IT’S INCREDIBLE THAT MORE THAN FORTY YEARS after the movie Grease premiered, it continues to mean so much to so many people on such a deep level. It’s taken people out of their worst moments and given them their best moments. And it’s still the go-to movie when people need to be cheered up. The cast and I are asked all the time, “Did you know that the movie would be such a big hit?” I have to say even then I knew it would be big, but I never guessed its impact would be so long lasting.
Grease has been a part of me since I played Doody on Broadway. As a young actor just starting my career, I was amazed by how well Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey captured the differences between preppies, jocks, and greasers—and especially the greasers’ “coolness” factor. Add rock and roll, dancing, and songs and their play was a combination that couldn’t be beat.
As soon as I was cast as Danny Zuko for the movie version of Grease, I wanted Randal to be the director because we had great rapport after working on The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. He helped bring together a phenomenal cast for Grease and agreed that Olivia was the only one to play Sandy. Some of us had been in the play version of Grease, and we all worked well together—as Patty Simcox said, we “became lifelong friends.” The team behind the scenes also brought the highest level of expertise. Songwriter John Farrar and musical director Louis St. Louis were such perfectionists that they would not allow any mistakes in pitch or performance. The costumes by Albert Wolsky and sets by Phil Jefferies were like the best of the fifties and the seventies all rolled into one. The choreography by Pat Birch and cinematography by Bill Butler captured the colors and layers of high school. And Randal as director had a vision that would not allow less than the best from all of us.
Randal’s book has photos even I haven’t seen before, and new interviews from cast and crew. His production script shows the changes and rewrites that happened while we were shooting—from improvised lines to added songs to how often we returned to the original words of Jacobs and Casey’s hit play.
I’m so grateful to have had the chance to be in a film that has endured and will endure forever. It’s been a few decades since I first put on the T-Bird jacket, but when I get together with my fellow Greasers, it’s as though no time has passed at all. That’s the feeling I get when I read this book, and I hope you feel it too.
