Grease reheats 50s hot rods and ponytails - Calgary Herald

By David Sheehan
(Special to The Herald)

What was it like growing up in the rough and raunchy 1950s? John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. were born too late to know (he's 24. she's 29). but they'll probably be considered experts by the time their new movie musical is released next month.

The film is, of course, Grease, the $6 million movie version of one of the longest running shows in Broad way history. Grease is as 1950s as hot rods and ponytails, and twice as risque as anything you're likely to see on TV's Happy Days.

Travolta plays Danny Zucko, leader of the T-Birds a gang of high school IDs who flaunt then macho cool in leather jackets and crotch killing jeans. They're the kind of guys who stand up in their hot rods, pull down their pants and moon right at you.

Zucko, with his black hair polished to a high gloss, has a stud image to uphold and will lose face with his gang if he hangs around with Sandy, the goody-goody girl played by Newton-John (But don't worry there's a happy ending).

June premiere

Both Travolta and Newton-John can relate much of the Grease plot line to their own growing up years but will the public be able to? That's the gamble producer Allan Carr is taking as he gears up for the movie's June premiere. Six years ago, when Carr purchased the film rights to Grease, the experts told him he was making a mistake on what they considered an out-of-date property. Besides, they said, how do you cast a song and dance romance about a squeaky clean girl and a leather jacketed greaser?

One couple Carr eyed for the leads early on was Elvis Presley and Ann-Margaret. Later he settled on Henry Winkler and Susan Dey, until the Fonz decided not to do any more 50s material. But that was long ago before the night in 1975 when Carr saw an actor named John Travolta in TV's Welcome Back Kotter.

Carr phoned Robert Stigwood, the music mogul. who had become his partner in Grease.

Certified gold

Shortly afterward, Stigwood signed Travolta to a three-picture deal. First came Saturday Night Fever and box office history. Now there's Grease, which also shows Stigwood's Midas touch with movie music tie-ins. The soundtrack from Fever is the best-selling LP of all time, and Grease is moving up the charts even before the movie's release. Travolta and Newton-John's single, You're the One That I Want is already certified gold.

Although Grease will not make or break Travolta's career at this point, it does have special significance for him: I went almost directly from Saturday Night Fever to Grease, Travolta explains. so making Grease was a wonderful change of pace. Also, since Fever wasn't out yet, no one recognized me as a big star. I felt good because people obviously thought I had the ability to do the heavier drama stuff and the light comedy singing and dancing too. It was exciting to assert myself in both styles, especially at a time when I was known only as one of the Sweathogs on Kotter.

An added kick comes from the fact that before Kotter, Travolta had a small role in Grease on tour and later on Broadway.

He played Doody, who is worlds apart from his current sizzling, sex-symbol image. Doody was tongue-tied and clumsy, and he dressed like a hick. His hair stuck out and he wore mismatched sneakers. Hard to believe, but that wasn't far from Travolta's real-life image as a kid.

I was a clown in school, Travolta admits I didn't like high school in general. I had other interests, mostly to go into show business. Which is what he did at age 16 when he dropped out of school.

Back then, no one would have dreamed of casting him as Grease's superstud hero. I wasn't tough like that. says Travolta. As for girls, maybe I'd have one girlfriend, never a lot. I wouldn't have known how to handle them.

After the critical acclaim he won for the grittily dramatic Fever, Travolta worried about the bubble-gum lightness of Grease. Then he decided: The lack of social statement in Grease is in itself a social statement, because the '50s didn't have a lot of great causes.

Everything was more dull, bland and complacent. And in a lot of ways, that's how things are today in the 70s. Which is something audiences can relate to, I think, When everything is so surface-y and self-centered, the adolescent experience becomes all the more important and dramatic.

Travolta has a point, and that point just might make Grease what he calls the Star Wars of musical movies in terms of entertainment for young people. Then again, from rough-cut scenes I've seen, Grease might be just insipid formula stuff that has nothing more to do with the '50s teen-age experience than Father Knows Best or Our Miss Brooks.

Travolta will fight me on that one, though, and since I can't judge a whole movie by a few scenes, I must listen when he talks about his behavior models in Grease.

When you watch it all. he points out. you'll see how my character is tender with the girl he really likes and slick when he's around the guys. So he's really a nice guy putting all this smart-ass stuff on. I think kids will understand that. After all, his two-sided way of behaving is really the romantic conflict of the story.

Voice blends nicely

To get all this across in Grease (if indeed he does) Travolta has sharpened his sense of humor while working out the rough spots in a singing voice that blends nicely with that of his co-star.

Carr's talent-scouting ability was as sharp in spotting Newton-John as it was in picking Travolta out of a crowd of Sweathogs. Carr saw the pretty, blonde singer with the Australian accent at a Hollywood party. At first, she was her usual self. Carr remembers, almost a waxen figurine. But then all of a sudden she started telling a joke, screwing up that perfect face in some cute but hilarious contortions.

Carr told her she ought to be in pictures, and arranged a screen test. I had no training really. Newton-John shrugs. and as much as I loved the idea, all I could do on such short notice was hope that sone natural ability would come through.

By the time the test was over, Carr knew she was just what he wanted for Grease. He'd already tested dozens of actresses for the role of Sandy, but only two others Marie Osmond and Deborah Raffin came close. Yet neither of them clicked so well on-screen with Travolta as did Newton-John.

Falling in love

Carr altered the Grease story line to make Sandy a transfer student whose family had just moved here from Australia, thereby justifying the co-star's accent and, inadvertently, echoing the tale of Newton-John's own adolescence. Well. I'm playing a 17-year-old. says the singer, so all I had to do really was think back to 12 years ago when I was suddenly plunked into a strange country (England), not knowing many people and just beginning really to discover boys, falling in love with a guy and being rejected. It's something everyone goes through one way or another, but there's definitely a bit of myself in there.

Sandy is described in one of the film's songs as being lousy with virginity. She's a beauty, but far too proper to suit her new school chums. She worries that my patent-leather shoes are too shiny, the boys might be able to see up my skirt. Now there's a genuine example of '50s paranoia.

Some of the prim image fits the offstage Newton-John. At times I feel like the 1978 equivalent to Doris Day, she laughs. There are those who think I can't be as straight as I look. That's why there's always someone trying to dig up dirt on me. Yet I can't be something that I'm not.

However, that's exactly what happens to her character in Grease. In the movie. Travolta forfeits his love for Newton-John to maintain his macho facade. But she saves the day by adapting to his life style.

Takes on trashy look

She sheds her pastel dresses and slips into skin-tight pedal pushers, a bare top and red platform shoes. She takes on a trashy look that her friends swoon over. A cigarette dangles from her lips. but we glimpse the old Sandy as she awkwardly tries to grind it out with her heel.

When Newton-John walked onto the set in her new sleazy attire, no one recognized her. She loved every minute of it winking, flirting, blowing kisses, enjoying the ultimate camouflage.

The joke is funny because it's something the real Newton-John would not do. She's never been able to play at being something she's not for the sake of peer acceptance. That includes being a new romance for co-star Travolta, even though the media thought that there were offscreen love songs.

He was as sweet and encouraging as could be, says Newton-John. and we sometimes went out for a meal or drinks after a day's work. But that was all.

Besides changing the story line to accommodate Newton-John, Carr also changed the basic nature of the Grease high school to conform more to his own teenage years. In the play the school was a tough, working-class neighborhood, but in the film the social strata is upper middle class. We didn't want these kids to be too raunchy. It's not a musical version of The Lords of Flatbush is it?

Carr kicked of rehearsals with an honest-to-goodness sock-hop. Once shooting started. there were champagne parties. The big sound-stage doors were rolled back and while the cast rehearsed the livelier numbers, music and song flooded the lot.

Noise aggravates

There was enough noise to aggravate Jack Nicholsono was working close by on his new film, Goin' South. One day as Travolta and Newton-John were wailing away on the Summer Love number, Nicholson threw open a window and shouted to Carr: Either close that door or put me in your goddam movie. Carr yelled back: I remember your singing in Tommy, Jack. We'll close the door.

We'll see what went on behind that closed door this summer in theatres all over North America, and decide for ourselves whether John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John have turned the 1950s into greased lightning or just into a lot of greasy kid stuff.