Those Movie Oldies Remind Them of Patrick Swayze

Some men confess that they’re confused by the appeal of “Dirty Dancing,” the 1987 coming-of-age-movie-for-girls that has spun off innumerable commercial enterprises. But the women who came to the “Dirty Dancing--The Concert Tour” post-show party at the Hop in Fountain Valley Sunday night had a rather specific explanation for the phenomenon:

“Patrick Swayze!” they shouted over the high-decibel oldies that are the Hop’s play list. But Swayze--the previously unknown actor who plays the boy from the wrong side of the tracks--wasn’t even at the Brookhurst Street shopping mall that houses the club.

Swayze, in fact, has nothing to do with “Dirty Dancing--The Concert Tour,” a show featuring acts from the film’s sound track performing while young dancers carry out some semi-erotic choreography on stage. On Sunday, the national tour had bumped and ground its way to the Pacific Amphitheatre in Orange County, home turf for singer (and Hop co-owner) Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers.

Medley, 47, had invited his Dirty Dancing tour colleagues to the club after the show, and there they came to enjoy free drinks and, with encouragement from the crowd, to perform a 90-minute selection of Dirty Dancing hits.

Medley confessed to some ambivalence about the picture itself, but he noted the continuing appeal of pop nostalgia. Fellow Righteous Brother Bobby Hatfield, 48, Medley’s partner in the club, seemed mystified by the Dirty Dancing phenomenon.

“A multiplatinum album?” he said incredulously. “I have no . . . idea why.” Hatfield, who joins Medley on stage to sing their 1966 hit “Soul and Inspiration,” added that as a youth in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, “I don’t remember any ‘dirty dancing.’ I remember trying to do a little grime in the dark, but I don’t remember much when the lights were on.”

“I can’t figure it out, either,” said Gary Hinot, 37, of Fontana, who earned a Best Dad in the World title for driving his 14-year-old daughter Michelle 50 miles to see the Dirty Dancing show. “But her grandmother also says it’s the best picture ever,” he said by way of explaining the cross-generational appeal of the movie’s leading actor.

At Michelle’s urging, Hinot extended his paternal duties at the club as he sought tour members’ autographs. Michelle, too young to be admitted to the club, sat on the curb outside listening to the music and thinking dreamily of Patrick Swayze.

Michelle said she has seen “Dirty Dancing” 20 times, has a videocassette of the movie and compact discs of the “Dirty Dancing” and “More Dirty Dancing” albums. Why? “Patrick Swayze. He’s cute and sexy”--an opinion she says her female classmates share.

When it came to seeing the tour show, Jan Reiber, a 52-year-old executive secretary, was not so lucky. The Anaheim resident said she was unable to get tickets to the concert ($18.50 apiece), so the trip to the Hop was her consolation prize. “I’ve seen it three times,” she said of the movie. “I love the dancing; I just love the dirty dancing,” she added, noting enthusiastically that she had recently entered the Hop’s dirty dancing contest and had placed respectably.

But Robert Anderson, 37, was taking a cynical view of it all. “If you and me could’ve figured this out, we’d be rich,” he said, chuckling as he gazed across the packed club. Of the early ‘60s tunes that make up the Dirty Dancing albums, he said, “I heard ‘em when they first came out, and I didn’t think much of them then, either.”

Anderson, an accountant from Little Rock, Ark., said he had come to the Hop without knowing about the Dirty Dancing connection. Using colorful language, he ascribed the success of the enterprise to Swayze’s attraction for women. He explained that he had traveled here to see the farewell tribute performances of Lynyrd Skynyrd, a rock band whose cultural significance he equated with that of the Beatles.

Anderson said he spent more than $1,000 to attend the Southern California Lynyrd Skynyrd shows--shows that feature surviving band members playing their hits from the ‘70s. As he downed his last beer of the night, watching women of several generations gyrate nearby, he proclaimed: “It’s worth it. Some things you can’t measure with money.”