The Scene
To the sound of revving engines, the race between the T-Birds and the Scorpions begins with the cars’ dramatic entrance through a dark tunnel into a dry riverbed of the Los Angeles River near downtown, then as now a tough neighborhood.
My early sketches for this sequence show the cars racing around the track with giant “gladiator” floats, like those used for the Rose Bowl, parked in the center of the football field. The image was to be a humorous homage to the chariot race in Ben-Hur. I instructed the prop department to watch Ben-Hur and match the spiked wheels that were on the chariots.
Lindsley Parsons Jr. was watching the budget for the Paramount production department and suggested a less expensive way to do the scene: instead of building the giant floats, why not move the race to the Los Angeles River? I was disappointed that my vision was not going to happen, but we changed the location. And when I saw the dailies of the LA River on the big Panavision screen I was thrilled. The decision really opened up the movie, and the location lent itself to the wide-screen format.
I did get to retain a remnant of my idea. The prop department had already built the knifelike hubcaps, so we used them to have bad guy Leo grind into Danny’s 1948 Ford Deluxe convertible.
We tried to use the new location to its best advantage, with the embankment serving as a kind of bleachers for the kids to watch and the track turning into an obstacle course: starting from the Sixth Street Bridge, continuing under the Fourth Street Bridge, and with the midpoint a U-turn at the First Street Bridge, where they headed back to the starting line. As an amped-up version of “Greased Lightnin’” sets the tone, the two cars jockey for place, narrowly avoid a drainage outlet, speed over ramps, and skid through water, cheered on by their friends.
The Script
During rehearsals we’d worked out an interchange between the girls and guys to keep up the pace, with the Pink Ladies (minus Rizzo) watching Cha Cha giving Leo a locket for good luck. Jan asks, “What did she give him?” Frenchy insults Cha Cha with “A lock of hair from her chest!”
The shooting script had Kenickie get incapacitated by a car door to the groin. Instead, we worked out a bit where Jan finds a penny on the ground (“See a penny pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck!”) and Marty takes the dirty penny at arm’s length to Kenickie for a good-luck charm. She drops it, he gallantly offers to pick it up, and he gets hit in the head by Putzie opening the car door. This was a somewhat awkward way of giving the race to our star, John.
A page from script supervisor Joyce King’s book with camera angles and on-set dialogue changes.
Annette
Annette Cardona, who at the time was using the stage name Annette Charles, wanted very much to do this tribute to Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause. But the day this was scheduled to shoot, she was in the hospital for tests. We told her no problem—we wouldn’t need to use her in the shoot. But she said, “No way.” She left the hospital, showed up on the set and did the scene, and then returned to the hospital. That’s dedication.
The Shot
Bill Butler had a chase car for two cameras, small and built low to the ground like a dune buggy. This little car helped us get footage on the steep slopes of the embankments at high speeds.
Our stunt coordinator, Wally Crowder, had some spectacular crashes and jumps in mind, but we wanted to scale it down and make it about the two characters in the story. Instead of having the cars try to cross a bridge or end in a crash, we had the cars jockeying for space as they narrowly miss a drainage outlet on the side of the slope. Greased Lightin’ jumps off a ramp that’s only about a foot high (but it was tall enough for the impact to flip open the trunk), and Leo meets his “end” in a stream of water with a satisfying slow-motion splash. Like most cars from the fifties whose undercarriage and wiring were vulnerable to getting wet, Hell’s Chariot “died” simply because it shorted out.
The Thunder Road sequence was inspired by the chariot race in Ben-Hur. The giant “gladiator” floats on the high school track didn’t make it into the movie, but the whirling hubcap knives did.
The chase car with cameras catching the action on the Los Angeles River
The cars jockeying for position during the race on the LA River
Greased Lightnin’ jumping the ramp over the drainage ditch with Hell’s Chariot close behind
“Sandra Dee Reprise”
After the race action we wanted a quiet moment where Sandy decides to change to get Danny. The original idea was that Rizzo would take Sandy aside and help her with a makeover. We decided to do this visually with a slow zoom as the lyrics of the song reveal Sandy’s inner thoughts. She comes up with the idea herself and asks Frenchy to help. This sets the scene for the entrance of “Bad Sandy.”