Grease (film)

• John Travolta as Danny Zuko
• Olivia Newton-John as Sandy Olsson

• Jeff Conaway as Kenickie
• Barry Pearl as Doody
• Michael Tucci as Sonny LaTierri
• Kelly Ward as Putzie

• Stockard Channing as Betty Rizzo
• Didi Conn as Frenchy
• Jamie Donnelly as Jan
• Dinah Manoff as Marty Maraschino

• Eddie Deezen as Eugene Felsnic
• Susan Buckner as Patricia "Patty" Simcox
• Lorenzo Lamas as Thomas "Tom" Chisum
• Dennis Cleveland Stewart as Leo "Crater-Face" Balmudo
• Annette Charles as Charlene "Cha-Cha" DiGregorio

• Eve Arden as Principal McGee
• Dody Goodman as Blanche Hodel
• Sid Caesar as Coach Vince Calhoun
• Alice Ghostley as Mrs. Murdock
• Darrell Zwerling as Mr. Lynch
• Dick Patterson as Mr. Rudie
• Fannie Flagg as Nurse Wilkins

• Joan Blondell as Vi
• Frankie Avalon as Teen Angel
• Edd Byrnes as Vince Fontaine
• Johnny Contardo and Sha Na Na as Johnny Casino & The Gamblers
• Ellen Travolta as a Frosty Palace waitress

John Travolta had previously worked with Stigwood on Saturday Night Fever, recorded 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 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 multiple Grammy winning pop and country singer, as Sandy. Newton-John had done little acting before this film, with only two film credits (1965's Funny Things Happen Down Under and the little-seen 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.[11] The screen test was done with the drive-in movie scene. Newton-John, who was born in England and spent most of her childhood 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 Carrie Fisher,[12][13] Ann-Margret, Deborah Raffin,[14] Susan Dey and Marie Osmond for the lead role. Osmond almost took the role before she realized the extent to which the character transformed into a rebel and turned it down[15] to star in Goin' Coconuts instead. Newton-John agreed to a reduced asking price in exchange for star billing.[11] 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.[16]

Lucie Arnaz auditioned for the part of Rizzo, but a talent client of Carr, Stockard Channing, was cast, several years after her last major film role and debut in The Fortune.[17] At 33 she was the oldest cast member to play a high school student, and Kleiser made her and the other actors playing students take a "crow’s feet test" to see whether they could pass for younger in close-ups.[17] Softer focus was used on some of the older actors' faces.[15] Channing lobbied heavily to keep the climactic song "There Are Worse Things I Could Do" in the score over Carr's objections.[15]

Henry Winkler turned down the role of Danny Zuko for fear of being typecast as a greaser, having been playing the similar bad-boy greaser Arthur Fonzarelli on Happy Days since 1974. Winkler would later regret the decision.[17][18]

Elvis Presley was considered for the role of The Teen Angel but died before production.[15] Marie Osmond's brother and duet partner Donny Osmond was another potential Teen Angel before Avalon was cast,[15] as was Frankie Valli, who had been given the choice of either singing the theme or appearing as the Teen Angel (he chose the former).[19]

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. He did not get to perform Kenickie's featured number "Greased Lightnin'" due to Travolta's influence and desire to have that song for himself.[15] 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.[20] 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, and Mark Fidrych, who ran into conflicts with his full-time career as a baseball player. His role contained no spoken dialogue and required Lamas to bleach his hair to avoid looking like one of the T-Birds.[20][15]

Adult film star Harry Reems was originally signed to play Coach Calhoun; however, executives at Paramount nixed the idea, concerned that his reputation as a porn star would hinder box office returns in the Southern United States,[21] and producers cast Sid Caesar instead.[22] 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; Paul Lynde was considered for the role Arden ultimately filled.[15] Coincidentally, Frankie Avalon and Randal Kleiser had both appeared in 1966's Fireball 500, the latter as an extra.

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 front parking lot scenes, the auto shop, the “Summer Nights” bleachers number, Rizzo's “There Are Worse Things I Can Do” number, the basketball, baseball, and track segments, and the interior of the gymnastics gym, were shot at Venice High School in Venice, California, during the summer of 1977. 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.[23] The final scene where the carnival took place used John Marshall High School.[24] Furthermore, owing to budget cuts, a short scene was filmed at Hazard Park in Los Angeles.

Scenes inside the Frosty Palace contain obvious blurring of various Coca-Cola signs.[25] 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 animated by John David Wilson at Fine Arts Films[26]). 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."[27][28]

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 anniversary comes in 2028.[29]

Grease was originally released in the United States 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 number 2 (behind Jaws 2) at the box office for the weekend[30] and with the all-time opening weekend records.[31] Despite losing the opening weekend, it topped the box office the following weekend with a gross of $7,867,000 and set a record gross in its first 19 days, with $40,272,000.[32][33] After 66 days, it had grossed $100 million to become Paramount's second-highest-grossing film, behind The Godfather, and ended its initial run with a gross of $132,472,560,[34][35] which made it the highest-grossing film in 1978.[36]

In the United States and globally, it became the highest-grossing musical ever at the time, eclipsing the 13-year-old record held by The Sound of Music, with a worldwide gross of $341 million.[3]

In the United Kingdom, it opened with a record $2.2 million in its first eight days.[37] It went on to become the highest-grossing film in the UK, with a gross of £14.7 million.[38]

It was re-released May 18, 1979, in 1,248 theatres in the United States and Canada (except for the New York City area, where it opened a week later), Paramount's biggest ever saturation release at the time, grossing $4.5 million in its opening weekend.[34][35] The film played for four weeks and was then paired with the PG-rated version of Saturday Night Fever in late June.[35] During the reissue, it overtook The Godfather as Paramount Pictures' highest-grossing film.[39] It was re-released in March 1998 for its 20th anniversary, where it grossed a further $28 million in the United States and Canada.[1]

It remained the highest-grossing live-action musical until 2012 when it was overtaken by Les Misérables,[40] and it remained the US champion until 2017 when it was surpassed by Beauty and the Beast.[41] Discounting inflation, Grease is now the seventh-highest-grossing live-action musical worldwide.[40]

A further re-issue for its 40th anniversary in 2018 grossed $1 million.[1] To date, Grease has grossed $189,969,103 domestically and $206.2 million internationally, totaling $396 million worldwide.[1] Another re-issue took place in select AMC Theatres locations in August 2022 to honor Olivia Newton-John following her death earlier that month, with $1 per sold ticket and the proceeds going to breast cancer research, through a donation by AMC Cares.[42] Similarly, in the UK, selected Merlin Cinemas venues also reissued the film during August, but partnered with Macmillan Cancer Support, with a contribution of £1 per ticket sold.[43]

Grease received mostly positive reviews from film critics[44] and is considered by many as one of the best films of 1978.[45][46][47][48]

The New York Times' 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)."[49] Gene Siskel gave the film three stars out of four, calling it "exciting only when John Travolta is on the screen" but still recommending it to viewers, adding, "Four of its musical numbers are genuine showstoppers that should bring applause."[50] Variety praised the "zesty choreography and very excellent new plus revived music", and thought Travolta and Newton-John "play together quite well."[51] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times was negative, writing, "I didn't see Grease onstage, but on the testimony of this strident, cluttered, uninvolving and unattractive movie, it is the '50s—maybe the last innocent decade allowed to us—played back through a grotesquely distorting '70s consciousness."[52] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post also panned the film, writing, "Despite the obvious attempts to recall bits from Stanley Donen musicals or Elvis Presley musicals or Frankie-and-Annette musicals, the spirit is closer to the New Tastelessness exemplified by Ken Russell, minus Russell's slick visual style ... I've never seen an uglier large-scale musical."[53] David Ansen of Newsweek wrote, "Too often, Grease is simply mediocre, full of broad high-school humor, flat dramatic scenes and lethargic pacing. Fortunately, there's nothing flat about John Travolta ... Travolta can't dominate this movie as he did Fever, but when he's on screen you can't watch anyone else."[54]

Retrospective reviews have generally been positive. In a 1998 review, Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, calling it "an average musical, pleasant and upbeat and plastic." He found John Travolta's Elvis Presley–inspired performance to be the highlight, but felt that Grease "sees the material as silly camp."[55] In 2018, Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian gave it 5 out of 5 stars, saying "It's still a sugar-rush of a film."[56]

Grease was voted the best musical ever on Channel 4's 100 greatest musicals in 2004.[57] On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 76% approval rating based on 75 reviews, with an average rating of 7.00/10. 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."[58] On Metacritic, it holds a score of 70 out of 100 based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[44]

The film was ranked number 21 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies.[59][60]

Grease was released in the US on VHS by Paramount Home Video in 1979, 1982, 1989, 1992 and 1994; the last VHS release was on June 23, 1998, and was 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.

On March 12, 2013, Grease and Grease 2 were packaged together in a double feature DVD set from Warner Home Video.

In connection with the film's 40th anniversary, Paramount released Grease on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD on April 24, 2018.[61]

• 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

Grease 2 (1982) stars Maxwell Caulfield and Michelle Pfeiffer. While several of the Rydell High staff characters reprise their roles, the sequel focused on the latest class of graduating seniors, hence most of the principals from Grease did not appear. Patricia Birch, the original film's choreographer, directed the sequel. The original musical's cocreator Jim Jacobs, who was not involved in the making of Grease 2, has disowned the film.

On July 8, 2010, a sing-along version of Grease was released to selected theaters around the U.S.[65] 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,[66] and the rating for the film itself changed from its original PG to that of PG-13 (as that rating had not been introduced until 1984) for "sexual content including references, teen smoking and drinking, and language."[67] The film 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.[68]

On May 15, 2020, it was announced that CBS, a subsidiary of ViacomCBS, which also owns Paramount, would air this version of the film on June 7, 2020, which was to be the date of the 74th Tony Awards, which was postponed indefinitely due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.[69]

In March 2019, it was announced that a prequel, called Summer Lovin', was in development from Paramount Players. The project would be a joint-production collaboration with Temple Hill Productions and Picturestart. John August signed on to serve as screenwriter.[7]