Eleanor Bergstein wrote Dirty Dancing, the 1987 hit movie that's recently been adapted for the stage. It's been mounted in Toronto now after blowing away Sydney, Hamburg and London. Michael Posner writes about this in Wednesday's Globe and Mail:

All of this is the result of a low-budget ($5-million (U.S.)) independent film produced by a small video company with two then unknown actors (Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey), after having been turned down by every Hollywood studio. Its worldwide gross is now in excess of $300-million, while the album of its songs initially spent 18 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard and ultimately sold more than 44 million copies. Ironic, insofar as when Bergstein, a novelist and screenwriter (It's My Turn), was demonstrating dirty dancing on studio desks trying to sell the film, everyone told her that "kids won't like this music."

Equally interesting is that Bergstein refused a wave of initial offers to create a stage version. It was a Springsteen concert in NYC the year after 9/11 that inspired her to reconsider and try to create "a community experience with all the lines of ecstasy and sorrow."

This article really made me wonder. Why didn't even one studio recognize the potential of this script? How did Bergstein manage to persevere in the face of such major league rejection? Then, in the wake of her tremendous success, what gave her the conviction not to cash in with a stage version? It's a heartening story; Bergstein strikes me as an amazing person and artist.