There is graffiti in the ballrooms where Johnny might have taught the cha-cha, and the ceiling is falling down in the dining room like the one where Baby was fatefully seated in a corner.

But the long-defunct Catskills resort that served as the inspiration for “Dirty Dancing,” the fictional Kellerman’s in which Baby and Johnny had the time of their lives, stands to be reborn after the owner applied for state help to clean up the contaminated ruins. It is the first step in a plan to bring a glamorous resort back to the site, and perhaps, with it, a bygone luster to the storied but tattered Catskills itself.

The resort, Grossinger’s Catskill Resort Hotel, began its life in the 1910s, and in its heyday was the fulcrum of the swirling midcentury vacation scene in the Catskills. It was a region where New Yorkers, predominately Jews, spent their summers in one of more than 500 hotels that thrived in the area. All are now gone.