By Steve LaVigne
I was involved with a group of hippies at a summer theater in the late 1960s when I first heard that someone was writing a play about grease youth. I didn’t give it much thought until I saw an article about the show replacing the long-running Oh, Calcutta! at off-Broadway’s Eden Theater. The rest, as they say, is history.
Grease was the brainchild of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey (1935-1988). First presented at Kingston Mines Theater (now a jazz club) in Chicago, it was originally a smutty look at high school in the 50s. It was successful enough to attract attention in New York, where it underwent multiple changes, transformed into the more nostalgic musical we all know. Besides adding more songs and characters, director Tom Moore framed the story with the tenth annual reunion of Rydell High’s class of 1959.
Grease opened at the Eden Theater, but, popular from the beginning, it moved to Broadway’s Royale (now Jacobs) Theater on 45th Street, where it lasted for 3,388 performances, surpassing Fiddler on the Roof as Broadway’s longest-running musical. (That record would be broken first, by A Chorus Line and later by Phantom of the Opera. It could easily be broken again if the revival of Chicago continues for about six more years.)
The original cast featured Barry Bostwick (later the Mayor on TV’s Spin City and Brad in The Rocky Horror Picture Show) as Danny Zuko; Carol Demas as Sandy Dumbrowski; Alan Paul as Teen Angel (He’d later become part of the jazz quartet The Manhattan Transfer) and Adrienne Barbeau as Rizzo. (Barbeau works frequently in Hollywood).
Of course it was destined for the movies.
Following a featured role in Tom Moore’s production of Over Here! which brought the surviving Andrews Sisters back to Broadway and after appearing in both a national tour and the Broadway cast of Grease, John Travolta moved to California, first as the breakout star of Welcome Back Kotter, during which he made a TV-movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble directed by Randal Kleiser. This led to the starring role in Saturday Night Fever, which propelled him to stardom. Casting him as Danny Zuko was a no-brainer, and Travolta requested that Kleiser direct. This would be Kleiser’s feature film debut.
Produced by Allan Carr and written for the screen by Bronte Woodard (Can’t Stop the Music), the story was opened up to include passing references to films of the 1950s (the beach used in the opening was the same one used in From Here to Eternity), a drag race along the Los Angeles river (referencing Rebel Without a Cause) and a school carnival with rides following the graduation scene.
He changed character names as well. Because Olivia Newton-John was cast as Sandy, her last name was changed to Olsen. Icons like Eve Arden as Principal McGee; Dody Goodman as Blanche; Sid Caesar as the Coach; Alice Ghostley as the mechanics teacher; Joan Blondell as Vi, a malt shop waitress; Frankie Avelon as Teen Angel and Edd “Kooky” Byrnes as Vince Fontaine were cast for nostalgic purposes.
The Burger Palace Boys were renamed the T-Birds and included Jeff Conaway as Doody, although his song, “Magic Changes” was cut. Stockard Channing was cast as tough girl and head of the Pink Ladies, Betty Rizzo; Didi Conn as Frenchy and Dinah Manoff as Marty (looking more beautiful than ever).
Four new songs were added and the credits were animated. (At one point, Grease was planned as an animated film). Vastly entertaining, it remains the most successful movie musical of all-time, beating the record held by The Sound of Music.
I’m going to admit that when I first saw it in the theater during the summer of 1978, I didn’t like the movie. I thought it had been blown way out of proportion and had lost its charm. Since then, stage productions have changed to reflect the showy aspects of the film. It no longer resembles the original Broadway production. It’s become a staple for high school productions and it’s even a plot element in Nunsense.
So, when I watched the film again for this article, imagine my surprise when I found that I really enjoyed it. Perhaps enough time has passed, but it really holds up well. When I first saw it, I thought the plot had been lost within the showy additions, but it’s still there, fairly intact and the emotional core is even stronger.
Among the surprises was how good I found Stockard Channing’s delivery of “The Worst Thing I Can Do.” I saw Channing in the last Broadway revival of Pal Joey. It was a disastrous production because they didn’t trust the material. The Joey was too young for the role; the new script turned his love interest into a thankless role and the traditional trappings of the script were drastically changed.
Channing was cast as Vera Simpson, but her vocal delivery left much to be desired. She has no legato, so her singing was rushed and she gulped her way through “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.” The only thing good about that version was Martha Plimpton, who played Gladys Bumps and wowed the audience with her rendition of “Zip.”
But I digress.
Woodard eliminated the reunion framing device, so the story jumps right into introducing the characters with Pat Birch’s terrific choreography, especially that of the T-Birds who dance on bleachers in “Summer Nights.” Among the highlights are Frenchy’s fantasy “Beauty School Dropout”; Danny’s “Greased Lightnin’”; the high school hop, and “You’re the One That I Want” during the carnival scene.
Because of its overwhelming success, of course, a sequel was in order. Didi Conn, Eve Arden, Sid Caesar and Dody Goodman returned, while other roles were created for 1960s icons Connie Stevens and Tab Hunter. The new grease youth featured Michelle Pfeiffer, Maxwell Caulfield and Lorna Luft and it was directed and choreographed by Pat Birch, the choreographer for original stage production and the movie. However, beyond the terrific opening number, “Back to School Again,” Grease 2 dies!
Evidently, Hollywood tried to squeeze as much cash as they could from this material. In the early aughts, a sequel was planned to star Olivia Newton-John, but she passed away in 2022 before there was ever a completed script. Another sequel and a prequel were also planned but neither of these has surfaced either.
Randall Kleiser went on to direct The Blue Lagoon, Summer Lovers, Flight of the Navigator, Big Top Pee Wee, White Fang, Honey, I Blew Up the Kid and his personal story It’s My Party, based on his partner’s decision to die with dignity by suicide rather than suffer the ravages of suffering from AIDS. (The movie is more entertaining than it sounds).
If you haven’t seen Grease or haven’t seen it in a long time, it’s worth seeing again. It may surprise you the way it did me.