Olivia (19 page)

Thus Olivia and John came to
Grease
as two very attractive, single stars, and it wasn’t long before the press began to hint that theirs was becoming much more than a working relationship while making the movie. Both accepted as almost inevitable that showbiz gossips would link them romantically and they were prepared for the rumours. These were partly sparked by Olivia slipping a sympathetic hand into John’s and giving him an empathetic squeeze during a joint press interview in which John became visibly emotional when asked how he was coping following Diana’s tragic death.

Friends have said they became lovers, but both Olivia and John insisted otherwise. ‘Oh yes, all the girls were in love with John, but we never dated,’ said Olivia. ‘
Grease
was the start of a lifelong friendship.

‘I met John when he was going through a lot of pain, and I think that’s why I gained a lot of respect for him because even though he was in incredible pain he never missed a day, he was so professional. He was always there on time and on the set he was full of energy and vitality. I can’t think of anyone else who would have that strength in that situation.’

With John’s encouragement and Kleiser’s patient direction, Olivia’s confidence in her own ability in front of the camera noticeably grew as filming progressed and she slipped into the routines and disciplines of filmmaking. A chauffeur picked her up from her home in Malibu in early morning darkness, even before the dogs had woken up, ready to take her to the studio by 6am in time for her to change into costume and be made up.

For the first eight weeks of filming Olivia was ‘Sandy One’, as she called the demure Sandy. To get into character, she thought back to when she was seventeen and found herself in a completely alien environment. She’d left England for Australia when she was a child and by the time she’d come back to England she had an Aussie accent. In Australia she’d been called a Pom and back in England she was regarded as an Aussie. ‘I know what it feels like to be an outsider,’ she said, ‘the only one with a funny accent. So all I had to do really was to think back to when I was suddenly plonked into a strange country not knowing many people and just beginning to really discover boys, falling in love with a guy and being rejected. It’s something everyone goes through one way or another, but there was definitely a bit of myself in there, for sure.

‘At times I feel like the 1978 equivalent to Doris Day,’ she was able to laugh in one interview. ‘There are those who think I can’t be as straight as I look. That’s why there’s always someone trying to dig up dirt on me. Yet I can’t become something I’m not.’

With no training as an actress, Olivia chose to trust her instinct totally. Fortunately she really hit it off with John Travolta. ‘He was very gentle, sensitive, funny, and very professional.’

Travolta also proved to be supportive and generous in the scenes they shared. At one point John saw Olivia patently struggling to get to grips with the scene where Sandy suddenly meets Danny again at school for the first time after their summer fling. A reaction shot was required from Olivia while John was off-camera. Halfway through the scene John fluffed his own lines and apologetically asked for a retake. Later John told her that he had deliberately made a mistake because he knew that Olivia could do a whole lot better, that she probably knew it, and that he wanted to give her the chance to do so by ensuring they started filming the scene all over again.

The opening scenes in the movie capture Danny and Sandy strolling by the sea and pausing to kiss as they enjoy their romantic beach holiday before parting to go back to school. ‘Having to kiss John Travolta wasn’t so rough,’ Olivia allowed. ‘But having to do that in front of the camera was new to me.’ John said of their first smooch: ‘It was wonderful for me because I got to kiss her and it was all within the rules. You know, if you dated someone like Olivia, God, who knows when you’d get to that first kiss!’

The filming of Sandy One’s transformation into Sandy Two was something Olivia looked forward to with relish. This was her chance to show the sexy side not just of Sandy but of Olivia Newton-John, too, and she was going to make the most of it. She spent hours in discussion with the wardrobe and hair and make-up departments trying on various outfits and experimenting with different hairstyles.

Olivia was at that point super-slim and it made sense to find an outfit that showed off her figure. She says:

 

To gauge the impact of her ensemble of skin-tight pants, red backless high-heeled platform shoes, low-cut off-the-shoulder blouse, whore-red lipstick, black leather jacket and teased blonde hair, Olivia casually strolled unannounced on to the set where Kleiser was setting up the night-time scene for John Travolta’s solo number after he has taken Sandy to the drive-in.

Olivia wanted to surprise the director by her transformation as well as to get his approval for the outfit she had chosen. Kleiser recalls: ‘When she walked on to the set in those pants, the whole crew began acting like adolescents with catcalls and whistles without even recognising it was Olivia. She was so sexy, the whole camera crew were around her and everyone was reacting so differently to her. Cast member Sean Moran commented that half the dancers fell to their knees in amazement, and the other half wanted the outfit.’

Olivia was tickled pink by the gasps from the girls and the lascivious looks from the boys. She said:

 

Sandy’s eye-popping morph into a sex kitten remains one of the high points of the movie. Cigarette dangling from her pouting red lips, sunglasses pushed well back on her saucy blonde curls, she licks her lips, stubs out her cigarette with her heel, pauses a moment for effect then gives Danny the come-on with the sultry line: ‘Tell me about it . . . stud.’ With a shove of her foot she sends him sprawling backwards before dancing off through the fairground’s Shake Shack to the John Farrar number, ‘You’re The One That I Want’. Randal Kleiser originally thought the song ‘sounded awful’ but Olivia knew it would be a massive hit as soon she heard the infectiously vibrant intro for the very first time.

For this pivotal scene at the fairground, Kleiser made use of a travelling carnival that conveniently happened to be in the area. But when he looked at the dailies it was with a critical eye. He wasn’t happy with the overall impact of John and Olivia’s duet and decided that although it had the required energetic quality, it was ‘a little rough around the edges’. He resolved to add a few close-ups to give visual punch to ‘You’re The One That I Want’, and arranged for further filming of the number two days later, only to be dismayed to find that the travelling carnival had moved on. As a compromise, a carnival soundstage with rented fairground machines was hastily mocked up on the football field of Marshall High School in Griffith Park.

Filming this pivotal scene in her figure-hugging pants had its drawbacks for Olivia. ‘The zip had gone,’ she explained, ‘so they had to stitch me into them every day. I wondered what on earth I was going to do if I wanted a pee, so I didn’t eat or drink anything from morning till evening. I was forced to drink almost nothing all day. But all the girls wanted the outfit and the boys were all over me, so it was worth it.’

Olivia’s contract stipulated she would be allotted one song to sing solo in the movie. But when
Grease
went into production, there was as yet no sign of the song, nor did Kleiser have any idea where he would include it anyway.

It wasn’t until halfway through shooting that John Farrar came up with ‘Hopelessly Devoted To You’ and presented Kleiser with a demo disc of his own rendition of the ballad. Hearing the song for the first time, sung not by a woman but by a man just accompanying himself on guitar, Kleiser confessed he wasn’t sure if it was suitable or not, but he was prepared to take Olivia’s word for it.

With time running out, the director chose to integrate ‘Hopelessly Devoted To You’ into the story by having Sandy sing about Danny while wandering around the backyard after the Pink Ladies’ slumber party. A set was hastily built and Olivia nailed the song in one take.

 

 

The cast generally felt it was a good omen for their movie when a stage production of
Grease
returned to the Pantages Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles while they were in the process of making the film. By an eerie coincidence, however, Elvis Presley died on the very day Stockard Channing filmed Betty Rizzo’s musical homage to him in the song ‘Look At Me, I’m Sandra Dee’. The very last day of filming, 16 of August 1977, found Stockard singing the line: ‘Elvis, Elvis, let me be, keep your pelvis far from me.’ When the cast learned of the rock ’n’ roll king’s death at such a poignant moment in the production, they wondered if this too was some kind of portent for
Grease
.

Once the movie was completed, the studio executives at Paramount were none too sure what to make of it, nor of its chances of success. True to form, however, Allan Carr enthusiastically promised them audiences would find John Travolta just as much of a sensation as he had been in
Saturday Night Fever
. As for Olivia, he said: ‘She couldn’t have been more adorable on screen. She’ll be a big star.’

Paramount’s nervy in-house reaction resulted, however, in a decision to test-market
Grease
in an out-of-the-way cinema just in case the audience reaction was unfavourable. In that eventuality, a damage-limitation exercise could be mounted and controlled, hopefully curtailing the unflattering word of mouth that could follow.

Honolulu on the island of Oahu in Hawaii was chosen as the location for the first
Grease
trial preview, and it doesn’t get much more remote than that. To further preserve secrecy, the cans of film were flown out from Los Angeles to the Hawaiian capital marked not as
Grease
but with a fake title. Despite all the subterfuge, a local Honolulu radio station somehow found out John Travolta’s new movie was being given its first screening in town that night, which resulted in lengthy queues outside the cinema.

Top-ranking Paramount executives accompanied Randal Kleiser to the Hawaii screening and they all nervously seated themselves in different areas of the cinema, the better to observe audience reaction.

‘When the first number came up,’ Kleiser later recalled, ‘Travolta began singing and strutting down the football bleachers and the audience burst into laughter. My stomach sank. I thought it was a bad laugh, that they thought it looked ridiculous and we had bombed. But as the laughter continued, I realised that it was a good laugh and they were delighted.’

At the end of this first public screening, Kleiser and Paramount’s top brass emerged from the cinema heartened by the audience’s response. Further market research revealed that kids lapped up the fun times Kleiser had created at Rydell High of teacher-baiting, backseat snogging at the drive-in, hot-rodding, the girly get-togethers of the Pink Ladies, the camaraderie of the T-Bird boys. The girls enjoyed Danny’s awkward veering from cool greaser when among his pals to romantic boyfriend showing his true softer feelings when alone with Sandy.

Additional previews confirmed Paramount’s belief that they had a potential hit on their hands and they were prepared to back their hunch with a hefty $5million promotion for the US alone. A similar amount was allocated for the rest of the world.

The marketing campaign proclaimed ‘Grease is the word’, a line from the movie’s theme song sung by Frankie Valli, best known as the lead singer of the Four Seasons harmony group, who had a string of hits in the 1960s. And by mid-June 1978, Valli’s recording of ‘Grease’ was number one in the US singles charts, which gave the movie vital impetus just as it was about to hit US cinemas.

At the Los Angeles premiere, Olivia and John rolled up in an open-top car to an ecstatic welcome from the large and excited crowd that had gathered outside Mann’s Chinese Theatre. Thanks to the hit songs from the movie and the carefully crafted promotional campaign,
Grease
really was proving to be the word. ‘We thought it was fun, but we had no idea it would create the hoo-ha it did,’ said Olivia. ‘Even when we went to the premiere in LA before it had been released, they were storming the car. This was long before the internet. It was bizarre, but there was just a buzz about it and people loved the idea of it.’

Olivia emerged from the car wearing a pretty pink prom dress symbolic of Sandy One. Later she was to change into a skin-tight pink catsuit as Sandy Two for the after-party where she and John happily danced the night away.

Inside the theatre, the warmth of feeling towards the movie was tangible from early on in the screening. Stockard Channing recalled the reaction of the audience when the first big production number came up on screen: ‘Whoosh! There was a ripple of excitement and then it was just like a big wave hitting a beach. It was really thrilling.’