A RARE ARCHIVAL INTERVIEW WITH PATSY SWAYZE, MOTHER OF HOLLYWOOD STAR PATRICK SWAYZE, WHO SUCCUMBED TO CANCER ON MONDAY. AND, AN EXCLUSIVE LOOK AT THEIR FAMILY ALBUM
Au00a0RARE ARCHIVAL INTERVIEW WITH PATSY SWAYZE, MOTHER OF HOLLYWOOD STAR PATRICK SWAYZE, WHO SUCCUMBED TO CANCER ON MONDAY. AND, AN EXCLUSIVE LOOK AT THEIR FAMILY ALBUM
LOS ANGELES: At the hospital they said, "We think we've lost the baby." But a little Irish nun believed Patrick had proved them wrong because he was born "with a star on his head".
The little nun gazed with wonder at the scrap of a baby she cradled in her arms. Although only newly born, he had defied all the odds to cling firmly to life. As she held him out for the exhausted mother in the hospital bed to see, the nun whispered in a soft, Irish brogue: "Your baby was born with a star on his head."
That tiny, determined baby, whom doctors wrote off almost as soon as he came into the world, grew up to be Patrick Swayze. A Hollywood giant, this time with a star on his door. The Texas hunk set millions of women's hearts afire in the sizzling movie, Dirty Dancing.
He thrilled audiences all over the world as he surfed through massive waves and performed breath-taking sky dives. The baby who fought so hard for life, won his way into the hearts of audiences with brilliant performances in films like Ghost and City Of Hope.
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u00a0The smile is megawatt and the looks already have that star quality, as Patrick prepares to take a trip, aged 18 months |
To the world, he had all the trappings of stardom fame, money and a beautiful wife. To his mother Patsy, Patrick Wayne Swayze would always be a miracle she called "Little Buddy". At the graceful home near Los Angeles that Patrick bought for her, Patsy, in her 70s, leafed through her family album and told me: "I'll never forget the words of that little Irish nun.
"They seemed strange. But I knew what she meant... that Patrick was our little miracle, because he had survived such a difficult birth.
"Ever since, Patrick had this I hate to use the wordu00a0 insane drive to accomplish everything he set out to do."
Patsy turned the pages and paused at two black and white snapshots, taken at her old home in Houston, Texas. They showed her smiling proudly as she nursed three-day-old Patrick. In one of the pictures, she is breastfeeding him.
She said: "You can use any of the other photographs in this album, but these are so private I really don't think they should be published."
Those fading snapshots brought back poignant memories. They took Patsy, a top international dance teacher, back to St Joseph's Hospital, Houston, in 1952, where Little Buddy was fighting for his life.
Patsy, her dancer's figure still as lithe as a teenager's, told me: "Patrick was born eight weeks prematurely. It was a very traumatic birth.
"The placenta tore loose and came first. So my baby was without oxygen for a long time.u00a0 "I was lying unconscious when they came out and told my mother, 'We're working on Patsy now. We think we've lost the baby.' "
As the sunlight sparkled on the pool outside, Patsy was living again that dark day. She went on: "My mother, Gladys, was a surgical nurse and the hospital's supervisor.
"So they told her things they wouldn't tell anyone else. That long ago, they didn't know so much about CPR and things like that.
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u00a0At 14, the smouldering, good looks that won a million women's hearts were beginning to develop |
"When my mother heard the news about the baby, she just barrelled in and took over. While they worked on me, she worked on Patrick. She did all kinds of things like banging him on the back and clearing out his air passages.
"Mother breathed into the baby's mouth to keep him alive until the paediatrician, who was my aunt, could take over. If it weren't for this, I don't think Patrick wouldn't have lived.
"He was the most beautiful baby, with tight, little golden curls, long, black eyelashes and rosy cheeks."
Although Patsy didn't know it, the danger was by no means past. She recalled: "About eight months later, my aunt really scared me." She announced, 'Well, I guess if Patrick was going to be mentally retarded, we would know by now.' They had been watching my baby all this time.
"I didn't know they had been worried because Patrick had been without oxygen for so long there could have been some impairment. It doesn't always show up early."
Far from being retarded, Patrick grew up to be as bright, feisty and athletic as all the other members of his Irish American family. Patsy declared: "God blessed our family with good genes."
From the time he could toddle, Little Buddy regarded life as a challenge. He never could resist a dare and insisted on doing all his own stunts on screen.
Patsy said: "He was never one who wanted help. "It was always, 'No, mom, I can do it myself.' There was never a problem in Patrick achieving something. He was absolutely confident he could do it.
"When Patrick was nine, I found that workmen building a two storey house nearby were paying him a dollar to prove he could jump off the roof."
Patrick Swayze became a superstar, but he didn't change. In the movie Point Break, he was battered while surfing 30foot waves. Once he came close to drowning. His jumping became a little more ambitious, with a series of two mile high skydives. And danger came looking for him, when Patrick was making City Of Joy. In Calcutta, India, there were knife attacks from political agitators. His beautiful blonde wife Lisa, aged 35, was there as usual to share the danger. In an earlier interview, Patrick said:
"She gets as big a charge of adrenalin as I do. Living close to the edge and taking risks turns us both on. We're thrill junkies. I take risks all the time and it gives me such a kick. I get a sniff of danger and it's like being charged with electricity."
Patsy, now a widow after being married to Patrick's father Jesse since she was 17, told me: "I guess he got it from me and my late husband, Jesse, who knew no fear."
Patsy explained how, Patrick triumphed over pain to dance and do his death defying stunts. She said: "He was injured when he was playing football at school when he was 17.
"It was the result of an illegal move. It ripped all the ligaments and cartilage in his left knee. This was the beginning of Patrick's problems.
"He couldn't play football again. And the doctors told him he absolutely should not, and could not dance, either. But he went on to dance professionally with this one bad leg. He had three or four operations on his knee. They've had to repair the cartilage in his other knee.
"Then they went into his bad knee to clean out some debris. He also had a shoulder injury." Not that Patsy was a shrinking violet when it came to telling her son the odd fact or two. She was thrusting, positive and admitted to being "bossy". Patrick had described his mother as "a very intense woman, who drove me hard". He added: "Later, I realised she had been teaching me discipline in a good way."
Patsy is at the top of her professional tree. She choreographed Urban Cowboy, with John Travolta and Debra Winger. She coached Geena Davis for her dancing in Thelma and Louise and has also coached and choreographed Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh.
Patsy, a loving mother of five and grandmother of five more with a sixth on the way is an enthusiastic member of a group called the Silver Foxes. These are celebrities' parents, who include Sylvester Stallone's mother, Jackie, and Al Pacino's father, Sol.
Chuckling, Patsy told me: "We're 'silver' because we're old, and 'foxes' because we love to dance. We go into retirement homes and tell people that because they're getting on in years, they don't have to just get old.
"Sol and I jitterbugged for them. He's over 70 and a great dancer."
But Patsy's "Little Buddy" often made her see red. She told me: "I'd get mad every time he told these stories of how he was teased at school because of his dancing. He was a boxing and wrestling champion. He was a big shot on the football team, ran track and broke records. How many people do you think were going to tease him and get away with it?" But there was one notable exception.
Patsy, still thumbing nostalgically through the pages of the album labelled "Li'l Buddy Patrick Wayne Swayze", went on: "When Patrick was 12, he asked me, 'What do you do when you have your ballet shoes in your hip pocket, you're carrying your violin case, and people are teasing you?" 'I said, 'You just ignore them because they either don't understand or they're jealous.' He persisted, 'But, mom, what if they still keep teasing?'
"I told him, 'You take those shoes out of your pocket and beat the snuff out of 'em!' Apparently, five boys had beaten Patrick up.
"He went to the sports coach and arranged to fight them, one by one, in the gym. He beat all of them."
Another of Patsy's professional triumphs was with his wife Lisa. She was married to Patrick for over three decades, some of them tumultuous. In their poverty days, they even worked together as carpenters. When the strain of fame sent Patrick a little out of kilter, Lisa stood by him.
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So strong was their relationship, that she even coached Patrick for his intimate love scene with beautiful Demi Moore in Ghost. But at 15, Lisa Niemi's life was something of a mess when she arrived in Patsy's dance studio in Houston. She had dropped out of school and was hanging around with the wrong sort of people in the city's "Sin Alley".
Then two things changed her life for ever...the discovery that she had a natural flair for dancing, and falling in love with Patrick Swayze at the studio. The couple married in 1976, and both excelled in their careers and their marriage. Patrick said, happily: "There is a power between us. A real chemistry, as though we are soulmates."
Off duty, Lisa and Patrick roared around on Harley Davidson motor cycles and rode horses bareback on their $3million, five acre Rancho Bizarro, a hideaway in the remote San Gabriel Mountains, in California. Rich, successful, in love, the couple seemed to have the perfect life. But one thing was lacking. The clue lies in Patsy's family album. There is no picture of a child belonging to Patrick and Lisa there.
In February, 1990, Patrick and Lisa were struck by tragedy. Lisa suffered a miscarriage when she was four months pregnant, and they lost the baby for which they both yearned. Patrick had said later: "I started crying. I walked outside and looked over the hills. I saw this shooting star, and I just knew it was my baby saying goodbye."
These interviews were done in 2004. Patrick died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 57, last Monday.
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