RIP the incomparable Olivia Newton John. 🩷 Cheers to this beautiful lifelong friendship and the joy Danny and Sandy have brought us all!

So much chemistry and love between this cast! 🧡

Wanted to share this photo of me and Barry “Doody” Pearl with his ORIGINAL T-Birds jacket! 🎵 🥰

If there's one movie that's synonymous with summer for me, it's Grease.

All it takes is the blaring opening notes of my favourite Frankie Valli song, and I'm transported back in time. I can smell hotdogs mixed with campfire smoke. I can hear crickets and the rustling of tall grass. I can feel the burrs stuck to my shirtsleeves and the scratches on my arms from the blackberry bushes. I can even see the stars glimmering overhead in the pitch dark sky. Every time I watch Grease now, I feel like a kid again.

But that wasn't always the case.

When I was younger, I loved the summer more than anything. It meant one thing: freedom. My friends and I would spend weeks camping out in the backyard, having water gun fights, playing cards, and swimming in the ocean.

And every summer we'd host our very own drive-in movies.

We got a projector, a bedsheet, and some speakers, then loaded up the backs of our family minivans with blankets and as much Dollar Store candy as our allowances could buy. The first film in our double feature changed each time, but the second one was, always and without fail, Grease

Grease was, and is, the ultimate fantasy of youth. It's an intoxicating mix of music, nostalgia, bright colours and iconic outfits that synthesizes an irresistible image of the teenage experience. The T-Birds and Pink Ladies of Rydell High drove around every weekend sneaking booze into dances, having rowdy sleepovers, fooling around, getting into fights and living life to the fullest. Where my world was full of parental expectations and chores, all that Danny, Sandy, Rizzo, Kenicke and the gang were worried about was who they would ask to the dance and what was playing at the drive-in next to the Frosty Palace. That glorious drive-in.

In my head, the drive-in was a symbol of independence and young revelry. That's probably why I was so obsessed with recreating it in the first place. My own elaborate version of make-believe.

While I watched the T-Birds drooling over a new(ish) car in Greased Lighting, I imagined being old enough to buy my own set of wheels to take to a real drive-in, snuggled up with my own devastatingly good-looking date, who, of course, would be madly in love with me. This little backyard charade was just a placeholder for the real thing.

Unbeknownst to me, the era of diner malts and sock hops was long over by the time Grease was made in the '70s, let alone the 2010s, when 10-year-old Gwen was gazing in awe at the flame-painted cars and technicolour taffeta. But that couldn't have mattered less. All I wanted was to grow up, and hopefully live a life just as exciting as the ones on the projector screen.

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Ok just hear me out...

Danny Zuko is the most effeminate man in the whole movie—the way he moves, the way he acts, the way he chastises his hyper-masculine friends for acting too guyish around him.

The only time Danny really acts masculine is at the bonfire, where he is peer-pressured by his friends, and Sandy rejects him; and at the dance when he dances with Cha Cha (while wearing his flamboyant pink suit) and Sandy rejects him.

This is because Sandy likes Danny's femininity. It's all she sings about in Summer Nights, while Danny is pressured by his friends' hyper-masculine heteronormative expectations to sexualize Sandy; but that's not what's important to Danny in the song.

But all that changes in the drive-in scene when Danny makes a last attempt to follow heteronormative relationship patterns by giving Sandy one of his rings. It's obvious by Danny's reaction that he doesn't really care about proposals or promise rings or whatever, he really just does it to stop her from being mad, which works momentarily. Then he tries to have his way with her, and she rejects him and his cheap ring.

In the next scene, Danny is singing "why would she do this?" "how could she leave me?" and it forces him to be introspective and realize he can't do this anymore. He has to let go of these heteronormative expectations to be with Sandy.

In the next scene, Kenickie talks to Danny about how close friends they are, and how they've always been friends. Kenickie represents the bisexual male; he's truly in love with both Danny and Rizzo. Kenickie essentially asks Danny to be his partner and Danny resoundingly says yes and passionately embraces Kenickie. This is by far the gayest scene. Then they see the hyper-masculine guys watching and Danny walks away in embarrassment.

In the next scene, at the race, Kenickie bonks his head, and who is holding Kenickie's semi-conscious body in his arms asking if he's ok? Danny! He offers to race in Kenickie's place. He wins, and in that scene Danny realizes what matters to him in a relationship.

In the NEXT scene, Danny walks out in the letterman jacket as the unapologetically effeminate homosexual man, and he says to his hyper-masculine friends that he needs to let them go and that this is who he wants to be with Sandy.

Meanwhile Sandy has had the opposite transformation. She walks out DRESSED LIKE A MAN, wearing the greaser jacket and tight black pants which only the other male characters like Kenickie have worn.

And how does Danny react? He falls on the ground singing about losing control and they sing You're the One that I Want.

First saw this movie in 3rd grade and it became my all time favorite! Age 35 now and rewatching it still transports me to all my favorite moments from childhood to adolescene. I used to watch it multiple times a year to once a year to now having been about 2 years since my last watch. But the magic is still there. To all you other fans hope life is treating u well and if its not, just throw this on and I can almost guarantee it'll help at least a little! Cheers!

Hello!

I am utterly obsessed with Michelle Pfeiffer's silver-y ruched dress from the ending of Grease 2, but cannot find anything like it anywhere or even a pattern so I can make it myself lol.

Please, if anyone has any leads or patterns or ideas, please help a girl out. I just wanna make my 12 year old dreams come true.

Sincerely, a desperate woman who's a sucker for terrible movies and great dresses lmao!

The cast became close during filming. Travolta took Conn and her little brother Richard (who has been a singer in the Met Opera for 30 years) to Disneyland in his limo. He also set up a screening of Saturday Night Fever before it came out because he wanted to hear the Grease cast’s opinion. “I remember him saying, ‘I did a movie in Brooklyn last summer. And I don’t know. I don’t think it’s going to do any good,’” Conn says. “We went, ‘John, this is unbelievable.’”

They all remain friends. Conn quotes the final refrain of the film: “‘We’ll always be together.’ It’s been 48 years and we’re still together.” When Jeff Conaway, who plays Danny’s best friend, died in 2011, found unconscious after an overdose, Travolta “had us all meet in a restaurant in Beverly Hills where we could talk”.

The one cast member who wasn’t part of the tight-knit circle was Stockard Channing, now 82, who played the hard-nosed Pink Ladies leader, Rizzo. Conn, who has followed Channing’s career and goes to see her plays, describes her as “aloof — she just stayed away from everybody”. Conn remembers a moment when Channing clashed with Conaway — who played her love interest in the film — after he crossed a line in the diner scene, right before Conn’s big Beauty School Dropout number.

“[Conaway] gave [Channing] a hickey. She didn’t want him to really give her a hickey. She wanted make-up to do it. But he gave her a real hickey and she was pissed off at him.” So, although the script said she should throw her milkshake at Conn, she threw it at Conaway. “Five times,” Conn says. “[Conaway] was mad.”

So Conaway and Channing didn’t have a love affair in real life. It was actually Conaway and Susan Buckner (Patty Simcox in the film, Sandy’s geeky friend). “They had something going on,” Conn says with a smile. Newton-John and Travolta too… “Nothing ever happened, but they really had feelings,” Conn says. 

Read the full interview ^

I’ve had this song in my head all day! Had to share!