Grease opens on a beach in the summer of 1958, where Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsson fall in love. She is about to fly home to Australia. He tells her the summer is “only the beginning.” Then the school year starts, and it turns out they are both at Rydell High.
That coincidence is the engine of the movie, and it is a thin one. Danny is a greaser with a reputation to protect. Sandy is a transfer student with none of the instincts required to survive senior year. The film gets 110 minutes out of the gap between them.
Grease was released in the United States on June 16, 1978, by Paramount Pictures. It was Randal Kleiser’s feature directorial debut, from a screenplay by Bronté Woodard with an adaptation by co-producer Allan Carr, based on the 1971 stage musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. It became the highest-grossing film of 1978.
Trailer, via Paramount Movies.
Danny Zuko at Rydell High
John Travolta plays Danny, and the casting is the least interesting thing about the performance. He had already made Saturday Night Fever with producer Robert Stigwood and had appeared as Doody in a touring production of the stage Grease. As part of a three-picture deal with Stigwood, he got the lead after Henry Winkler turned it down for fear of being typecast as a greaser. Winkler later regretted it.
Kleiser had directed Travolta in the 1976 telefilm The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. He helped Travolta stay focused while the actor grieved the death of Diana Hyland, his girlfriend at the time and his on-screen mother in Bubble.
Sandy Olsson and the Pink Ladies
Olivia Newton-John had two film credits before Grease, both predating her singing career. She asked for a screen test. She thought she would not get the part because she was 28. She took a reduced fee in exchange for star billing and the right to rewrite the script.
Allan Carr had considered Carrie Fisher, Ann-Margret, Deborah Raffin, Susan Dey and Marie Osmond. Fisher was rejected because neither Stigwood nor Carr knew if she could sing. Osmond turned it down when she understood how far the character transforms. Carr picked Newton-John after meeting her at a party hosted by Helen Reddy.
The T-Birds and Greased Lightnin’
Kenickie arrives in “Greased Lightnin’,” a used car he plans to restore and race at Thunder Road. Danny motivates the T-Birds to work on it by promising it will win them girls and races. The gang includes Sonny, Putzie, Doody and Kenickie, played by Michael Tucci, Kelly Ward, Barry Pearl and Jeff Conaway.
Stockard Channing plays Rizzo, the Pink Ladies’ leader, with Marty, Jan and Frenchy around her. Didi Conn’s Frenchy announces she is quitting Rydell for beauty school. Rizzo leaves the sleepover with Kenickie to have sex in the car at a make-out spot, where rival greasers Leo and Cha-Cha interrupt them.
Grease is the word.
The Soundtrack and the Awards
The soundtrack album finished 1978 as the second-best-selling album of the year in the United States, behind the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, which also starred Travolta. “Hopelessly Devoted to You” was nominated for Best Original Song at the 51st Academy Awards. The film took five nominations at the 36th Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and two for Best Original Song, for “Grease” and “You’re the One that I Want.”
What Grease Gets Right
The songs carry this film. “You’re the One that I Want” and “Grease” are the reason the Golden Globe nominations exist, and “Hopelessly Devoted to You” is the reason one of them turned into an Oscar nomination. When the movie stops for a number, it works.
When it has to move its two leads from one awkward conversation to the next, it sags. The plot is a machine for producing misunderstandings. Danny mocks Sandy at a pep rally to keep his image. She goes on a date with Tom, a football player. He apologizes and she does not buy it.
Where the Movie Stalls
Grease is 110 minutes and feels longer in the middle. The T-Birds and Pink Ladies are written as types, and the film gives most of them one joke each. Eve Arden appears as Principal McGee and gets almost nothing to do. The romance depends on two people who are never shown having a conversation worth remembering.
The National Film Registry
The film was selected in 2020 for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” That is a statement about influence, not quality. A sequel, Grease 2, followed on June 11, 1982.
Grease earns its place in the culture through its soundtrack and its two leads, not through its script. The movie is a great album with a thin story attached. It is worth watching for the numbers and worth remembering for the songs.
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