Swayze not Hollywood’s greatest actor, but perhaps its nicest guy

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(MCT) — Patrick Swayze, the two-fisted Texan who danced like a god, died Monday in Los Angeles after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

It’s hard not to think that the one-time gymnast who vaulted to stardom in 1987’s “Dirty Dancing” had rehearsed his premature exit in the 1990 blockbuster “Ghost.”

As the banker who solves his own murder mystery, he speaks from the dead to his living sweetheart, Demi Moore. Swayze, impossibly sexy and throbbingly sensitive, tells her: “It’s amazing, the love inside. You take it with you.”

That’s a reassuring thought for Lisa Niemi, Swayze’s wife of 34 years, and for his many fans who greeted the actor’s March 2008 announcement that he had Stage IV pancreatic cancer with prayers and prayer circles. (See patrickswayze.net).

There are great actors and there are great screen personalities. Swayze was the latter. His reputation rests on “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost,” and what made them beloved was his gallantry. Quite simply, he radiated Galahad-like honor. “Patrick possessed a depth of nobility,” said his “Point Break” director Kathryn Bigelow.

Even while undergoing chemotherapy, Swayze put in long hours on the television cable drama “The Beast” on A&E. When well-wishers inquired how he nurtured such a positive attitude despite a prognosis that claims 75 percent of patients within a year, the consummate professional crisply replied, “When the statistics say you’re a dead man? You go to work.”
To quote the phrase made famous by his distant relative, Timex pitchman John Cameron Swayze, throughout a lifetime of physical challenges, the actor took a licking and kept on ticking.

Besides his wife Lisa, he is survived by his mother, Patsy, and siblings Don, Sean and Bambi.

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