Patrick Swayze Died

Patrick Swayze Died

"Patrick Swayze at 57": they'd forgotten to put the "died" part in the headline. Given that we all know that Swayze had been battling with pancreatic cancer for a couple of years (when the prognosis is usually less than 6 months) there wasn't that much surprise when the headline in its next incarnation was "Patrick Swayze died at 57". The British newspapers have been giving huge coverage to this news of Patrick Swayze's death from pancreatic cancer. The Telegraph collected quotes from those who knew him: Demi Moore, who played Swayze's fiancee in Ghost, wrote: "Patrick you are loved by so many and your light will forever shine in all of our lives." (One might want to make a note about Demi Moore's Twitter there. We usually use the past tense about those, like Swayze, who have died, not the present. And, err, that particular sentiment, shouldn't it have been said to Patrick Swayze while he was alive? As for Ashton Kuchner's Twitter: are there really a million people signed up to follow such pearls of wisdom as might come from a bookend?)

Swayze's movie characters had some lines that became cultural catch phrases, such as, "Pain don't hurt" from his role in "Road House." Author Marcus Eder compiled Swayze's movie lines and compared them to the words of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu in "Nobody Puts Swayze in a Corner: The Tao of Swayze." The title refers to his often-cited line "Nobody puts Baby in a corner!" from "Dirty Dancing." Proceeds from the book went to the American Cancer Society. Swayze went public with his illness in the spring last year, and worked while he underwent treatment. He was writing a memoir and recently made The Beast, a well-received cable TV series about a veteran FBI agent. Days ago it was reported he had left hospital to be at home with his wife, Lisa Niemi, his childhood sweetheart from Houston.

Patrick Swayze was in his mid-thirties when he became an overnight sensation in 1987 with the romantic dance movie Dirty Dancing, in which he played the dance instructor Johnny Castle, and Jennifer Grey was his pupil Baby. The film cost $5 million and was intended primarily for video, but it grossed more than $200 million worldwide and was one of the biggest hits of the year. Grey, 49, played the naive teenager who falls in love with Swayze’s sultry dance instructor in the hit movie which became a cult classic after its release in 1987. The pair’s on-screen chemistry – best highlighted in their sizzling dance moves and the famous lift scene in a lake – helped turn both actors into Hollywood stars. "When I think of him, I think of being in his arms when we were kids, dancing, practising the lift in the freezing lake, having a blast doing this tiny little movie we thought no one would ever see," Grey, who played Frances 'Baby' Houseman, told People magazine.