GREASE’S 40TH ANNIVERSARY
THE MUSICAL’S CAST SHARES MEMORIES OF FILMING ON HOT SUMMER NIGHTS AND REVEALS WHY THEY’LL ALWAYS BE TOGETHER
John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing, Didi Conn and the rest of the T-Birds and Pink Ladies share their favorite memories (and secrets!) from the set of the hit 1978 movie musical.
Can you believe it,” John Travolta marvels to Closer about the beloved hit Grease reaching its milestone 40th anniversary. “It’s the movie that lasts forever!” The film adaptation of the stage musical premiered on June 16, 1978, and it’s been a fan favorite ever since. The story follows the loves, dramas and rivalries among Rydell High’s gangs — the T-Birds (led by John’s Danny Zuko) and the Pink Ladies (bossed by Stockard Channing’s Rizzo). Olivia NewtonJohn arrives to shake things up as transfer student Sandy.
The movie received tepid reviews but earned lots of summer lovin’ from audiences. “We didn’t have any great expectation and then 40 years later, it’s still going,” says Olivia. Now cast members exclusively share their memories with Closer. “As Rizzo said: ‘It sounds like ancient history.’ But Grease will never be ancient history,” says Jamie Donnelly, who played Pink Lady Jan. “I’m convinced the popularity never really will wane, so I guess I just feel like saying, woo bop ba loo bop, here we go again!”
Director Randal Kleiser and producer Allan Carr set the tone on set…
RANDAL KLEISER: It was like a party every day. A lot of the actors had been in Grease on Broadway and they were so excited to be part of it, and that permeated the set.
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN (Sandy): I really wasn’t sure I wanted to do it. John [Travolta] came to talk me into it. I remember meeting him and we had a great connection. He had these beautiful blue eyes.
DIDI CONN (Frenchie): Olivia asked to have a screen test with John, and their chemistry was so juicy right away that she felt she would love to do it. Plus the fact that her persona as a performer was such a goody-goody, and she got really excited about being able to make the transformation to that hot mama.
JAMIE DONNELLY (Jan): Olivia was very humble. She was the star of
the movie, but she didn’t act like she was the star. She was a star already.
KELLY WARD (Putzie): It was my first feature film, and I’m the only one of the T-Birds who did not do the stage production. We all rehearsed for two weeks prior to shooting. It was a lot of fun. My partner Jamie was the only Pink Lady who did the play.
JAMIE: I had a dream dance partner. Kelly could do everything Gene Kelly could do!
DINAH MANOFF (Marty): Even though we were in our 20s, and some even in their 30s, we were still a cast of young actors, so it was pretty ac- cessible to [get into] all that stuff that comes up in high school. I was a very bad girl in high school, so it was easy for me to play a bad girl in Grease.
MICHAEL TUCCI (Sonny): It was unbelievable [on set]! We had everybody looking through the doors [on the Paramount lot] because everybody was interested in this musical.
BARRY PEARL (Doody): We put on a show in the studio. At the time, Jack Nicholson was filming Goin’ South and he came to see [us] and Michael Landon was doing Little House on the Prairie. He came to watch. I think Warren Beatty was there, too.
MICHAEL: Every day it got better. Joan Blondell (Vi), Eve Arden (Principal McGee), Alice Ghostley (Mrs. Murdock), Sid Caesar (Coach
Calhoun), Frankie Avalon!
DINAH: I remember I shared a Winnebago with Didi and Jamie. We talked a lot about sex!
DIDI: Olivia’s first scene was with me and she was nervous. I thought I’d make up a whole story. “Sandy, what was it like in your high school in Sydney, Australia?” She looked at me like, “Is this woman nuts?” But then she said, “It’s so different. I had to wear gloves.” We just kept talking like this and then they said, “Action!” We walked right into our dialogue and she was so grateful.
“‘Summer Nights’ tells you everything you need to know about the story.” — Jamie Donnelly
DINAH: My very first job was on Welcome Back, Kotter and that’s where I met John. He is so generous in spirit. When we did Grease, he had just lost his girlfriend, Diana Hyland, and
he was coming from very deep grief into a creative explosion.
RANDAL: I worked with John on 1976’s The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. John has the tendency to be a perfectionist and an insomniac, which is a bad combo because he would call me late at night to ask which take I had printed on a certain scene. He had just finished Saturday Night Fever so he was realizing that he was a star.
DIDI: My younger brother was visiting [the set] and he was such a fan of Barbarino from Welcome Back, Kotter, and John said, “After work, do you want me to take you and your brother to Disneyland?” As soon as we got there, he said, “I better get a disguise.” So he got one of these Daniel Boone hats that came way down low. Towards the end a whole bunch of girls rushed up and started to say, “Didi Conn! You Light Up My Life! [A movie she’d been in.] We love you!” John was like, “What?” They didn’t notice him at all!
RANDAL: Olivia is exactly the way you would have imagined her, just the most loving, caring, warm person. Always upbeat.
KELLY: I had the worst crush on Olivia. I think everybody else did, too. She was so natural, friendly, genuine and authentic.
BARRY: We all got along. There was no rotten apple in the bunch. The only rock ’n’ rolling behind the camera was Jeff [Conaway, who died of an accidental drug overdose in 2011], may he rest in peace. He was a ladies’ man.
JAMIE: Jeff liked to be shocking, and his whole life he was like this. Everybody knows that Jeff played Danny Zuko in the national tour where John had played Doody, and I think it took a lot of heart for Jeff to do the role of Kenickie [in the movie], particularly when the song “Greased Lightning,” which had been originally Kenickie’s, suddenly became Danny’s song.
RANDAL: John was becoming the biggest star in the world, so it was obvious we had to shift the attention to him. [But] Jeff came up with some bits that we used, like when he and Zuko hug and they comb their hair right afterwards.
JAMIE: That was one of the more serious moments. I think what you saw between those two guys when they hold each other and looked at each other and backed off real quick like, “Ay! I’m all guy here” — all that came from the real relationship between the two of them.
DIDI: Stockard stayed to herself a lot, but that was good because we were all as afraid of her as our characters! She was really working on her part. I think [the producers] wanted Lucie Arnaz originally and I heard Lucille Ball did not want her daughter to do a screen test. She wanted her to just be offered the part, but [the producers] wanted a screen test to see how she looked with Jeff [the studio wanted Henry Winkler to play Danny; Carrie Fisher and Marie Osmond were front-runners to play Sandy]. Allan Carr was managing Stockard and all of a sudden, there she was. It was perfect.
DINAH: I was very close with Stockard and I really looked up to her. I was feeling like a kid in a new high school. But filming “Sandra Dee” was a great joy because we were so silly and we all got along and it was so much fun to torture Sandy — and it was really fun to torture Olivia!
JAMIE: Randal and I came up with that Brusha-Brusha opening [to the “Sandra Dee” scene]. I had done the play seven years before on Broadway and there was a line that could always get a laugh when they mention Bucky Beaver, and I would show my prominent teeth.
During the shooting of Grease, John’s next movie was about to premiere…
DIDI: One night John said, “I made this little film and I don’t know if it’s any good. Would you mind seeing it?” The whole cast went to a screening and we flipped out. It was Saturday Night Fever!
MICHAEL: We had no idea how big he was about to become. John said, “What did you think?” Stockard said, “You’re going to be the next Rudolph Valentino.”
On the Grease set everyone had their own favorite scenes…
MICHAEL: “Hopelessly Devoted to You” is one of my favorites that Olivia did. When she sings it, she’s so lovely. It’s like listening to a cloud. Every time she had a party at her estate in Malibu, everyone was invited. Everybody got the same gift: A button with “Grease is the word” on it.
RANDAL: The drive-in scene was my favorite because at the end of the song, the hot dog jumped into the bun right [on the movie screen behind Danny]. That was not planned!
DIDI: With “Beauty School Dropout,” the fun part was the scene that came before because Stockard was mad at Jeff. He gave her a real hickey, and she’s supposed to fling the milkshake at him and she misses and it gets all over me. But she would never miss! She must’ve done it seven times, and she just kept getting it right on him because she was mad at him. But then seeing Frankie Avalon singing to me — he wasn’t at rehearsal, so it was really a first to have him do it right then and there.
DINAH: That was the day Elvis Presley died [Aug. 16, 1977]. That’s what I remember about filming “Beauty School Dropout.” My favorite
song is Stockard’s, “There Are Worse Things I Could Do.” That’s the one we all like to secretly sing in the shower, right? It was the bad girls’ theme song! And she’s operating on a whole other level. She was playing a much deeper part of her character.
But not everything went as smooth as greased lightning…
JAMIE: A lot of the scenes required us to look like we were having fun when it was way too hot. The big dance-off: “Hand Jive.” That was excruciatingly hot.
MICHAEL: It was like 120 degrees in the gym and I passed out. Heat exhaustion. I was in the hospital for two days!
JAMIE: We were popping salt pills to stay hydrated. And the LA River scenes — it was pretty putrid at that time. They had our legs wrapped in saran wrap because it was so dirty! The director just walked right through it and the next day he had a 104 temperature.
RANDAL: I couldn’t work, so we had to close the whole production down for a day.
OLIVIA: My favorite scene was “You’re the One That I Want,” because it was a whole different image and outfit and person. It was the ’70s but those pants were from the ’50s, so they stitched me in. I have them and I’m going to auction them off for my [Cancer Wellness & Research Centre] this year.
JOHN: I liked being with Olivia in
“Jeff made out like a bandit, but the rest of us were married or had girlfriends!”
— Barry Pearl
“You’re the One That I Want” — best duet in history!
DINAH: When Olivia first came out, in that outfit with that hair, we all just died! It was as big a reveal for the cast.
OLIVIA: After I did Grease I was able to expand my music to a little bit more rock because of “Sandy 2,” I call her. It opened up a new genre for me.
KELLY: The carnival scene was fun because the ride operators would let us ride between takes.
DIDI: Remember the boys throwing pies at Sid Caesar? He says something like, “I’ll see you in summer school.” We were having such a good time that Allan Carr asked everybody, “Would you be interested in a sequel?” It was going to be called Summer School, [but Paramount] passed, and then when Grease was such a big hit, John and Olivia weren’t available. So that’s how Grease 2 was born.
OLIVIA: You can’t go back. In the early days, I used to watch it and cringe, but now I can relax and enjoy it.
DIDI: Grease is about firsts — first car, first love, first breakup. It had kind of sexy, terrific energy. The Grease spirit is all about heart and love and friendship and grease. Grease the hair, and grease the wheels of our friendship, which we’ve done over 40 years.
JAMIE: I saw John years later, and I said, “I haven’t seen you in a while and it’s so nice to be together.” He said, “Jamie, we’ll always be together because somewhere people are watching us together.” In a sense, we’re always together. — with reporting by
Amanda Champagne Meadows and Ilyssa Panitz