it did back then.
It’s based in Southwest Virginia which is much further south than New York’s Catskill Mountains where the film was set.įilming commenced in 1986 and went on for a few weeks, as most of the outdoor scenes were shot at the hotel with its stunning architecture on full display. Mountain Lake Lodge is the name of the real resort where the majority of Dirty Dancing was shot. That was the summer we went to Kellerman’s.” - Baby That was before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatles came, when I couldn’t wait to join the Peace Corps, and I thought I’d never find a guy as great as my dad. “That was the summer of 1963-when everybody called me Baby, and it didn’t occur to me to mind. But where is the lake, and where is the rest of Dirty Dancing filmed? This article will tell you where some of the most recognizable scenes were shot. Some people even go so far as to travel to the location where filming took place so they can re-enact the lift in the very lake where Baby and Johnny practice themselves. If you could use a laugh, just type “dirty dancing lift fails” into YouTube and you can amuse yourself for hours watching clips of people attempting the lift from the film’s final scene, only to come crashing back down to reality. The infamous lift performed by Grey and Swayze is a masterpiece that’s been recreated at weddings, in Tik Tok challenges, and in bodies of water around the globe. The unlikely pair perform the mambo together in the final dance of the resort’s end-of-season talent show, wowing the audience and Baby’s family alike. Memories of the property’s long and rich history as a summer camp have been preserved by alumni, which have organized reunions and have a Facebook group with a treasure trove of old photos.Written by Eleanor Bergstein and directed by Emile Ardolino, Dirty Dancing is an iconic 1978 film starring the naïve yet strong female lead, Jennifer Grey, as Frances “Baby” Houseman and her co-star, Patrick Swayze, as a working-class dance instructor, Johnny Castle. It’s scheduled for August 19-20 this year.
The film’s legacy on the property and the local community continues to be celebrated with signs marking different scenes from the film and at a Dirty Dancing Festival that’s been held over the summer since 2010. Whether it’s the shadow of children’s laughter from Camp Chimney Rock, or because of the fictional family summer camp contrived for film – there’s no denying, Firefly Cove at Lake Lure is absolutely enticing.” “Although most of the structures have since been destroyed, Firefly Cove treasures the land’s history and has preserved the remaining ruins of the camp’s gym and dining hall as integral parts of the community.
While the movie is set at the fictional Kellerman’s Resort in the Catskills (the large resort building is Mountain Lake Hotel in Pembroke, Virginia), the shuttered Camp Chimney Rock’s cabins, gym and dining hall, nearby Lake Lure and other scenery were an integral part of the setting for the low-budget film that became a box office hit.įirefly Cove at Lake Lure, the development with houses ranging in price from the $400,000s to more than $1 million, acknowledges the property’s history both as a summer camp and a film set on its website.Ī page about Dirty Dancing notes that there is little left standing of the camp structures: The camp was founded as a boys camp in 1918 but later became coed and closed its doors in 1982. Camp Chimney Rock was closed even before the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing made the North Carolina camp famous, but the lakefront property that was home to the summer camp is now a gated residential community.