It's Got Groove, It's Got Feeling - Entertainment Weekly

IT'S GOT GROOVE, IT'S GOT FEELING, and Paramount hopes, eternal appeal. After 20 years, a $360 million worldwide gross, and sales of more than 8 million soundtrack albums, Grease bops back into theaters March 27. Allan Carr, Grease's eccentric co-producer, began lobbying for this revival long before last year's Star Wars re-release sent execs scurrying to the old-movie vaults.

Not to be immodest, but Carr says a 1996 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY article about Broadway's Grease mania provided him with the ammunition he needed to convince Paramount of the movie's cross-generational appeal. I bought 20 copies, sent them to the executives, then marched into [Paramount president] Sherry Lansing's office, and said, We're sitting on a gold mine.

At one point, the studio got so giddy about Grease it discussed doing a Pop-Up Video version of the film. Herewith, a few of our own nuggets culled from the memories of the east of Rydell High's senior class.

They Don't Go Together Like Ramalama-Dingdong

From Bette Davis as Scarlett O'Hara to Ronald Reagan as Casablanca's Riek, movie lore is littered with near-fatal movie castings and so is the story of Grease.

When Carr first approached Paramount about turning the Broadway musical into a $6 million movie in 1976, studio execs went - BING! Henry Winkler. Thanks to Happy Days, Winkler was Paramount's biggest TV star at the time

Luckily, Winkler decided this wasn't the way it should be: The character of Danny Zuko, a sweethearted tough guy, was too similar to his TV gig. With Fonzie out of the picture, Carr offered the part to then Sweathog John Travolta, who had just wrapped Saturday Night Fever. The studio agreed, but not knowing what would happen nine months later when Travolta strutted down a Brooklyn street, it insisted that Carr find someone with proven star power to play Sandy.

The producer requested Partridge Family member Susan Dey, but according to Carr, she didn't want to play another teen. While Carr searched on, director Randal Kleiser headed down to the Star Wars mixing stage to see his college roommate George Lucas and check out...Carrie Fisher, It was one of the battle scenes, and there were all these explosions and spaceships flying by, and suddenly Carrie was there with her hair and the buns and George said, That's her! Kleiser remembers. But it was too fast, and there was no way to tell.

Meanwhile, Carr had a chance encounter with pop star Olivia Newton-John while attending a party at Helen Reddy's home. Completely smitten, he begged her to sign on. Totally dubious, Newton-John refused without first putting herself through a screen test. When she saw the results, Sandy Dumbrowski from Chicago became Sandy Olson from Australia, and the hottest screen couple of the '70s were together at last.

Looking back, Carr has only one regret about the final cast: I wanted Andy Warhol to play the art teacher, he says And one of the studio executives said, 'We'll give you everything you want, but I will not have that man in my movie.' It was some kind of personal vendetta.

Six Degrees Of Elvis

Travolta had a Presley-like quality in Grease, says director Kleiser, who would know. To help pay his college and film school tuition, the director, now 51, often worked as an extra in movies including 1967's Double Trouble. I had a bit where I was dancing with a girl and Elvis jumped off the stage and grabbed her, says Kleiser.

Travolta and Kleiser weren't the only ones conjuring up images of the King. The original script called for a Presley type in Frenchy's (Didi Conn) fantasy sequence. We originally thought about Fabian, [but for some reason] we didn't go to him, says Care. Frankie Avalon signed on, but with one caveat: The former good-boy teen idol balked at playing Elvis, insisting he perform the Teen Angel scene Frankie Avalon-style.

But the weirdest Elvis connection occurred in the Sandra Dee scene. On the morning the scene began filming, with Stockard Channing singing Elvis, Elvis, keep your pelvis from me to a poster of the King, Presley's body was discovered at Graceland.

Is There A Travolta In The House?

Forget about Travolta's swiveling hips - it was his healing hands that the cast and crew remember most.

Travolta's first restorative encounter came during an audition involving actress Annette Cardona (who went by the name of Annette Charles when she played Danny's hot-to-trot dance partner Cha Cha). Accidentally knocking heads with Travolta during their dance, Cardona momentarily lost consciousness. When she came to, she saw Travolta waving his arms over her head.

Kleiser also got the hands-on treatment when he cut his foot and developed a fever-inducing infection. John came to my trailer to do a healing, Kleiser recalls. He took his finger and pushed it into my arm and said, 'Do you feel my finger?' and I said 'Yes,' and then he'd move it an inch and say, Do you feel my finger? He did this for about an hour. Here was the star of the movie helping me, so I didn't criticize. The next day, though, my fever was gone.

Let's Stay Together!

A pre-Taxi Jeff Conaway, who played Kenickie, remembers that although he was dating Lisa Hartman during the filming, he soon fell hard for Newton-John, a crush he shared with Travolta. When Travolta expressed his own interest (Newton-John says she was oblivious to all the attention), Conaway steered clear and did the next best thing: He asked Newton-John's sister Rona out on a date. They were married for five years before divorcing in 1985.

Secret Admirers

For the large production numbers, Carr opened the Paramount soundstages to employees and visitors. Among those who stopped by: Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, as well as ballet dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev, who watched as Didi Conn went through Beauty School Dropout. But performing while the greatest dancers in the world stood on the sidelines didn't faze Conn - she was already a goner. Frankie Avalon was so dreamy, says Conn, whose memories, along with other cast members', are collected in Frenchy's Grease Scrapbook, due out this month from Hyperion. My heart palpitated every time he got closer.

The Lost Moment

After viewing the rough cut, Paramount executives decided Rizzo needed a reason for throwing a milk shake at Kenickie. Filmmakers obliged by adding an argument between the pair, filmed against a black screen. It looked like something out of a Scorsese picture, Carr says. We call it the Mean Streets scene. It was later lopped off because it hurt the picture, he adds, but maybe it will be in the laserdisc version.

Better Shape Up

The skintight pants Sandy wears in the finale were vintage '50s, but because the zipper was broken and there was only one pair, Newton-John had to be sewn into them every day. Twenty years later, Newton-John still remembers, I was very careful about what I drank.

Most Likely To Succeed

I didn't understand it was a big hit, Kleiser says of the days following the movie's release. Grosses were something in the trades, and I never followed that stuff. I didn't know if it was doing okay or great.

But Grease's phenomenal performance-it was the top box office hit of 1978-wasn't lost on one businessman. A few months after the movie opened, Carr was stopped on the street by a clothing executive, who thanked him for making him a millionaire. He told Carr he was a distributor of spandex, and that after Newton-John appeared in the now infamous pants, he sold every piece that had been in my storeroom for years.

Perhaps it's time to stock up again?