JUNE 1978 …Retro monster-musical Grease premieres!
JUNE 16
It was pure old school Hollywood – or was that High School Hollywood? On that day, the crowds poured downtown as a leather-clad, D.A.’d John Travolta edged a somewhat bewildered Olivia Newton-John through the mêlée and into the welcoming foyer of Mann’s Chinese Theatre to attend the movie premiere of ’50s-nostalgic musical romance Grease.
Outside, Los Angeles Mayor Thomas Bradley proclaimed it Grease Day, as a steady flow of celebs battled their way in, while a film crew shot footage for a TV production documenting the event and the launch party held on the Paramount set. The latter scenario featured a danceathon involving cast members plus Alice Cooper, Debby Boone, Yvonne Elliman, Jodie Foster, Chevy Chase, The O’Jays, Frankie Valli, Robert Stigwood, Andy Gibb, Barry Manilow, Susan George, Lynda Carter and other cheerleaders.
It was a long way from Grease’s low-key origins as a stage musical. Penned by adman Jim Jacobs and art teacher Warren Casey, it had opened at Chicago’s Kingston Mines Theatre in February 1971. After an off-Broadway stint and a fistful of Tony Award nominations, the show moved to the Broadhurst Theatre in midtown Manhattan in June 1972.
Theatre and movie producer Allan Carr had sold music entrepreneur Robert Stigwood a half-interest in the film rights to Grease. Sensing a blockbuster, the pair toyed with Ann-Margret or Marie Osmond as female lead Sandy Olsson, while Henry Winkler (AKA The Fonz from TV’s Happy Days) was in the frame to play Danny Zuko.
Instead, Travolta, who portrayed the cocksure Vinnie in the TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, and had been an understudy in the stage version of Grease, was hauled in to become Danny, while Australian pop star Olivia Newton-John, whose previous film had been the laughable Toomorrow, a 1970 sci-fi-angled attempt to launch a new supergroup, was signed up to play Sandy.
The two months of production began in summer 1977, with LA’s Venice High School and Huntington Park High School standing in for Grease’s Rydell High. “I was playing a naive girl,” mused Newton-John to People magazine. “I kept trying to give her a little strength. John gave me a lot of confidence. We became good friends and spent a lot of time together.”
Travolta had recently played dance king Tony Manero in Stigwood’s disco drama Saturday Night Fever. That film’s December ’77 release won him a degree of fame that made the release of Grease a lip-smacking proposition for America’s baby boomers. Accordingly, when the Grease soundtrack album was released prior to the film’s opening, its first single, You’re The One That I Want, entered the US charts on June 10 and eventually sold three million copies. Another of its big hits was the title song, written by Barry Gibb, who hadn’t seen the show or read the script. A disco groover sung by Frankie Valli, it existed outside of Grease’s purported world of ’50s rock’n’roll – the OST also featured Sha Na Na’s versions of burnished oldies such as Hound Dog, Tears On My Pillow and Blue Moon – but at least it fitted with
“The best of James Dean, the best of Brando, the best of Elvis…” JOHN TRAVOLTA
Gibb’s work on Saturday Night Fever six months earlier.
The film’s $6-million production costs seemed well spent – so far. But another $3m was required for promotional purposes. “We have to be more than packagers. You wouldn’t find people in Detroit making a car and not selling it,” reasoned Allan Carr. Then there was an additional $2.5m tie-in with Pepsi that resulted in a promotional 15-minute short featuring Lynyrd Skynyrd which went out as a support item when Grease went on general release at over 900 cinemas across the States.
The film itself was a high school hop of a movie that oozed nostalgia and energy, allied with great charm and humour. With its references to Rebel Without A Cause and From Here To Eternity allied to the wacky appeal of a ’60s beach party movie, it was Busby Berkeley with a popsicle. It couldn’t miss – and didn’t.
“The two writers of Grease were obsessed with their teenage-hood in the ’50s,” mused Travolta at a 40th anniversary screening of the film in Los Angeles. “They did a microcosm of every great aspect of the ’50s – the best of James Dean, the best of Brando, the best of Elvis…”
At the box office, it notched $395m, checking out as the 20th century’s most successful film musical. Though 1982’s sequel, starring Michelle Pfeiffer, flopped, and two further films to take the story into the ’60s were never made, it was announced on April 10, 2019 that a prequel entitled Summer Loving was in production. What’s the word? Grease is the word.