MONTICELLO — Listening to Jackie Horner's life story is very much like watching a movie - and not just the one with which she's identified, 1987's “Dirty Dancing.”

So let's open her mesmerizing story with a surprise twist right off the bat.

“Nobody knows me as ‘Elizabeth,'” Jackie shares of her actual first name. “My parents named me ‘Jaclyn,' but when my grandmother Elizabeth saw the birth certificate, she went ballistic.”

With the original July 9, 1932 certificate literally ripped up by Grandma Elizabeth, Jackie's parents drew up one with “Elizabeth” as her given name - but “Jaclyn” in the middle.

Raised in a musical family with a mother who was a nurse and a father who was a career Navy man, Jackie saw much of the U.S. in her childhood, graduating high school at 16, by which time she had already spent more than a dozen years becoming a talented dancer.

“My aunt had a dance school in Baltimore, Maryland, where I taught as a teenager,” she recalls, laughingly adding that she unintentionally intimidated some of her male classmates at Dundalk High School. “I choreographed all our musicals, and because of that, I couldn't get a date to the prom!”

She beat out hundreds of others for a coveted position with the June Taylor Dancers, made famous by the troupe's high-kicking appearances with Jackie Gleason. Though her mother wanted her to go to college, Jackie headed to New York City instead.

“I loved history, I loved English,” she admits, “but dancing was first.”

She vaulted into television's golden years, rubbing shoulders with Milton Berle, Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, Errol Flynn, Judy Garland, Dinah Shore, and of course, Jackie Gleason (who told her about his first act at Grossinger's when he was just 21).

Tragedy struck hard in those years, however. Jackie's father had introduced her to a handsome Navy lieutenant, who asked for her hand in marriage. She accepted, and the couple entertained their wedding party-to-be on a yacht. The boat exploded due to a malfunction, and Jackie was the sole survivor.

“I was burned to the waist,” she recalls. “My entire wedding party, 13 people, were dead in the Chesapeake Bay.”

Her parents, fortunately, had not been able to attend, and they visited her during the subsequent seven weeks recovering in the hospital. She painfully but proudly mounted crutches to sing at the birth of her sister's first baby.

Shortly thereafter, in early 1954, Jackie arrived at Grossinger's for a short series of performances, but the Grossinger family became so enamored of her that they asked Jackie to remain - first for the summer, then for the winter.

“I stayed there till they closed in 1986,” she relates.

During that time, she performed at other Borscht Belt resorts, trained legions of aspiring dancers, and married fellow Grossinger's employee Lou Goldstein.

“November 27, 1960,” she remembers of that happy day. “All the Yankees and movie stars came up, including Shelley Winters.”

Around that time, Jackie taught a mother, father and their daughter how to dance, and that little girl became the basis for the key character of “Baby” in “Dirty Dancing.”

“I had told Baby at 17 that dance teachers don't make a lot of money - you have to get out and do something you love,” she says. “One day in 1985, Paul Grossinger called me in to his office, telling me there was someone here to see me. There was Baby!”

Eleanor Bergstein was her real name, and she had taken Jackie's advice, doing what she loved by writing screenplays, including for a 1980 film with Michael Douglas, “It's My Turn.”

“Did you see that movie?” she asked Jackie, who nodded her head. “Then sit down and start writing - it's your turn.”

The duo's collaboration created a film that captured the essence of the Catskills' famed vacation experience - and also captured America's hearts. She still is asked to tell stories about it: like how the name “Dirty Dancing” came from Jackie's boss terming the tango a “dirty” dance because of its closeness and romantic overtones, or who the real “Johnny” was (Steve Schwartz, now 81), or how she taught Patrick Swayze dance moves via videocassette (the film was shot in North Carolina, but Jackie lives in Liberty).

“I've only seen the movie once - would you believe it?” she laughs. “Once I saw it was put together exactly as it really was, I was fine.”

She still dances, by the way.

“I can still do splits, I'm still teaching, and I'm still here - just not kicking quite as high,” she affirms. “It's wonderful exercise!”

“She is a tireless champion of the Sullivan Catskills, and I couldn't be prouder to call her a neighbor and friend,” says Luis Alvarez, chairman of the Sullivan County Legislature, which today bestowed the Distinguished Citizen Award on Jackie. “Her life and her work have created so much interest, so many fans, and so much awareness of Liberty and Sullivan County, preserving the best parts of our history in the minds of millions. She is the best ambassador anyone could ask for!”

Jackie continues to preserve those memories.

“Honey, I've got 200 scrapbooks, 500 pictures on the walls, 300 pairs of shoes, 185 pairs of earrings and four closets,” she laughs. “I live in a museum!”