Music on Film: Grease By Stephen Tropiano

The book Music on Film: Grease is an homage to everything Grease: The original 1971 play, the 1978 movie, the sequel Grease 2, the TV documentary Behind the Music, the 1994 and 2007 New York revivals, more TV specials, the 2010 sing-along version of the original movie, the promotional John Travolta posters given away with purchase of Helene Curtis shampoo, Grease jeans, Grease jackets, Grease Firestone tires, and Pepsi’s Grease “lucky caps”.

This is not a book of gossip or celebrity secrets. The closest author Stephen Tropiano comes to sensationalism is to tell us how Joan Blondell committed one of the films “biggest bloopers” in the scene where she attempted to turn off the lights in the diner where she works and missed the switch entirely. The “quick-thinking” staff covered for her by turning them off anyway. Or how the character Frenchy spells her name with a “y”, but in the end credits her name is mistakenly spelled “Frenchie”.

I have to confess that I was hoping for a little more celebrity shock-and-awe. There were many times when I felt that Tropiano was throwing in meaningless or irrelevant facts just to fill up space, like when he explains to us that a crane is “an apparatus on which a camera is placed so it can be raised and lowered.” Or when he tells us that the John Marshall High School in Los Angeles is named after Chief Justice John Marshall. Or when he describes the plot of the old Imperial Margarine commercial where someone takes a bite, and a crown appears on their head.

If I had written this book, I would have focused on other stories. First and foremost: Jeff Conaway! Conaway was in the play for a year and a half before being cast in the movie, and he had one solo number, "Greased Lightnin’." In the movie, that one big song of his is given to John Travolta. There’s the real story! Can you imagine Conaway’s heartbreak and rage? The scalding hatred he must have harbored to his grave? The intrigue during the filming of the movie, the petty acts of sabotage, the backstage bickering? I would have interviewed Conaway and quoted him at length. I would have tracked down every last person who was on the set for the short skinny.

Another story I would have elaborated on is how Henry Winkler was offered the Travolta role and turned it down. Tropiano merely tells us (with masterful understatement) that Winkler later “regretted his decision.” Ya think? Perhaps even more interesting than why Winkler turned it down is, what were these people smoking when they offered him the role in the first place?

I was fascinated with the story of Marie Osmond, who says she was the studio’s first choice for the lead role that was ultimately given to Olivia Newton-John. Osmond turned it down for “moral” reasons. If Newton-John (the Doris Day of the 80’s) had no qualms, what could Osmond possibly have objected to? Osmond made a movie with her brother Donny later that same year (1978) called Goin’ Coconuts. In a line, which at first seems fairly innocuous, but upon reflection, may be one of the most vicious put-downs ever written, Variety described the film as “an extended film version of their TV show [Donny and Marie (1976-1979, ABC)], no better and no worse.” Ouch!

The most interesting fact brought out in this book is that, before she got the role of Rizzo in Grease, Stockard Channing starred in The Big Bus, a disaster-movie parody about a nuclear powered bus. That could be brilliant, could be stupid, but I’m definitely going to rent it. Tropiano tells us it bombed at the box office, but when I looked it up on Amazon.com, it was getting rave reviews from customers. We also find out that Olivia Newton-John appeared in an Australian musical/science fiction/comedy TV series called Tomorrow. Too bad the sci-fi musical never quite caught on.

It will probably interest you to hear that porn star Harry Reems was originally cast as the gym coach, the role that went to Sid Caesar. Reems had recently been convicted of conspiracy to distribute obscenity (the 1972 movie Deep Throat). The conviction was overturned because Deep Throat had been made a year before the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling under which Reems had been prosecuted. Two weeks before shooting began on Grease, it finally occurred to someone that a porn star in a high school might look bad, and Reems was fired.

This book is heavy on stats, with a 26-page “Grease-ography” listing pretty much every individual who has been involved in any way with the movie, sequel, or play; a 10-page bibliography; a 12-page index; and an astonishing 19 pages (10% of the entire book!) devoted to endnotes.

Other titles in the Music on Film series are A Hard Day’s Night, West Side Story, This Is Spinal Tap, Cabaret, and Amadeus. In spring of 2012 Limelight Editions plans to release Purple Rain and Rocky Horror Picture Show.

- Ron Abraytis