Her role as Sandy in grease remains her most resonant film work and provided her with a string of hits, but it was also a film that had to overcome many obstacles to get made, including convincing Hollywood studio bosses that people would see it.
A testament to its success is grease‘s ability to transcend generations. Last week’s prime-time broadcast of the film on Nine the day Olivia died managed to draw one of the evening’s biggest audiences, while songs from the film have soared to the top of streaming charts.
It was larger-than-life, outrageously flamboyant, kaftan-wearing Hollywood producer Allan Carr who fought to bring grease to the big screen, convincing skeptical studio bosses at Paramount that the all-dancing, all-singing musical would find an audience at a time when the genre was considered a major risk in Hollywood. The movie musical had long been written off as passé, despite the slow-burn success of 1975’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
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But Carr would eventually come right. grease it became the highest-grossing movie musical of the 20th century, despite an erratic birth.
Production was mapped out in just five weeks and the film shot over two months with a modest US$6 million budget.
According to a Vanity Fair piece in 2016, Carr’s original vision for grease was considerably different from the classics so loved today.
The original treatment, submitted to the studio in December 1976, included Danny Zuko as a busboy and gas-station attendant (doing a song called Gas Pump Jockey); Paul Lynde (at that time best known as Uncle Arthur on television’s Bewitched) as the Rydell High principal, rather than Eve Arden as Principal McGee; Donny Osmond as Teen Angel; and the Beach Boys doing the showstopping garage production number, Greased Lightnin’.
The studio wanted Henry Winkler from Happy Days to play John Travolta’s Danny Zuko.
Paramount had wanted Henry Winkler, Fonzie on the popular sitcom Happy Days, as Danny, but Winkler, fearful of being typecast, passed.
Robert Stigwood, Carr’s co-producer, had a three-picture deal with the 22-year-old rising star John Travolta, already a TV hit with Welcome Back, Kotter playing school stud Vinnie Barbarino. After Travolta shot saturday night fever he signed on to star in grease Ace Danny.
The Beach Boys were considered to sing Grease Lightning instead of the T-Birds.
Casting Sandy would prove trickier. Director Randal Kleiser saw rushes from a new film his old college buddy George Lucas was making,titled Star Wars, to see if its female lead, Carrie Fisher, could be a fit. She wasn’t.
Marie Osmond (left) and Carrie Fisher (right) were both considered for Olivia Newton-John’s Sandy. Credit:
Kleiser and Carr mulled other possibilities, including The Partridge Family’s Susan Dey, model turned actor Deborah Raffin, and America’s Mormon sweetheart Marie Osmond, who became the front-runner until she objected to Sandy’s transformation from good girl to bad girl and dropped out in protest.
In 2009 Osmond told Fox News: “The script came to me, and [it] was much edger than what Olivia came up with.
Paul Lynde was a possible candidate to be principal, instead of Eve Arden.Credit:Getty Images
“But I was at a place in my life where I wanted to have children and I didn’t like the fact that the girl had to turn bad to get the guy. I think the guy has to work hard to get the girl, that’s what I believe.”
Donny Osmond was considered as Teen Angel instead of Frankie Avalon. Credit:Getty Images
With Osmond out, Carr set sights on Olivia, who sat across from him at a dinner party at fellow Aussie Helen Reddy’s house one night without realizing she was auditioning. Carr gushed that she would be perfect for the role, but the singer wasn’t so sure, fearing she was too old – 29 – to play a teenager, and nervous after the previous musical bomb she had appeared in.
Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta in Grease.Credit:AP
Carr prevailed and rewrote the part to make Sandy Australian. Cinematographer Bill Butler used soft lenses to turn back the clock.
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grease was originally released in the United States on June 16, 1978 and was an immediate box-office success. At the time it became the highest-grossing musical ever, eclipsing the 13-year-old record held by The Sound of Music, with a worldwide gross of US$341 million, or well over US$1.5billion dollars in today’s money.
And, despite her early misgivings, grease guaranteed Olivia’s major league celebrity status for the rest of her life, and beyond.
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