Remembering great moments in movies: Patrick Dempsey and Hilary Swank dancing

October 24, 8:01 AMLA Dancing ExaminersIan Ono and Jana Monji :

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If you don't have cable, you might have missed the HBO 2004 movie "Iron Jawed Angels" with Hilary Swank and Frances O'Connor.

In this 2004 movie, Swank plays Alice Paul and O'Connor is Lucy Burns. Returning from England, they become active in the women's suffrage movement, but their ideas are more radical than what's going on in the Naitonal American Woman Suffrage Association and create their own party, National Woman's Party.

They picket outside the White House--radical for that time and they get arrested for obstructing traffic. The protesters are sent to a workhouse for two months and Paul leads a hunger strike, causing the workhouse authorities to force feed them milk and raw eggs. That creates a stir and the NAWSA uses the publicity to further the 19th amendment.

Patrick Dempsey plays a fictional character, to help sex up the movie. I don't know if radical Paul would have approved, but the scene where his character is teaching Swank as Paul how to dance if romantic and sweet. A lot of romances have started out this way, I'm sure.