Grease, Story of the Shot
It’s The One That We Want. Ooh, Ooh, Ooh
THE ORIGIN
“You’re The One That I Want”, perhaps the signature song and surely the best-loved? from Randal Kleiser’s 1978, 50s-set musical Grease, didn’t appear in the show’s original Broadway production. Replacing the Elvis Presley pastiche ‘All Choked Up’, it was written specifically for Olivia Newton-John, penned by her favoured songwriter, John Farrar.
At its heart, the sequence pivots on perhaps cinema’s greatest case of crossed wires. Greaser Danny Zuko (John Travolta, then aged 23) has donned a lettered Rydell High cardigan - soon swiftly removed to win over wholesome Aussie gal Sandy (Newton-John, 29), while Sandy has transformed into a cigarette smoking, clad-in-black sex bomb to seduce Danny, cue a catchy declaration of love at a carnival.
A very late-in-the-day addition, Farrar “had a tight deadline the next day - to write a song that would showcase the Bad Sandy character”, recalled Kleiser. “I liked the 70s take on a driving, Eddie Cochran-like rhythm. We got it recorded right away so [choreographer] Pat Birch could rehearse with it.”
THE SHOOT
The number was shot at John Marshall High School in the Los Felix district of Los Angeles, with a carnival set up on the athletic fields. Kleiser and Birch planned out the choreography on the fly and went for it. “The movie was not expensive,” said the director. “It gave us a kind of freedom to try things out and see what happened.”
Key to the scene is Sandy’s appearance in her raunchy garb. While Newton-John wore her own red platformed shoes, costume designer Albert Wolsky used famed lingerie store Fredericks of Hollywood as reference for items such as Sandy’s skin-tight spandex trousers. “I had to be stitched into those pants every morning.” Newton-John recalled. “They didn’t want to use a zipper. I don’t remember what they had to do if I needed to pee.” She did a run-through the night before, during the filming of the drive-in scenes “I got all dressed up and walked onto the set,” she said. “I had been working with the same crew for two months and they didn’t know it was me. I had the best time flirting with everyone.” Tell us about it, stud.
THE LEGACY
‘You’re The One That I Want’ remains one of the biggest-selling singles of all time, estimated to have sold over 15 million copies globally (it spent nine weeks at number one in the UK, and also hit the top spot in the US, eventually garnering the prestigious ‘Platinum’ designation). This came as no surprise to the songwriter. “I remember feeling for the first time in my life that we had a hit on our hands,” beamed Farrar.
There have been numerous cover versions, from the ’70s (Brit comedians Arthur Mullard and Hylda Baker) through to the ’90s (Craig McLachlan and Debbie Gibson) and the 2020s (Doja Cat for a Pepsi commercial).
Meanwhile, in 2019, an unknown bidder paid $405,700 for Sandy’s outfit at a Beverly Hills auction. It’s not just the chills that are multiplyin’.
By Ian Freer.
INSTANT TRIVIA
- Sandy’s original opening line in the scene was, “How are you hanging, stud?” Olivia Newton-John felt happier with, “Tell me about it, stud.”
- Sandy drops her cigarette on the floor and stubs it out, but when filming it would never land on its mark, always bouncing off. To solve this, prop master Rich Valesko inserted a bobby pin into the cigarette to weigh it down, keeping it in frame.
- The high range of John Travolta’s vocals made him nervous - so Newton-John accompanied him to the recording session as moral support. He needn’t have worried. “He definitely had a great feel for it, the way he did the chorus in particular,” recalled John Farrar. “And he got, like, the little yodel that I wanted.”
- You’re The One That I Want soundtracks brutal fight in a car between Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) in, er, Deadpool and Wolverine.
Grease is out now On DVD, Blu-Ray And Digital
Main photo: Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) and Danny (John Travolta) turn up the heat.