Actor Patrick Swayze passed away late last night at his home in Los Angeles after a year-and-a-half bout with pancreatic cancer.  He was only 57 years old.  There is a final television interview that will be broadcast tonight.  Swayze met with Barbara Walters for the special interview, titled Last Dance, which will be shown tonight at 10 Eastern /9 Central on ABC.

While Swayze is best known for his roles on the big screen, he has had an impact on television audiences as well.  In fact, his acting debut was on a made-for-TV movie called Shaketown, USA, in 1979.  He played Pvt. Gary Sturgis in a 1981 episode of M*A*S*H.

 However, those roles were mostly secondary to the main characters in the plot.  With the mini-series North and South (1985) and North and South, Book II (1986), Swayze began to come into his own, with his character, Orry Main, as part of the primary plot lines.

His real breakthrough, however, came with the movie Dirty Dancing, in 1987.  Following the success of the film, Swayze appeared in many additional movies and, more recently, in television shows as well.  Although Red Dawn and The Outsiders were precursors to Dirty Dancing, none of them propelled Swayze into the limelight quite like Dirty Dancing.

Over the years he has appeared as a guest on Saturday Night Live and had guest roles on telvision with shows like Amazing Stories and Whoopi.  Just this year, Swayze garned the lead role in the television series The Beast on the USA cable network.  Patrick Swayze had as good a career as any actor, capturing the hearts of millions of fans in the process.  His presence from television and film will surely be missed.

Recently, Swayze was honored before the screening of his latest film, Jump, at the 2009 Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival (LAJFF).  Here is a reconstructed version of that tribute to Patrick Swayze.