Olivia (20 page)

Reviews of
Grease
tended towards the word ‘slick’ and mostly picked up on the film’s youthful energy and charm, and Travolta’s sex appeal and dancing.
Variety
pronounced the movie ‘slick as a ducktail hairdo’ and commented: ‘
Grease
has got it, from the outstanding animated titles of John Wilson all the way through the rousing finale as John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John ride off into pre-Vietnam-era teenage happiness. The Robert Stigwood-Allan Carr production values complement superbly the broad comedy-drama, zesty choreography and very excellent new plus revived music.’

The
New York Times
said: ‘Olivia Newton-John, the recording star in her American film debut, is simultaneously very funny and utterly charming as the film’s ingénue, a demure, virginal Sandra Dee type. She possesses true screen presence as well as a sweet, sure singing voice . . .’

In general the critical reaction was highly favourable and picked up on the film’s pervading sense of fun. Both critics and audiences also seemed prepared to overlook the fact that most of the high school pupils looked too old to answer Rydell’s roll call even if they’d had to stay behind to resit their exams five years running.

Olivia and John worked hard to promote
Grease
. It was in their financial interest to do so, of course, as they both had a small stake in the movie, but together they attended world premieres as well as many of the big-city openings in America. At every one they were greeted by hysterical screams from excited teenage girls for John, and the couple were both wildly mobbed, sparking scenes reminiscent of Beatlemania. John was by now the hottest young star in the world.

The excitement surrounding the movie was reflected in record-breaking takings at the box office. In America,
Grease
grossed an incredible $58million in its first month, and the soundtrack album raced to number one in the LP charts where it stayed for twelve weeks. It remained in the Billboard pop album charts for seventy-seven weeks, and it has gone on to become the second bestselling movie soundtrack of all time, behind
Saturday Night Fever
, selling 25 million copies.

In years to come Olivia’s daughter Chloe would take great comfort from the soundtrack whenever her mother was away from home touring, recording or filming. ‘When she’d go away or travel I’d put on
Grease
every night to go to sleep to so I could hear her voice,’ says Chloe. ‘I’d put it on replay. It’s really sad, but I’ve seen it a few hundred times. It was like having my mum in the room.’

The money-spinning success story of the movie and the album continued in every territory in which
Grease
was released, even though the title didn’t translate too easily into a foreign language. The Spanish for ‘grease’ is
grasa
, which literally means fat or oil, so it was released under the title
Brilliantina
(Brilliantine), and in Venezuela as
Vaselina
(Vaseline).

By the time
Grease
reached London on 13 September 1978, the film had already been given five international premieres and there had been violent incidents at the first nights in Chicago and Japan. John and Olivia were warned that the London crowds might prove the most riotous yet and they could expect trouble getting into the Empire cinema in Leicester Square.

Crowds started arriving several hours beforehand, some in 1950s cars. Many of the girls massed behind the barriers wore 1950s dresses, bobby sox and ponytails and the boys turned up in Teddy Boy outfits of drape jackets, thick crepe shoes and slicked-back ducktail hairstyles. By the time
Grease
’s two stars were expected at the cinema, around 5,000 fans had crammed into Leicester Square.

John, his new girlfriend, actress Marilu Henner, and Olivia were delayed by the chaos and when they did arrive there was a stampede as fans fought and kicked to break through the cordon of two hundred policemen who linked arms in a vain effort to hold them back. Soon hysterical girls were swarming all over their car and two youths clambered on to the roof and started jumping up and down. It was a terrifying moment. ‘They were on the roof and all over the outside of the car,’ Olivia remembers. ‘It was the scariest mob situation I’ve ever been in. John and I were smiling and acting like everything was fine, but I felt like they were going to come through the roof. It was exciting, but I was worried someone was going to get hurt.’

John was visibly scared. ‘I thought the roof of the car was going to cave in under the crush,’ he said. ‘I genuinely thought my life was about to end. It was panic for me. And yet it was exciting, too. Part of me was loving it. But I’ll never go through this again. No one could imagine it would be like this. I was terrified.’ Police, bodyguards and film executives eventually managed to escort them safely through the screaming mob to the foyer.

John was so shaken by the experience that he left by a back exit and missed the film as well as the after-party laid on for 1,000 revellers at the Lyceum in the Strand. Olivia took it all more calmly. ‘I was shaken but not hurt,’ she said. ‘It was quite exciting really. They mean well, they’re only trying to touch you, but thousands of people trying to touch you can be frightening.’

Pictures of the couple looking like frightened rabbits in the crush made the front pages of all the newspapers the next day. Scary it may have been for the two stars, but it was nevertheless priceless publicity for the movie.

The British reviews of
Grease
were largely favourable, and the first day’s takings at the Empire cinema, £6,874, smashed the previous box office record of £4,640 - for
Saturday Night Fever
. Within three days the Empire had £50,000 worth of advance bookings, which was a record in itself, and within a month the soundtrack album was top of the UK LP charts, where it stayed for thirteen weeks.

 

 

Quite simply,
Grease
has become a phenomenon, the most successful movie musical of all time. It was the top money-making movie of 1978 and earned Olivia a Golden Globe nomination for best actress in a musical. Eventually the movie made $340million worldwide, an incredible return on its paltry budget.

The video, released for rental in January 1990, grossed $96million, and when it was released for sale in April 1993, it became one of Paramount’s top-selling videos of all time with sales of more than 11 million. Such remarkable figures earned
Grease
an induction into the Video Hall of Fame, which recognises movies that have continued to perform well in both video sales and rental over an extended period of time. The release on DVD has also proved to be a money-spinner for all concerned.

For Olivia, the lasting worldwide financial success of
Grease
has been lucrative. The reported 2.5 per cent she was contractually due will have more than made up for her original bargain-basement fee of $125,000 for taking the role.

The imprint of
Grease
upon Olivia remains with her to this day. ‘
Grease
was the single biggest event of my life,’ she has said. ‘It affected everything.’ The role of Sandy recently ranked number 89 in the movie magazine
Premiere
’s list of 100 Greatest Movie Characters of all Time.

For years, a day barely went by without someone or other referring to Olivia as Sandy or asking her about John. At her concerts she has found successive generations of audiences turning up with their children or grandchildren dressed in ponytails and Sandy-style outfits. ‘To me, it’s almost like a cartoon,’ is Olivia’s explanation of
Grease
’s enduring appeal. ‘It’s so larger than life, so brilliant and colourful. It’s almost animated, and then one breaks into song. I think that’s why it has such broad appeal. And I just think it had a lot of magic in it - the movement, the colours, the costumes. The young kids love that, and the older kids love the risqué stuff, which I admit I was clueless about when we were filming. I guess I was pretty naive!’

In the glorious certainty of hindsight, Olivia has often wondered why she hesitated for so long before signing up for
Grease
. And she admits that if she hadn’t begun working on the movie before
Saturday Night Fever
had been released, she might not have gone through with it. ‘If John had been a big star at the time I’m sure I would have felt intimidated. Especially as I didn’t know him first.’

Wisely, as it turned out, neither Olivia nor John Travolta signed up for
Grease 2
. Exploratory talks were held with the two stars about a sequel, but both felt they could not top the original. The sequel went ahead with Maxwell Caulfield cast as an English cousin of Sandy’s who joins the senior class of 1961 at Rydell High and has to prove himself a cool rider on a hot motorbike before he can win the heart of the queen of the Pink Ladies, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. Although
Grease 2
went some way to launching Michelle Pfeiffer’s career, the movie proved to be a pale shadow of its predecessor when it was released in 1982.

Down the years there have been persistent reports that John Travolta and Olivia would team up for a sequel that would examine what happened to Danny and Sandy and all the other main characters in the original movie after they left Rydell High. Randal Kleiser has been reported as saying he felt fans of
Grease
would welcome such a movie and that he would jump at the chance to direct it if a deal could be struck with the two main stars. But no concrete plans have emerged.

When Allan Carr saw that audiences were willing to shell out $50 for a ticket to the Broadway revival of
Grease
, he convinced Paramount executives to re-release the movie.
Star Wars
had shown that a re-release could make a financial killing and Carr reckoned the feel-good factor surrounding
Grease
could also generate similar big business. ‘I told them they were sitting on a goldmine,’ he said. ‘The appeal of the stage show and the movie just never died. It’s timeless entertainment.’

Randal Kleiser was all for it. He had seen the potential in a re-release after taking Olivia and Didi Conn to a late-night showing of the movie to see if it still stood up on the big screen.

 

The first task was to examine the original 35mm music masters in the vaults. Much to everyone at Paramount’s dismay, the adhesive on the film had become, in Kleiser’s words, ‘a flaking gooey mess’. The music tracks had deteriorated so much that they were unplayable until Cecilia Hall, Paramount’s vice-president of post-production sound, gambled on trying a special heating technique to save them.

Kleiser told the
Los Angeles Times
: ‘She took these original music masters to her Tujunga home and baked them in her kitchen oven at 150 degrees for six hours. Miraculously it worked and she saved the tracks, allowing the Dolby six-track mix to be done.’

By enriching the colour and digitally enhancing the stereo re-mix for its twentieth anniversary rerelease, Paramount gave the movie a fresh look and atmosphere and relaunched it in 2,000 cinemas across America. Naturally Carr arranged a starry repremiere in Los Angeles, attended by both John and Olivia who had not seen some of the cast for twenty years.

‘Just out of interest,’ said Olivia, ‘I thought I’d try the pants on again. But I put one foot in and the elastic had gone. I couldn’t get them past my ankle, so I never had to embarrass myself in them. Not that I was ever really considering wearing them - I think that might not have been appropriate twenty years on. I’d given away the red shoes to a charity auction, but I did wear my jacket to the premiere.’

Even though many millions had seen the original at the cinema first time round or on video or TV, audiences still flocked to see
Grease
all over again, many of them dressed as Danny or Sandy.

When
Grease
was eventually issued on DVD, Olivia turned the launch into a major event by flying in her band and singing with John Travolta for the first time for many years. ‘I wouldn’t trade
Grease
for any other movie I’ve ever been in,’ said John, ‘because it meant so much to so many people. I feel a part of history, so I’m pretty proud of it.’

Twenty-eight years on from the film’s original release, John Travolta filmed a brief tribute to Olivia for the Australian TV version of
This Is Your Life
in which he said of her
Grease
role: ‘I promised you’d be great in it, and I came through with my promise. At the end of the movie, when you come out in those tight black pants and that hair and that cigarette, I don’t think anyone would ever think either of us were wrong.’

Olivia has been equally supportive of her co-star. In March 1996 she took out a big advertisement in the showbiz trade paper
Hollywood Reporter
to mark John’s selection as ShoWest Male Star of the Year.

The advert read: ‘Dear Danny, I am Hopelessly Devoted To You.’ It was signed: ‘Love Sandy’.

Olivia is unequivocal about what
Grease
means to her: