LOS ANGELES — Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into viewers’ hearts with “Dirty Dancing” and then broke them with “Ghost,” died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.
Fans of the actor were saddened to learn in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from a particularly deadly form of cancer.
He had kept working despite the diagnosis, putting together a memoir with his wife and shooting “The Beast,” an A&E drama series for which he had already made the pilot.
A three-time Golden Globe nominee, Swayze became a star with his performance as the misunderstood bad-boy Johnny Castle in “Dirty Dancing.” The coming-of-age romance, starring Jennifer Grey as an idealistic young woman on vacation with her family and Swayze as the Catskills resort’s sexy (and much older) dance instructor, made great use of both his grace on his feet and his muscular physique.
Swayze performed and co- wrote a song on the sound- track, the ballad “She’s Like the Wind,” inspired by his wife, Lisa Niemi.
It was his performance in 1990’s “Ghost” that showed his vulnerable, sensitive side. He starred as a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee (Demi Moore) — with great frustration and longing — through a psychic played by Whoopi Goldberg.
Swayze earned three Golden Globe nominations: for “Dirty Dancing,” “Ghost” and 1995’s “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar,” in which he played a drag queen on a cross-country road trip alongside Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo.
Other films included “The Outsiders,” “Red Dawn,” “Grand- view U.S.A.,” “Youngblood,” “Point Break” and “Tall Tale.”
In 1991, he appeared on the cover of People magazine as its “Sexiest Man Alive,” but his career tapered off toward the end of the 1990s, when he also had a stay in rehab for alcohol abuse. In 2001, he appeared in the cult favorite “Donnie Darko,” and in 2003 he returned to the New York stage with “Chicago”; 2006 found him in the musical “Guys and Dolls” in London.
Swayze was born in 1952 in Houston, the son of Jesse Swayze and choreographer Patsy Swayze, whose films include “Urban Cowboy.”
Other Deaths
Crystal Lee Sutton, 68, whose fight to unionize Southern textile plants that had low pay and poor conditions was dramatized in the film “Norma Rae,” died Friday of brain cancer, her son, Jay Jordan, said.
Actress Sally Field portrayed a character based on Sutton in the movie and won a best-actress Academy Award.
In 1973, Sutton was a 33-year-old mother of three earning $2.65 an hour folding towels at J.P. Stevens when a manager fired her for pro-union activity. In a final act of defiance before police hauled her out, Sutton, who had worked at the plant for 16 years, wrote “UNION” on a piece of cardboard and climbed onto a table on the plant floor. Other employees responded by shutting down their machines.
Jordan said his mother spent years as a labor organizer in the 1970s. She later became a certified nursing assistant in 1988 but had not been able to work for several years because of illnesses.
Jody Powell, 65, who was White House press secretary and among the closest and most trusted advisers to President Jimmy Carter, died Monday of a heart attack at his home near Cambridge, Md. Powell first worked with Carter during his campaign for governor in Georgia the 1960s, then joined Carter’s presidential campaign in 1976 and served as chief White House spokesman from 1977 to 1981.
Carter called Powell’s death “a great personal loss.”
“Jody was beside me in every decision I made as a candidate, governor and president, and I could always depend on his advice and counsel being candid and direct,” Carter said.
After leaving the White House, Powell became one of the founders of the Powell Tate public relations firm in Washington.
