Grease is a 1978 American musical romantic comedy film based on the musical of the same name. Written by Bronte Woodard and directed by Randal Kleiser in his theatrical feature film debut, the film depicts the lives of two high school seniors: a bad boy (played by John Travolta) and a good girl (played by Olivia Newton-John) in the late 1950s. Grease was successful both critically and commercially. Its soundtrack album ended 1978 as the second-best selling album of the year in the United States, behind the soundtrack of the 1977 blockbuster Saturday Night Fever, and earned the film its lone Oscar nomination for "Hopelessly Devoted to You" (which lost the Academy Award for Best Original Song to Donna Summer's "Last Dance" from Thank God It's Friday at the 51st Academy Awards).
A sequel, Grease 2, was released in 1982, with Maxwell Caulfield and Michelle Pfeiffer in lead roles. Few of the original cast members reprised their roles.
Video Grease (film)
Plot
In the summer of 1958, greaser Danny Zuko and nice Australian girl Sandy Olsson meet at the beach and fall in love. When the summer comes to an end, Sandy, whose family is returning to Australia, worries that they might never meet again, but Danny tells her that their love is "only the beginning." At the beginning of the new school year at Rydell High School ("Grease"). Danny reunites with his fellow gang members, the T-Birds, of whom his best friend Kenickie, along with Doody, Sonny, and Putzie are members. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Danny, Sandy arrives at school, with her family's plans having changed, with her new friend Frenchy, a member of the Pink Ladies. Other Pink Ladies Rizzo, Marty, and Jan also arrive, excited to be seniors.
At lunch, Frenchy introduces Sandy to the other Pink Ladies while Danny and the T-Birds make fun of practicing football players, including the handsome Tom Chisum. Each group asks Danny and Sandy, respectively, about their summers and they each independently describe their romance without using the other's name. Sandy's version emphasizes the romance, truth and purity, while Danny's version is more sexual ("Summer Nights"). Headed back to class, Sandy reveals that it was Danny Zuko she met, and Rizzo teases that perhaps she'll meet him again.
At a pep rally before a football game, Sandy performs with the cheerleading squad and catches Tom Chisum's eye. Kenickie arrives with a beat up car he says he plans on rebuilding so he can race it at Thunder Road, a popular street race spot. Rizzo puts Sandy and Danny together, surprising both of them. Sandy is thrilled, but Danny, trying to impress the other T-Birds, acts obnoxious and indifferent, upsetting Sandy. Frenchy invites Sandy to a sleepover with the Pink Ladies to cheer her up.
Rizzo and the other girls pressure Sandy into smoking a cigarette and having a drink of wine at the sleepover. Frenchy reveals that she plans to drop out of Rydell to go to beauty school and in an effort to prove herself, tries to pierce Sandy's ear, making Sandy sick. Rizzo makes fun of her innocent nature ("Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee") and leaves when the T-Birds arrive in Kenickie's car. Rizzo tries to make Danny jealous by flirting with Kenickie, but Danny is unmoved and leaves. Kenickie leaves with Rizzo, stranding Putzie, Sonny, and Doody. Sandy laments over her feelings towards Danny, despite his earlier behavior ("Hopelessly Devoted to You").
Kenickie and Rizzo, while in the midst of sex, are interrupted by Leo and Cha-Cha, rival greasers. Leo insults Rizzo and deliberately crashes his own street racer into Kenickie's. At the same time, Kenickie's condom breaks.
The next day, the T-Birds look over Kenickie's car, and although they are initially skeptical of its potential, Danny and Kenickie explain the modifications they could add to make it a hot-rodding sex machine ("Greased Lightnin'"). At the popular hangout The Frosty Palace, Danny apologizes to Sandy for his behavior at the pep rally, but she rejects him. In an attempt to impress Sandy, Danny approaches Coach Calhoun about joining a team. After picking fights with the jocks in basketball, wrestling and baseball, Calhoun suggests cross-country running. He succeeds at getting Sandy's attention and the two reconcile.
Danny takes Sandy to the Frosty Palace for a date. Kenickie finds them and the gang sits together; Danny and Sandy, uncomfortable around the others, leave. Putzie asks Jan to the upcoming school dance and she agrees. Kenickie and Rizzo get into an argument and go their separate ways. Frenchy, whose hair has turned bright pink, tells a waitress she has dropped out of beauty school and is visited by a guardian angel who advises her to return to Rydell ("Beauty School Dropout").
At the school dance, Leo and Cha-Cha show up as Rizzo's and Kenickie's respective dates. Vince Fontaine, who is hosting a live telecast of the dance, flirts with Marty. All of the students take part in a dance contest that descends into chaos ("Born to Hand Jive"). Danny and Sandy do well, but Sonny pulls Sandy off the dance floor, allowing Cha Cha to step in and win with Danny. Sonny, Putzie, and Doody moon the national TV audience, prompting Principal McGee to threaten to tell federal authorities.
Danny apologizes to Sandy and tries to make it up to her by taking her to a drive-in movie theater. She's unmoved by his pleas for forgiveness until he asks her to wear his ring, which she gleefully accepts. Danny then tries to make out with her, causing Sandy to angrily throw his ring at him and run off, leaving Danny distraught ("Sandy"). Meanwhile, Rizzo admits she may be pregnant to Marty and asks her to keep it a secret, but the story gets back to Kenickie. Rizzo tells Kenickie the baby isn't his, which both relieves and upsets him.
The next day, the T-Birds have finished Kenickie's car and he is eager to race it against Leo's at Thunder Road. Sandy tells Rizzo she plans to watch the race and offers to help Rizzo despite the rumors about Rizzo's character that have been spread around school. She thanks Sandy and muses to herself about how her sins are not as bad as they could be ("There Are Worse Things I Could Do").
The T-Birds, Pink Ladies, and Scorpions gather for the race, with the winner receiving the loser's car as a prize. Just before the race begins, Kenickie hits his head and asks Danny to race for him. Danny agrees and despite Leo using bladed hub caps (in a sequence paying homage to Ben-Hur), wins the race. Sandy watches from afar and concludes that she must change her approach to life, asking Frenchy for help ("Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee (Reprise)").
The gang celebrates graduation at a school carnival where Rizzo tells Kenickie she isn't pregnant and they reunite. Danny arrives wearing a letterman's sweater and vowing to do whatever is necessary to win Sandy. Sandy shocks the T-Birds when she arrives with a new hair style and wearing a revealing black outfit and leather jacket. In song, Danny and Sandy reaffirm their commitment to each other ("You're the One That I Want"). Jan worries that after graduation, the gang won't see each other again, but Danny disagrees. They celebrate their friendship ("We Go Together") and Danny and Sandy depart in a red hot rod, which takes flight as they wave goodbye to their friends.
Maps Grease (film)
Cast
Principal cast
- John Travolta as Danny Zuko, who lives a double life as leader of the greaser gang the T-Birds and as Sandy's boyfriend
- Olivia Newton-John as Sandy Olsson, Danny's girlfriend and an Australian expatriate and ingénue, who transforms from square to greaser
- Stockard Channing as Betty Rizzo, Danny's former fling and the cynical leader of the Pink Ladies clique
- Jeff Conaway as Kenickie, Danny's best friend, Rizzo's love interest and the owner of Greased Lightnin'
- Barry Pearl as Doody, a member of the T-Birds; he pairs with Frenchy at the school dance
- Michael Tucci as Sonny LaTierri, a trouble-making wannabe womanizer and T-Bird who courts Marty with little success over the course of the film
- Kelly Ward as Putzie, a member of the T-Birds whose relationship with Jan builds over the course of the film
- Didi Conn as Frenchy, Sandy's closest friend in the Pink Ladies and an aspiring beautician
- Jamie Donnelly as Jan, a quirky member of the Pink Ladies with a liking for Ipana toothpaste
- Dinah Manoff as Marty Maraschino, a member of the Pink Ladies whose attractiveness regularly draws the attention of men, including Sonny and Vince Fontaine
School staff/others
- Eve Arden as Principal McGee, who shows discomfort at the goings-on at Rydell High.
- Dody Goodman as Secretary Blanche Hodel, who enjoys even the wilder antics at the school.
- Sid Caesar as Coach Vince Calhoun, the tough-talking gym teacher and coach of all the school's perennially losing sports teams
- Eddie Deezen as Eugene Felsnick, the class nerd
- Susan Buckner as Patty Simcox, the head cheerleader and a rival for Danny's affections
- Lorenzo Lamas as Tom Chisum, a popular jock who competes for Sandy's affections
- Dennis C. Stewart as Leo "Craterface" Balmudo, head of the Scorpions, a rival greaser gang
- Annette Charles as Charlene "Cha-Cha" DiGregorio, Leo's girlfriend
- Joan Blondell as Vi, a waitress at the Frosty Palace
- Ellen Travolta as Waitress
- Frankie Avalon as Teen Angel
- Edd Byrnes as Vince Fontaine, on-air personality at KZAZ radio and television
- Sha-Na-Na as Johnny Casino and the Gamblers, a rock and roll band
- Alice Ghostley as Mrs. Murdock, a rogue auto shop teacher who helps build Greased Lightnin' for the T-Birds
- Darrell Zwerling as Mr. Lynch
- Molly Brady (uncredited) as unnamed baby
- Dick Patterson as Mr. Rudie
- Fannie Flagg as Nurse Wilkins
- Michael Biehn (uncredited) as Mike, a jock at Rydell high
Production
Casting
John Travolta had previously worked with producer Robert Stigwood on Saturday Night Fever, had a nascent singing career at the time (including the top-10 hit "Let Her In" in 1976), and had previously appeared as Doody in a touring production of the stage version of Grease. He made a number of casting recommendations that Stigwood ultimately accepted, including suggesting Randal Kleiser (who had never directed a theatrical feature before this but had directed Travolta in the 1976 telefilm The Boy in the Plastic Bubble) as director, and Olivia Newton-John, then known almost exclusively as a country music singer, as Sandy. Newton-John had done little acting before this film, with only one film credit (the unreleased 1970 film Toomorrow, which predated her singing breakthrough) to her name up to that time. Before accepting the role, Newton-John requested a screen test for Grease to avoid another career setback. The screen test was done with the drive-in movie scene. Newton-John, who is native to England and lived most of her life in Australia, was unable to perform with a convincing American accent, and thus her character was rewritten to be Australian. Before Newton-John was hired, Allan Carr was considering numerous names such as Ann-Margret, Susan Dey and Marie Osmond for the lead role; Newton-John agreed to a reduced asking price in exchange for star billing. In a case of life imitating art, Newton-John's own musical career would undergo a transformation similar to that of the Sandy Olsson character; her next album after Grease, the provocatively titled Totally Hot, featured a much more sexual and pop-oriented approach, with Newton-John appearing on the album cover in similar all-leather attire and teased hair.
Jeff Conaway, like Travolta, had previously appeared in the stage version of Grease; he had played Danny Zuko during the show's run on Broadway. Jamie Donnelly reprised her role as Jan from the Broadway show, the only cast member to do so; as her hair had begun to gray by this point, she had to dye her hair to resemble her stage character. Kelly Ward had previously appeared as a similar sarcastic supporting character in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble with Travolta under Kleiser; he was cast as Putzie, a mostly new character.
Lorenzo Lamas was a last-minute replacement for Steven Ford, who developed stage fright shortly before filming and backed out. His role contained no spoken dialogue and required Lamas to dye his hair blond to avoid looking like most of the other T-Birds (although Conaway and Ward were also blonds).
Henry Winkler was once considered for a lead in the film. Winkler, who was playing Arthur Fonzarelli on Happy Days, was originally chosen to play Danny. His lack of singing experience and fear of being typecast after Happy Days and the film The Lords of Flatbush led him to decline the role. Adult film star Harry Reems was originally signed to play Coach Calhoun; however, executives at Paramount nixed the idea due to Reems' previous work in adult films, and producers cast Sid Caesar instead. Caesar was one of several veterans of 1950s television (Eve Arden, Frankie Avalon, Joan Blondell, Edd Byrnes, Alice Ghostley, Dody Goodman) to be cast in supporting roles. Coincidentally, Frankie Avalon and Randal Kleiser had both appeared in 1966's Fireball 500, the latter as an extra.
Filming locations
The opening beach scene was shot at Malibu's Leo Carrillo State Beach, making explicit reference to From Here to Eternity. The exterior Rydell scenes, including the basketball, baseball and track segments, were shot at Venice High School in Venice, California, while the Rydell interiors, including the high school dance, were filmed at Huntington Park High School. The sleepover was shot at a private house in East Hollywood. The Paramount Pictures studio lot was the location of the scenes that involve Frosty Palace and the musical numbers "Greased Lightning" and "Beauty School Dropout". The drive-in movie scenes were shot at the Burbank Pickwick Drive-In (it was closed and torn down in 1989 and a shopping center took its place). The race was filmed at the Los Angeles River, between the First and Seventh Street Bridges, where many other films have been shot. The final scene where the carnival took place used John Marshall High School. And due to budget cuts a short scene was filmed at Hazard Park in Los Angeles.
Post-production
Scenes inside the Frosty Palace contain obvious blurring of various Coca-Cola signs. Prior to the film's release, producer Allan Carr had made a product-placement deal with Coca-Cola's main competitor Pepsi (for example, a Pepsi logo can be seen in the animated opening sequence). When Carr saw the footage of the scene with Coca-Cola products and signage, he ordered director Randal Kleiser to either reshoot the scene with Pepsi products or remove the Coca-Cola logos from the scene. As reshoots were deemed too expensive and time-consuming, optical mattes were used to cover up or blur out the Coca-Cola references. The 'blurring' covered up trademarked menu signage and a large wall poster, but a red cooler with the logo could not be sufficiently altered so was left unchanged. According to Kleiser, "We just had to hope that Pepsi wouldn't complain. They didn't."
Due to an editing error, a closing scene in which Danny and Sandy kiss was removed from the finished print and lost before its theatrical release. The scene was preserved only in black-and-white; Kleiser attempted to have the existing footage colorized and restored to the film for the film's re-release in 1998 but was dissatisfied with the results. The scene is included as an extra on the 40th anniversary home video release, and Kleiser hopes to make another attempt at colorizing the footage that is effective enough for the footage to be inserted into the film as he originally intended by the time the film's 50th anniverary comes in 2028.
Release and reception
Box office
Grease was originally released to North American theaters on June 16, 1978 and was an immediate box office success. In its opening weekend, the film grossed $8,941,717 in 862 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking at No. 2 (behind Jaws 2) at the box office for the weekend and with the all-time opening weekend records. Despite losing the weekend, it set a record gross in its first 19 days with $40,272,000.
Grease has grossed $188,755,690 domestically and $206,200,000 internationally, totaling $394,955,690 worldwide. Globally, it was the highest-grossing musical ever, eclipsing the 13-year-old record held by The Sound of Music, but has since been overtaken by Les Misérables, Mamma Mia! and the 2017 release of Beauty and the Beast. Grease is now the fourth highest-grossing live action musical.
Critical reception
Grease received mostly positive reviews from movie critics and is considered by many as one of the best films of 1978.
Vincent Canby on its initial release in June 1978 called the film "terrific fun", describing it as a "contemporary fantasy about a 1950s teen-age musical--a larger, funnier, wittier and more imaginative-than-Hollywood movie with a life that is all its own"; Canby pointed out that the film was "somewhat in the manner of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which recalls the science-fiction films of the '50s in a manner more elegant and more benign than anything that was ever made then, Grease is a multimillion-dollar evocation of the B-picture quickies that Sam Katzman used to turn out in the '50s (Don't Knock the Rock, 1956) and that American International carried to the sea in the 1960s (Beach Party, 1963)."
Grease was voted the best musical ever on Channel 4's 100 greatest musicals in 2004. The film holds a 75% approval rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 64 reviews with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Grease is a pleasing, energetic musical with infectiously catchy songs and an ode to young love that never gets old." It holds a score of 70/100 on the review aggregator Metacritic based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Grease premiered for the first time on American television in 1981 on ABC-TV. It was re-released to theaters in 1998 to mark the 20th anniversary. The film was also ranked number 21 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies.
Home video
Grease was first released in the US on VHS by Paramount Home Video in 1982, with reissues in 1989 and 1994; the last VHS release was on June 23, 1998 and titled the 20th Anniversary Edition following a theatrical re-release that March. On September 24, 2002, it was released on DVD for the first time. On September 19, 2006, it was re-released on DVD as the Rockin' Rydell Edition, which came with a black Rydell High T-Bird jacket cover, a white Rydell "R" letterman's sweater cover or the Target-exclusive Pink Ladies cover. It was released on Blu-ray Disc on May 5, 2009. In connection with the film's 40th anniversary, Paramount released Grease on 4K, UHD, Blu-Ray and dvd on April 24, 2018.
Awards
American Film Institute Recognition
- American Film Institute Lists
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions: No. 97
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs: No. 70 for "Summer Nights"
- AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals: No. 20
Sequels and spin-offs
The sequel, Grease 2 (1982), stars Maxwell Caulfield and Michelle Pfeiffer. While only a few cast members from the original movie such as Dody Goodman, Sid Caesar, Eddie Deezen, Didi Conn, Dennis Stewart and Eve Arden reprise their respective roles. Dick Patterson returned, playing a different character. It was not as successful, grossing just $15 million on its $13 million budget. Patricia Birch, the original movie's choreographer, directed the ill-fated sequel. It would be the only movie that she would direct.
On July 8, 2010, a sing-along version of Grease was released to select theaters around the U.S. A trailer was released in May 2010, with cigarettes digitally removed from certain scenes, implying heavy editing; however, Paramount confirmed these changes were done only for the film's advertising, and the rating for the film itself changed from its original PG to that of PG-13 for "sexual content including references, teen smoking and drinking, and language." The movie was shown for two weekends only; additional cities lobbied by fans from the Paramount official website started a week later and screened for one weekend.
On March 12, 2013, Grease and Grease 2 were packaged together in a Double Feature DVD set from Warner Home Video.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack album ended 1978 as the second-best selling album of the year in the United States, exceeded only by another soundtrack album, from the film Saturday Night Fever, which also starred Travolta. The song "Hopelessly Devoted to You" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music--Original Song. The song "You're the One That I Want" was released as a single prior to the film's release and became an immediate chart-topper, despite not being in the stage show or having been seen in the film at that time. Additionally, the dance number to "You're the One That I Want" was nominated for TV Land's award for "Movie Dance Sequence You Reenacted in Your Living Room" in 2008. In the United Kingdom, the two Travolta/Newton-John duets, "You're the One That I Want" and "Summer Nights", were both number one hits and as of 2011 are still among the 20 best-selling singles of all time (at Nos. 6 and 19 respectively). The movie's title song was also a number-one hit single for Frankie Valli.
The song "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee" references Sal Mineo in the original stage version. Mineo was stabbed to death a year before filming, so the line was changed to refer to Elvis Presley instead. The references to Troy Donohue, Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Annette Funicello are from the original stage version. Coincidentally, this scene as well as the scene before and the scene after it were filmed on August 16, 1977, the date of Elvis Presley's death.
Some of the songs were not present in the film; songs that appear in the film but not in the soundtrack are "La Bamba" by Ritchie Valens, "Whole Lotta Shaking Going On" by Jerry Lee Lewis, "Alma Mater", "Alma Mater Parody", and "Rydell Fight Song". "Alone at a Drive-in Movie (instrumental)", "Mooning", and "Freddy My Love" are not present in the film, although all three are listed in the end credits in-addition to being on the soundtrack. (Both "Mooning" and "Rock'n'Roll Party Queen," the latter of which was played in the film as background music, were written in the musical for a character named Roger that was written out of the film, replaced by the non-singing Putzie. In general, all of the songs in the musical that were performed by characters other than Danny, Rizzo, Sandy or Johnny Casino were either taken out of the film or given to other characters, including Marty Maraschino's number "Freddy My Love," Kenickie's "Greased Lightnin'," and Doody's "Those Magic Changes.") Two songs from the musical, "Shakin' at the High School Hop" "and "All Choked Up," were left off both the film and the soundtrack.
The songs appear in the film in the following order:
Television
On August 17, 2009, a television series inspired by the film premiered in Venezuela. The series was produced and directed by Vladimir Perez. The show will explore and expand on the characters and story from the film.
References
External links
- Official Sing-A-Long Site
- Grease on IMDb
- Grease at the TCM Movie Database
- Grease at AllMovie
- Grease at Box Office Mojo
- Grease at Rotten Tomatoes
- Grease at Metacritic
- Original 1978 Release Trailer on YouTube
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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