Book #176: Out Of The Corner by Jennifer Grey

  

Out Of The Corner

Jennifer Grey

 Released: May 3rd, 2022

My 42nd book for 2026 was Jennifer Grey’s Out Of The Corner.  

This was an interesting choice.  I only know Jennifer Grey from two movies: Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Dirty Dancing.

Growing up, I knew Grey from her role in the John Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  She played his sister Jeanie Bueller.  The interesting question is: is she older or younger?  If younger, why does she get all the brunt of the sibling rivalry.  If she's older, why is she still in high school?  Are they twins?  Who knows.  

I got into the movie because of my dad's ability to recall the 1980's as this glorious landscape of amazingness.  We were supposed to see Fast Times At Ridgemont High, but they discovered it was Rated R, and we were still a bit young for it.  So Ferris Bueller it was.  We howled with laughter at every other scene.  I saw Jennifer for the first time in her role, and not paying much attention to her as she was the snotty sister, and I didn't really differentiate character from person back then.

The next role was one I didn't see until my 30's.  I was introduced to Dirty Dancing by my friend Erica back in 2023.  We were hanging out one night and scrolling through Netflix looking for a movie, and we stopped on that one when I said I had never seen it before.  I sent a message to my sister because that is her favorite movie.  Meg told me that she was shocked that I had never seen it before given how many times she used to watch it growing up.  Similar to me and James Bond films.  I always have to let both of them know every time I watch it.  

This was a pretty solid biography.  We learn a good bit about Jennifer's childhood, and her struggles with alcohol, anxiety, substance abuse, and just getting through difficult relationships, and living with fame and the difficulties of the entertainment industry.  We explore her wild years, and then see her change into a mother with new priorities, and new outlooks on life.

I enjoyed this novel.  It was cool to really dive in and get the background on someone I never truly knew much about.  I enjoyed both films of hers that I have seen, and the information in this book is more that enough to spark curiosity and seek out other books regarding what she covers.

Her relationship with Ferris Buller star Matthew Broderick is covered in substantial detail.  She holds back very little in explaining what she feels and why she felt it.  She covers the accident in Ireland that changed both their lives forever.  She even goes into detail on the Helen Hunt affair.

She talks about her engagement to Johnny Depp, and how that was difficult for her.  Even the difficulties surrounding the breakup and Winona Ryder's stealing of Depp from her post-breakup.

Lastly, she goes deep into parenting, and how that changed her life.  Stella became her primary focus, and she enjoyed it all.  It's a beautiful chapter for anyone questioning the merits of parenthood.  It is overall positive and warm in tone.  She connects this to her victory with Derek Hough in Dancing With The Stars.

She had a wild life with a lot of zany Hollywood-style stories.  But she seemed to really pick herself up and reestablish herself in life, to a role that suited her much better than the stage.  She has lived a very adventurous life.

Here is what I learned:

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• For Stella, may you have an enduring understanding that your story is more up to you than you realize and is always evolving. And in moments of darkness, be still, breathe, be gentle with your tender heart. Look for breadcrumbs; you will always be led out of the woods.

• “In case of emergency, break nose.”

• Jennifer Grey was waitressing tables at 25, waiting on her shot in Hollywood.

• She did consultations for nose jobs.

• Dirty Dancing made Jennifer America’s sweetheart.

• She made it through life without a tip on her nose.

• She is Jewish.

• She got a nose job from the top nose doctor in Hollywood.

• She had to tape her nose nightly from cheek to cheek to encourage her nose to drop.

• She was a regular at King’s Road Cafe on Beverly Boulevard.

• Her father had a rental house in West Hollywood.

• People did not recognize her.

• Jennifer was born a month early.

• Her father Joel Grey was out of town performing his nightclub act in the Catskills.

• She was born in Cedars of Lebanon hospital.

• Come Blow Your Horn was Neil Simon’s first play.

• Joel’s first Broadway show was replacing the lead in this play.

• Her mom Jo Wilder was a performer as well.

• They moved from Hollywood to New York City.

• Her brother was adopted.

• His name is James Rico.

• Her parents were fans of the painter Rico Lebrun.

• They were known as the 4 J’s: Jo, Joel, Jenny, and Jimmy.

• She slept in t-shirts as nighties.

• She was never breastfed.

• She considers 1966-1968 her Caberet years since her dad starred in the stage version.

• He performed eight shows a week.

• Jennifer and her family used to eat at Broadway restaurants such as Frankie & Johnnie’s or Joe Allen’s.

• Her dad used to be exception at making her mom laugh.  She learned this early on how special it is.

• “This spark in the middle of the dark, quiet apartment was a welcome reprieve from being banished to my bed. It was a joyous treat, made only more of an event when punctuated by my dad's uncanny ability to make my mom laugh. When my mom got going, laughing hard, it would quickly progress into her involuntary silent scream, with tears streaming down her face. And if he really got her good, she'd beg for mercy, crying-laughing, and with everything she had, try not to pee herself. I don't remember what he'd said or done to put her over the edge, but it looked to me like a highlight of what fun married life could be.”

• Her family did not celebrate Christmas.

• They celebrated Hanukkah.

• She is the granddaughter of Mickey Katz.

• Balabusta is Yiddish for homemaker.

• During a difficult time in her mom’s youth, her mom attempted suicide by oven.  It started with her for life.

• “I believe if we’re lucky we have many mothers.  They can come into our lives at any time, but their influence can particularly permeate and imprint our early years.”

• She once had a nanny named Effie who became a strong influence to her.

• Nellie Clark was an influential and strict nanny.

• Nellie loved herself some Tom Jones.

• She moved to California in the middle of 6th Grade.

• She started off the year at her French School in New York and ended it at Webster Elementary in Malibu.

• She was in the same class as Sean Penn.

• Her mother always wore Chanel No. 19.

• Jennifer hates her birthday.

• She valued her first training bra.

• “Your brother is beautiful.  You are…interesting-looking.”

• In 8th Grade, she switched to Oakwood School in North Hollywood.

• She moved back to New York in 9th Grade.

• “I had this inner watchdog, my parents' opinions and rules. Their approach to everything was my life-line. I assumed that if I played by their rules, nothing bad could happen to me.”

• Her grandparents apartment manager took advantage of her the day she got her braces off.

• In 9th Grade, she attended Dalton in New York.

• Her dad kept a promise to get high with her when she was a teenager to keep it safe and controlled.

• The teen hangout in 1974 NYC was a “kid’s bar” called Malian’s on East 79th Street.

• Times Square in the seventies was the icky sticky center of sleazebags, lousy with lowlifes, the capital of sexual deprevity.

• She used to go watch Porn films in Times Swuare with her friend Maggie.

• Maggie later became known as Janice on Friends.

• Later Jennifer enrolled in UNIS, short for the United Nations International School.

• “If I could time travel back to that fifteen-year-old right now, I’d reassure her with complete and utter confidence that this was going to be a real adventure. The road ahead was going to be rocky, but also super fun. It was going to take a while, but someday she would come to understand so much more, feel so much more solid and more comfortable in her skin. Beautiful, much more beautiful than she could possibly know, but not in ways she would be able to fathom at this moment, and that it would all be worth it. She would eventually have a sense of her true value and purpose that no one—no man, parent, or outside force—would be able to take away from her. One day she would finally own and know, really know, how amazing it is to be her.  Exactly as she is, in every perfectly deeply imperfect way, inside and out.”

• Her parents both had nose jobs before she was born.

• She went to Rio de Janeiro for Christmas with her older boyfriend.  Gilda Radner was invited and when it was learned that Radner was expecting a romantic getaway, she was shunned by everyone.  She went home early.

• Cachcça is Brazil’s national cocktail.

• She was the Neighborhood Playhouse’s youngest graduate.

• She felt Dirty Dancing was a cheesy title at first.

• She was in a hit off-Broadway show called Album.

• In 1982, she was working as a busboy at the Cottonwood Café.

• Kaufman Astoria Studios was known for ballooning budgets, producer in-fighting, and all manner of shady business (which she encourages people to look up).

• She landed another role in Red Dawn which at the time was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most violent film of all time.

• She supported herself throughout most of the late 70’s and early 80’s by waitressing.

• She had been a temp secretary, a salesgirl at Henri Bendel, and worked behind the counter at gourmet deli Mangia when it opened on 56th St.

• Her first waitressing job was at the Saloon across from Lincoln Center.

• She worked with singer Shawn Colvin at the Cottonwood Cafe.

• She was in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with Matthew Broderick.

• She had an affair with Broderick and they become a couple after the movie.

• “Whenever young actresses ask me about shooting love scenes, i basically tell them, ‘Just turn yourself on. Do whatever it takes to feel you're in the power position, because you are. No one's taking anything trom you that you don't want to give.’”

• Her mother never learned to ride a bicycle.

• Her dad was not athletic.

• While she was at the Playhouse, her family returned to the West Coast without her.

• Her parents divorced after 24 years of marriage.

• Her father moved back to New York.

• On the outside, Matthew Broderick had the boyish Irish good looks.

• On the inside, he was more of a cranky old Jew.

• Penny Miller had a crazy obsession with Matthew.

• She once got drunk on Wild Turkey with Christopher Walken at an Arkansas airport bar.

• Matthew’s mother is Patsy Broderick.

• She was a playwright and a painter.

• Matthew’s father James Broderick died of cancer in 1982.

• Patsy revealed to Jennifer that her father was homosexual.

• Her dad officially came out at the age of 82 in his memoir “Master of Ceremonies”.

• She had in her Dirty Dancing contract a “no-nipple-ass-crack-bush-clause.”

• When Matthew was 8-years-old, his family bought a cottage in Ireland on the bluffs overlooking the ocean in Kilcar, a town in County Donegal.

• He grew up spending Christmas there.

• His father’s ashes are buried there.

• Everyone in the town knew Matthew from growing up there.

• In Ireland, they both were involved in a car accident that fractured his femur, punctured his lung, and killed a mother and a daughter who were the other driver and her passenger.

• The Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast had a renown major trauma ward for treating thousands of victims of violence from the Irish Conflict.

• She began chain smoking after the accident.

• The Crown Liquor Saloon is Belfast’s most famous bar.

• She took the Concorde to New York 2 days before the premiere of Dirty Dancing.

• The Howard Stern show pranked their answering machine, offering Matthew “Free driving lessons”.

• The NYC premiere had an afterparty at the Roseland Ballroom.

• The LA premiere had an afterparty at Ed Debevic’s.

• She was paid $50,000 flat to star in Dirty Dancing.

• Madonna once dated Sean Penn.

• Matthew proposed to her and she said yes.

• Johnny Depp and Jennifer both preferred Marlboro Reds.

• Depp was a regular at Maurice’s.

• Depp’s mom is Betty Sue.

• They were engaged 2 weeks later.

• They lived together in Carrie Fisher’s log cabin in Laurel Canyon.

• The Rose Bowl has a flea market.

• She broke off her engagement with Depp 9 months after they had met.

• The Tonight Show featuring Johnny Carson ran for 30 years.

• She was engaged to Matthew Broderick and Johnny Depp in the same month.

• She regrets missing out on Dirty Dancing’s press opportunities.

• “What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” - Carl Jung.

• She had a disastrous interview on Johnny Carson.

• She went into AA for her drinking.

• “Schadenfreude sells.”

• Shutters is a posh hotel on the beach in Santa Monica.

• She started seeing Clark Gregg, and told him the only way they could have sex is if he was prepared to give her a child.

• She got married and pregnant to Clark.

• She gave birth to their daughter Stella.

• Becoming a mother was the greatest thing that ever happened to her.

• Doctors recommend she abort her baby due to a bad CVS screening.

• She kept the child after getting a second opinion, and everything turned out fine.

• She doesn’t regret keeping her child.

• “I must be a living example of what I want to teach her.”

• She was diagnosed with the thyroid cancer Capsular Follicular Cancer.

• She then found she had Morton’s neuroma.

• She rehearsed 7 hours a day for Dancing With The Stars

• She had undiagnosed ADHD.

• Her 8-year-old daughter encouraged her not to quit.

• She won Dancing With The Stars with Derek Hough and a ruptured disc.

• Jamie Lee Curtis designed the book’s cover.

•  

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Overall, it was a good read.  Some parts were moving and powerful.  I highly recommend it.  

Highly Recommend.

On to Book #177: Salty by Kate Myers.

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Need to catch up?  See previous blog post: Dressage Tips And Training Solutions.