The Scene
Danny rushes Sandy to a table and stacks two menus to shield them from prying eyes. It’s nighttime at the Frosty Palace and it’s packed with people dancing to “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” performed by Sha Na Na. In a nod to her days at Warner Brothers, when she would play roles like a tough-talking waitress or a gun moll with a heart of gold, Joan Blondell takes Danny’s and Sandy’s orders.
Shooting the Thunder Road sequence at the Los Angeles River, the day before the Frosty Palace scene
The Shot
The Frosty Palace scenes as a whole were challenging to stage—and not just because of the complicated blocking and cues. The day before, we had shot the Thunder Road sequence at a section of the Los Angeles River near downtown. I was working barefooted, cut my foot, and it became infected by bacteria in the water. On the day we were scheduled to shoot the Frosty Palace scenes, I had a fever of 102. I went to my dressing room and couldn’t even sit up on the couch. The whole production came to a stop for an entire day.
1 sent production assistant Peter Collister out for a vat of chicken soup. The medic was sent for, but before she arrived, John Travolta entered to try a cure called a “touch assist” based on Scientology teachings. I was lying on the daybed and John sat in a chair beside me. He pressed one finger on my chest and said, “Feel my finger?” A bit confused, I answered, “Yes.” He then began moving his finger, inch by inch, around my fevered body asking the question over and over. I answered, over and over, and I must say, in my dazed state, I wondered if this odd ritual was really happening or if it was a dream.
The next day, I had recovered and we went back to the Frosty Palace set and picked up shooting its scene. Was it the touch assist? Or the antibiotics the medic gave me? For me, shooting these scenes was a blur, as I was still not feeling my best. I asked the actors to help. The way Kenickie, Rizzo, and the rest of the gang talk over each other, cutting in and finishing one another’s lines, was really the way the actors interacted in real life. I always wanted the characters to have a looseness to them—as if they were not just repeating dialogue. A lot of their improvisations, like Stockard’s Rizzo affectionately messing up Kenickie’s carefully greased-back hair, made it into the movie.
For the shoot, Stockard had practiced tossing her strawberry milk shake at Jeff, using an empty glass. The idea was that some of it would get on Frenchy, providing her for the motivation to take off her scarf and reveal her bright pink hair. But once we filled that glass with the strawberry shake, Stockard’s aim unfortunately hit Jeff smack in the face each time, with nothing on Frenchy. Take after take, he’d get cleaned up and into a new costume, only to do it again until we finally got it right. Maybe Stockard was getting back at Jeff for giving her a real-life hickey for the scene.
A Deleted Scene
When studio head Michael Eisner watched our rough cut he liked it, but after the screening he requested that we explain what Rizzo and Kenickie were fighting about in the Frosty Palace. But when we screened the whole film again, the new, added scene stood out like a sore thumb. The seriousness of it was so out of tune with the rest of the movie that Allan Carr called it “the Martin Scorsese scene.” It had to go. The studio execs agreed and out it went. We looked for this scene in the Paramount vaults to add to the Blu-ray edition, but when it ended up on the cutting room floor in 1977, the studio janitor no doubt swept it into the dumpster.
RANDAL: Stockard, do you remember when [studio head] Michael Eisner requested we shoot a scene outside the Frosty Palace to explain why you threw the milk shake into Kenickie’s face?
STOCKARD: No!
RANDAL: He asked, “Why does she do that?” We told him, “Well, we don’t know.” So he said, “Please write a scene and shoot it.” And we did, but it was cut out. You don’t remember it either, huh?
STOCKARD: I don’t remember it at all!
RANDAL: That’s funny . . .
STOCKARD: Nobody ever seemed to question why I threw the milk shake.
RANDAL: No, only Michael Eisner. So, we’re okay.
The Costumes
Albert Wolsky used bright colors to highlight the principals, as well as the graphics of the T-Birds’ logo on the back of their jackets. But he also paid attention to the extras and dancers, considering them a way to set the tone and help create the period.
Joan Blondell looked the part of the world-weary but warmhearted Vi. Albert had promised her that she wouldn’t have to be dressed in the short little skirts that the other waitresses were wearing.
© Albert Wolsky/Courtesy Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences
Frenchy and Vi
Frenchy responds to Vi’s “heart of gold” by confiding that she dropped out of beauty school. Didi wanted to show Frenchy’s humiliation over her ridiculous pink hair—this was way before wildly colored hair became stylish. By the time she confides in Vi and wishes for a guardian angel, the audience is feeling for her. Frenchy mentions Debbie Reynolds in Tammy, a reference that baby boomers would catch. Debbie Reynolds’s role of Tammy in this movie was rooted in the idea that a simple girl facing a dilemma can, through determination, find a happy ending.
Most viewers notice the obvious light switch snafu as Frenchy and Vi walk down the steps into the kitchen of the diner. Vi tries to hit the switch with her elbow and misses it by six inches, but the lights go off anyway. This has been pointed out by dozens of internet posts. My excuse is I was still recovering from my bout with fever that day.
