Grease - Photoplay

WHO would want to make a six million dollar movie based on a stage musical that's already run too long, featuring two young stars who were totally unproven when cameras started to roll last summer?

The stage musical is, of course, "Grease", and the movie version was completed after more than a few studio experts said such 1950's nostalgic non-sense wouldn't make a dime because it just wasn't popular any more and besides it had been done to death on television.

Not only that, singer Olivia Newton-John had never starred in a major movie and there she was with co-star billing alongside some young television actor named John Travolta who had just finished something called Saturday Night Fever, which the experts also had their doubts about while everyone wondered how audiences would react to its star.

Everyone except Allan Carr, that is.

Carr is the portly cherub who's become a minor Hollywood legend for his kaftan wardrobe, his de-fattening surgery, his lavish but laid-back glitter parties, his knack for spotting talent that goes all the way back to the Sixties. when he "discovered" Bob Newhart, Judy Collins and Joan Baez for the Playboy Penthouse TV show in Chicago, and his abilities as a personal manager handling the futures of stars like Ann-Margret, Peter Sellers, Marisa Berenson and composer Marvin Hamlisch.

John Travolta is someone Carr should be managing, but failing that Carr became the producer of the next movie to star John Travolta: Grease.

What no one ever seems to mention in the many close-look-at-the-new-superstar stories on Travolta, is the fact that if it hadn't been for Allan Carr's desire for Travolta to star in Grease there never would have been a Saturday Night Fever.

Carr had picked up the screen rights to Grease, which is now one of the longest running musicals in Broadway history, and while he was fighting his endless battles with studio people who kept saying Grease was out of date, the would-be producer also had big problems with casting this song-and-dance story of a new goodie-goodie girl at school whose summer romance with a leather jacketed greaser turns sour when the new semester begins and the greaser has to act tough like a good gang member should.

One couple Carr had picked out way back when was Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret. Later he had settled on Henry Winkler and Susan Dey, until The Fonz decided not to do any more Fifties material. But that was all a long time ago, long before the Democratic Convention in 1975 when Carr was in his New York hotel room trying to escape the summer heat by watching television. And what happened to be on the minute his TV set warmed up and flickered into action was the series - Welcome Back Kotter, in which John Travolta appeared.

After watching only five minutes worth of Kotter, Carr picked up the phone to call the man who had become his partner in Grease: Robert Stigwood of rock 'n' roll mogul fame and Jesus Christ Superstar success.

Carr told Stigwood to turn on his TV, and that was it. Before Valentine's Day of 1976 Stigwood had signed Travolta to a three picture deal, the first of which was to be Grease. But since the rights to Grease stipulated that the movie version couldn't be released before Easter of 1978, the Carr-Stigwood combine decided to hold off. Instead they started looking for material tailor-made for their new star.

That's when they found Tribal Rites of a Saturday Night in the short story section of the New Yorker magazine, and we all know what happened from there, as the short story became Saturday Night Fever, the Bee Gees' music became the most sustaining chart dominating record album in years and John Travolta became the superstar sensation Carr predicted, he would be back in that hotel room on a steamy summertime night.

Grease will not make or break John Travolta's career at this point, but doing the rock 'n' roll musical had other levels of meaning to him: I went almost directly from Saturday Night Fever to Grease, John explains, so making Grease was a wonderful change of pace, and since no one really recognised me as a big star yet - since Fever wasn't out - 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 the Kotter series, when he was a struggling stage actor, John Travolta played a supporting part in the Grease chorus for one of the many touring companies of the play.

But the chorus-boy-on-stage-to-leading-man-on-film thrill didn't stop him from worrying whether the bubble gum lightness of Grease was really worthy of his talents after being involved in the heavier social statements of Saturday Night Fever, until he saw it another way: The lack of social statement in Grease is in itself a social statement, he figures, because the Fifties didn't have a lot of social interest, no great causes. Everything was more dull, bland and complacent. And in a lot of ways, that's how things are today in the Seventies. Which is something audiences can relate to, I think. When everything is so surfacy and self-centered, with no really heavyweight type of things going on, the adolescent experience becomes all the more important, and more dramatic. Which is what happened in the Fifties, when the music was born, and which Grease is about.

Travolta has a point there, and it's a point that just might make Grease become what he calls The Star Wars of musical movies, in terms of entertainment for young people.

There is surely some drama and some comedy in everyone's adolescence, so a Fifties' musical like Grease might provide a long look back at lost adolescence for the forty-ish folks and a completely identifiable kind of contemporary operetta for the younger crowd.

I have to listen when Travolta talks about the behaviour models in Grease: The Tough-Guy greaser he plays, who is afraid to admit his tender feelings to his buddies because he thinks that's not manly or cool. When you watch it all, John points out, you'll see how he's one way with the girl he really likes and then when he's around the guys he gets very slick and smart-ass again. So, he's really a nice guy who's putting all this stuff on, you know, and it's not authentic behaviour, which I think kids will understand. After all, his two-sided way of behaving is, really the romantic conflict of the story.

To get all this across in Grease - if indeed he does Travolta has sharpened the edges of a very pleasing sense of humour, while rounding the edges on an equally pleasing singing voice, a slightly wailing rocker sound that blends nicely with the purring dynamism of his acting and singing co-star Olivia Newton-John.

Whether the movie turns out to be a terrific or terrible picture there's a certain all-American magic in the screen coupling of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, who come off as some sort of latter day Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.

So Allan Carr's talent scouting ability was as sharp in spotting Olivia Newton-John as a potential screen personality as it was in picking John Travolta out of a crowd of sweathogs. Robert Stigwood's faith in Carr helped on both counts, as well, of course. But then Stigwood had seen what Carr could do when Allan worked wonders in promoting and partying the opening of The Who's rock opera movie Tommy for the Stigwood organisation.

As a result, Olivia's reputation for being somewhat stiff and too prim and proper as an onstage singer, was quickly and easily dismissed when Allan Carr came forth with his story about seeing the pretty blonde girl with the Australian accent across a crowded parties being thrown by singer Helen Reddy and her husband Jeff Wald. room at one of those A list Hollywood.

At first, she was her usual self, Carr remembers, almost a waxen figurine, but then all of sudden she started telling a joke and she became instantly animated, screwing up that perfect face in some cute but hilarious contortions.

So Allan walked right up, told her such a funny-face from such a pretty-face should really be on a movie screen and did she think she could do such stuff again in front of people and on cue?

Well, sure she could, Olivia answered, but she'd have to see how she looked on a movie screen both funny-face and pretty-face before she'd commit to making a picture. Carr knew he would need a screen-test any way, to convince those who might still doubt his touch with talent, so a sound-stage was booked and the Olivia Newton-John memorial screen test was about to begin, not without some anxiety on her part:

Well, I had no training really, Olivia shrugs, and as much as I loved the idea, all I could do on such short notice was hope that some natural ability would come through, know what I mean? I was never sure it would work.

John Travolta, as participant in the But Allan Carr gives screen-tests like they used to in the best of the old MGM days: full lighting, full crew, director with instructions to allow unlimited retakes, complete make-up, hair-styling and wardrobe, and, the co-star himself, John Travolta, as participant in the scene.

When the test was over, Carr had 48 hours to decide if he wanted Olivia and she had 48 hours to decide if she liked herself on the big screen. Carr didn't really need 48 hours. He knew immediately that the chemistry between John and Olivia was just what he wanted. He was tired of looking for girls by this time anyway. He'd seen dozens, but only got close with Marie Osmond and Deborah Raffin, neither of whom could quite catch the Travolta vibrations the way Olivia could.

Before the 48 hours were up Olivia put aside her fears, and the new Travolta/Newton-John team was on its way, or at least ready to start to begin to get on its way. That's when the anxiety really got bad, says Olivia, because then it wasn't so much a matter of whether I liked myself on screen, or my manager or agent or accountant or friends did, it all of a sudden changed to the big question: will the public like me and accept me in a new sphere, in a new career really?

A question that is yet to be answered, but my guess is that no matter how the picture itself is received, Olivia Newton-John is bound to be widely embraced by movie goers and moviemakers alike. Whatever Sandra Dee and such one time stars had for their era, Olivia has for this calmly crazy time and more.

That more may not come forth from her until she gets another role in another picture, though. Because in Grease Olivia is cast in the Sandra Dee mould to some extent, playing the high school girl who is just starting the new school year at a new school.

For the movie, Carr had the storyline slightly altered so the girl could be a transfer student whose family had just moved here from Australia, thus justifying Olivia's accent, and, coincidentally, causing the Grease story to be a lot like the story of Olivia Newton-John's own adolescence. Well I'm playing a seventeen-year-old, so all I had to do really was think young, you know, think back to ten years ago, when I was suddenly plonked into a strange country, not knowing many people and just beginning to really 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, that's for sure.

There's a bit of Allan Carr himself in there too, as far as that goes. Besides changing the storyline to accommodate Olivia, Carr also changed the basic nature of the Grease high school to conform more to his own teenage years. On stage, the Grease school was pretty much a rough and tough working class cross-section, but in the film Carr has upgraded the social strata to upper-middle-class, not unlike the Highland Park High School of his youth on the outskirts of Chicago.

Well, you know, we didn't want these kids to be too raunchy, Carr declares, I mean it's not the musical version of 'The Lords Of Flatbush' is it? But even in my high school, there were greasers and they were the neatest people who ever lived, because they had the force of numbers, I mean they were a gang who dressed alike with the leather jackets and the slicked back ducktail haircuts and they were not to be messed with. And I remember being terrified of them and at the same time fantasising what it would be like to be accepted by them. So in a way making a movie out of Grease is fulfilling my own adolescent fantasy. I'm not only accepted by these greasers, I'm their boss.

Carr's eye for talent, and his eye for properties it was six years ago when Carr first started negotiating for the rights to Grease, long before it was the record-breaking hit it has become - is likely to get Carr accepted by more people than just the greasers in Grease. And someday soon he may just take down his personal manager title and devote full time to being a major movie producer. And party-giver, too, of course. That's an avocation that Allan Carr could probably never let loose of, no matter how big a producer he might become.

Even in the midst of the pressures of making Grease, party time was always a very important aspect of the project.

Carr kicked-off rehearsals with an all-out sock-hop. Once shooting started, set side champagne parties were open to anyone and everyone on the Paramount lot. When he moved into a new beach house in Malibu, Carr decided the film-in-progress called Grease could benefit from the publicity and word-of-mouth generated by a truly lavish surf-side bash. But suddenly the guest list got out of hand, so the Malibu soiree had to become a double header, with last names beginning with A through L invited for Friday night, and M through Z on Saturday night.

The Allan Carr Party, as Grease became known to the people at Para-mount, was so infectious that even the cast and crew got into the mood, and the big production song-and-dance numbers were more like parties than movie making. Which prompted Paramount chieftain Barry Diller to declare the Grease set open to all Paramount employees. He was hoping the spirit would rub off.

So the big soundstage doors were rolled back and while the cast rehearsed the livelier numbers, music and song literally flooded the lot.

It also began to aggravate Jack Nicholson, who was working pains-takingly just across the street on his directorial debut movie Going South.

So one day, as the Grease kids were wailing away with Summer Love. Nicholson threw open his editing room window and shouted across the passageway 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.

What went on behind that closed door from then on is what we will be seeing on screen in cinemas all over the world.