Patrick Swayze: He Had the Looks, and the Moves

He had the looks, and the moves. As the star of some of the most iconic films of the 1980s and '90s — Dirty Dancing, Ghost, Point Break and that epic of B-movie machismo, Road House — Patrick Swayze brought intelligence and warmth to old-fashioned movie maleness. Then he played his greatest, most heroic role, in a gritty, dignified, very public 20-month battle with pancreatic cancer that ended on Sept. 14. The actor was 57.

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Remembering Patrick Swayze

Seriously gorgeous in his prime, with a face that was sensual and craggy, Swayze always seemed secure in his studliness; he was a peacock that didn't need to strut. And he was so alpha male, he could get away with wearing hair that managed to be both slicked back and puffed up. Among the stars of his generation, he was in the Harrison Ford category of ornery hunks, but he was younger, cooler and more smoldering to boot. With ambition and talent to match his looks, Swayze forged a solid career as a dramatic actor and, in almost a throwback to a bygone era, a dancer; he and John Travolta were the Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire of the non-dance-movie movement. (See pictures of Patrick Swayze.)

Swayze might have seemed a figure of another time; his phase of top stardom lasted only a few years, and often amounted to triumphs over mediocre material. But his appeal gave his movies real staying power. Consider that, earlier this year, when the retail behemoth HMV polled customers for their all-time best romantic movies, Ghost and Dirty Dancing filled the top two slots. (Read TIME's 1987 capsule review of Dirty Dancing.)

Born in Houston in 1952, Swayze would learn to blend the careers of his parents: his father Jessie was a rodeo performer; his mother Patsy a choreographer who ran a dance studio. She taught her boy the smooth moves that would bring the Swayze craze to its apogee in 1987 with Dirty Dancing. But it was clear that he was cut out for dance: Swayze studied gymnastics for two years and moved to New York in 1972 to complete his training at the Harkness and Joffrey ballet schools. From there, he danced professionally with Disney on Parade (playing Prince Charming, of course) before appearing in the Broadway production of Grease. (Read TIME's 1988 story about Disney "Do You Believe in Magic?")

But it was back at the dance studio in Houston where Swayze met Lisa Niemi — he was 18, she 14 — and began the great love story of his life and hers. They married in 1975 and stayed together, in part because the sexy movie star was also a devoted husband. "I like being married," he once said. "I'm sort of like a loyal sheepdog, sometimes to a fault."

Moviegoers found no fault with Swayze when he appeared in his first major role, as Darrel Curtis in Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders. For this 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton's teen-angst novel, Coppola assembled a bunch of young comers — Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Diane Lane, Rob Lowe, C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio — all of whom soon achieved star status. Swayze, then 30, played the eldest brother and gruff father figure to Howell and Lowe; he got to be the family drill sergeant and, at the end, a teary mourner. (See TIME's photo-essay "Francis Ford Coppola — A Life Behind the Lens.")

A tough guy who learns to cry: that was Swayze again in 1984's Red Dawn, John Milius' right-wing wet dream about a military takeover of the U.S. by Soviet troops, who are stalemated by the woodlore and firepower of half a dozen Foolhardy Boys and a couple of radical, feminist teenyboppers in rural Colorado. Swayze is the local high school's star quarterback, who turns to tossing grenades soon after his father shouts, "Avenge me! Avenge me!" A natural leader, he indoctrinates a younger kid (C. Thomas Howell) in drinking the blood of a deer he has killed and passes out guns to captives he has freed, shouting, "C'mon! If we're all gonna die, die standing up!" Swayze's climactic double-death scene with his brother (Charlie Sheen) is one of many examples in his career of an actor selling outlandish scenarios simply through sheer force of personality. People believed in the parts he played because he invested them with such passion and plausibility.

Still not quite a bona fide star in movies, he became one on TV, in the ABC miniseries of John Jakes' North and South novels. Consuming 24 hours of air time in two "books" in 1985 and '86, the miniseries was a major hit and an ideal showcase for the actor. As a South Carolina plantation scion who goes to West Point, then fights for the Confederacy and against his old schoolmates in the Civil War, Swayze radiated a stalwart sexiness too immediate and dangerous to be confined to the small screen. Now he just needed a big break in a big movie.

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