Grease, Tell Me More, Tell Me More

Stories from the Broadway Phenomenon That Started It All

Tom Moore, Adrienne Barbeau, Ken Waissman

• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781641607582
• eBook ISBN: 9781641607605
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

" Grease, Tell Me More, Tell Me More is a fabulous rockin' and rollin' origin story with every juicy inspiration that went into creating it. . . . A must read for all Grease fans." —Didi Conn, Grease's "Frenchy"
 

What started as an amateur play with music in a converted trolly barn in Chicago hit Broadway fifty years ago—and maintains its cultural impact today. 
Grease opened downtown in the Eden Theatre February 14, 1972, short of money, short of audience, short of critical raves, and seemingly destined for a short run. But like the little engine that could, this musical of high school kids from the 1950s moved uptown. On December 8, 1979, it became the longest running show—play or musical—in Broadway history. 
Grease: Tell Me More, Tell Me More is a collection of memories and stories from over one hundred actors and musicians, including the creative team and crew who were part of the original Broadway production and in the many touring companies it spawned.
Here are stories—some touching, some hilariously funny—from names you may recognize: Barry Bostwick, John Travolta, Adrienne Barbeau, Treat Williams, Marilu Henner, Peter Gallagher, and others you may not: Danny Jacobson, creator of Mad About You; Tony-winning Broadway directors Walter Bobbie and Jerry Zaks; bestselling authors Laurie Graff and John Lansing; television stars Ilene Kristen, Ilene Graff, and Lisa Raggio, and many, many more. 
Read about the struggles, the battles, and the ultimate triumphs achieved in shaping the story, characters, and music into the iconic show now universally recognized the world over.
 

1 In the Beginning . . .

JIM JACOBS (Author/Composer): In 1969 I was having a cast party in my apartment and practically everybody had left, but Warren Casey was still there, along with some deadbeats lying around listening to Led Zeppelin, smoking weed and drunk, of course, and I go to this closet where I had a shopping bag full of my old 45s from the ’50s and came out and said, “I’m putting on Dion and the Belmonts.” I go over, sit next to Warren, and say, “How come there’s never been a Broadway show, man, with rock and roll music?” Those exact words.

Warren looked at me like I was nutty and said, “Yeah, well, that’s a fun idea, but what the hell would it be about?” I said, “I have no idea. Maybe it should be about the people I went to high school with. And because everything in those days was greasy, because the hair was greasy and the food was greasy, and there were all these guys who had cars and they were always under the hood, man, and they’d come out all greasy . . . it could be called Grease.”

Warren looked at me and said, “Yeah, yeah. OK, you’re drunk, it’s three o’clock in the morning, let’s all go get a tattoo of an executioner with an axe. I’m goin’ home.”

Warren was a very close-lipped guy. But I found him the funniest person I had ever known. A latter-day Oscar Wilde of the welfare state. An American Joe Orton. We could have each other in hysterics for hours on end. There were never two more different kind of guys, but we made a great team.

I was part of Chicago’s community theater scene while working a day job in advertising. Warren, at that time, was working for Mary Cell Corsetry—a women’s underwear store. When people asked Warren, “What do you do?” he’d say, “Oh, I’m in bras and panties. . . .”

Jim Jacobs at Foster Beach on Lake Michigan.

A few weeks after that party where I replaced Led Zeppelin with ’50s rock ’n’ roll, Warren calls me up and says, “I started working on a scene and a song for that show you were talking about the other night.” I said, “What show?” I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. “You remember . . . Grease. You said we would call it Grease.” I said, “You’re writing a scene?” He said, “Yeah, it’s a girls’ pajama party. And I’m writin’ it now. It’s called ‘Freddy, My Love.’” I knew right away he was spoofing “Eddie My Love” by the Teen Queens. So that was it. I went down to my office and instead of writing direct mail and ads and shit for Advertising Age, I just started writing names of characters and making up songs. I started thinking of the drive-in movie, hamburger joints, a rumble, pajama parties, tattoos . . . scenes like that.

Around the same time, this actress-teacher friend of mine calls me up one day and says, “Do you think you could teach my drama class for me?” I said, “I don’t know anything about teaching.” She said, “Well, just fake it for one week. You’ll think of something. Oh, and you get thirty dollars!”

So I came up with auditioning for a play. I brought in the pajama party scene and picked out five girls and said, “OK, you’ll play Marty, you’re gonna be Jan, etc.” They start reading the thing—it was the first time I had ever heard it read—and all the people in the class start laughing their asses off. I mean, really howling at the lines; I got goose bumps. Holy shit, what the fuck! I called up Warren and said, “Warren, we have a play! We really have a fuckin’ play!”

Jim Jacobs.

Warren Casey.

An early version of Grease was first performed on weekends by an amateur cast at the Kingston Mines Community Theatre, in a converted trolley barn in Chicago, February 1971 to November 1971.

—TOM MOORE

“Could This Be Magic?”

KEN WAISSMAN (Producer): In August 1971 a Baltimore high school friend and college roommate, Phillip Markin, called me from Chicago. He and his wife Suzy had happened upon a small, ninety-seat community theater that was presenting a show about high school kids in the 1950s. Phil knew I was looking for a new show to produce.

“It’s about the kids with the ducktail haircuts and black leather jackets who hung out in the back of our high school,” my Baltimore friend reported. “It’s called Grease.”

In high school and college, Phil was known as the ultimate pessimist. He never had a positive word to say about anything. I figured if he, the champion glass-half-empty guy, is showing enthusiasm for this, I better fly out and see it.

Off to Chicago I went. The theater was in the basement of what had once been a trolley barn. There were no seats, just the cement floor. An usher handed us some newspapers to sit on. I looked at the stage (which was level with the floor) and saw homemade brown paper scenery depicting a mythical Rydell High. I could see the drip marks left by the poster paint.

However, once the show began, I saw my own high school yearbook coming to life. I knew every one of the characters onstage. They each mirrored people I remembered from my high school in Baltimore. I felt their fears, their bravado, and their need to fit in.

Danny and Sandy existed as part of the ensemble but weren’t fully developed as central characters. At this stage, the book was way overwritten: 70 percent book, 30 percent music.

The band was basically winging it, slamming through lyrics and often drowning out voices. However, the wit of “Beauty School Dropout” and “It’s Raining on Prom Night” and the joy of songs like “We Go Together” and “Greased Lightnin’” came through, sounding original but at the same time like songs I remembered from the ’50s.

As rough as the show was at this point, I believed from what I saw that the authors, with the right guidance, had the talent to expand the score and do the rewrites necessary to transform this pint-size show into a Broadway-size musical.

After the performance, I met with Jacobs and Casey and expressed my enthusiasm. I told them if they were willing to move to New York to rework the show, focus the book, and flesh out the musical score, my partner and I would produce it. (My producing partner, Maxine Fox, flew out to Chicago the next day and saw the final performance of the run.)

I told the authors that the authenticity they managed to create in the characters, the feeling that when the show is over the actors, still in their costumes, would jump into an old jalopy and go out for hamburgers, made the Grease experience indelible. I told them if we produced it, we would keep that in mind with every single choice we made for the New York production.

2 “Move It”

KEN WAISSMAN (Producer): Once back in New York, the next step was for Maxine and me to meet with Jacobs and Casey’s agents at International Creative Management—ICM: Steve Sultan, a buttoned-up attorney, and Bridget Aschenberg, a matronly middle-aged woman whose hair always looked like it just came in from a windstorm. Although Jim and Warren became ICM clients because of the Kingston Mines production, Bridget had never seen it and hadn’t heard the music. Nonetheless, she decided that the director and choreographer should be Michael Bennett, then a young, up-and-coming Broadway choreographer who would later go on to direct and choreograph the groundbreaking musical A Chorus Line. He just happened to be an ICM client. She indicated that if we had Michael Bennett on board, it would be easier for them to recommend that Jim and Warren give us the producing ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Prologue
• 1 In the Beginning . . .
• 2 “Move It”
• 3 Finding a Theater
• 4 Burger Palace Boys and Pink Ladies
• 5 “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On”: Rehearsals
• 6 “Good Golly, Miss Molly”: Moving to the Eden
• 7 “Slippin’ and Slidin’”: Technical | Dress Rehearsals | Previews
• 8 “Oh, What a Night”
• 9 “Rock ’n’ Roll Is Here to Stay”
• 10 “All I Have to Do Is Dream”: The Tony Awards
• 11 “Oh What a Dream”: The Broadhurst Theatre, June 7, 1972–November 19, 1972
• 12 “Roll Over Beethoven”: The Royale Theatre, November 21, 1972–January 27, 1980
• 13 “Take Good Care of My Baby”
• 14 “Let the Good Times Roll”: The First National Tour, December 1972–December 1974
• 15 “Got My Mojo Working”: Rehearsals
• 16 “We’re Gonna Rock Around the Clock Tonight”: The First National Hits the Road
• 17 “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes”: The Shubert Theatre, Los Angeles, June 1, 1973–September 9, 1973
• 18 Meanwhile . . .: Playing on Broadway, 1972–1973
• 19 The National Tour Goes Home: The Blackstone Theatre, Chicago, September 12, 1973–December 16, 1973
• 20 Broadway: 1973–1974
• 21 “Reelin’ and Rockin’”: Life in the Orchestra Pit
• 22 The First Bus and Truck Tour: October 1973–November 1974
• 23 “Movin’ ’n’ Groovin’”: Traveling Across America by Bus
• 24 “Leader of the Pack”: The Geary Theater, San Francisco, June 1975
• 25 Broadway: 1974–1975
• 26 Coconut Grove: August 27, 1974–November 17, 1974
• 27 The Summer Stock Tent Tours: April 1975
• 28 The Flight to Norf*ck
• 29 Broadway: 1975–1976
• 30 The Grease Tours Circling America: 1976–1980
• 31 Danny Takes Sandy to the Drive-In
• 32 The Last Tours on the Road
• 33 Broadway: 1976–1977
• 34 Hanging Out with Liz and Dick: March 1976
• 35 “Words of Love”
• 36 Playing the Odds in Las Vegas: Summer 1977
• 37 The Great New York Blackout: July 13, 1977
• 38 Broadway: 1978–1979
• 39 Broadway: 1979–1980
• 40 Grease Becomes Broadway’s Longest-Running Show: December 8, 1979
• 41 “The Party’s Over”: The Majestic Theatre, January 29, 1980–April 13, 1980
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Credits
• Photos Insert