Word: stigwood
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...some might even dare to say there is some hint of talent beneath that flashy strobe-light exterior, which made its debut in Saturday Night Fever and is bound to make a few more starry-eyed fans in Grease and then who knows...Rumor has it that producers Robert Stigwood and Allan Carr held Grease until Travolta made his claim to fame in Saturday Night Fever. They apparently believed that Grease could be a bigger box office hit because everyone would be going to see Travolta, and not some rehash of a big Broadway...
...Stigwood and Carr might be smarter than we all think. Grease essentially is a poor remake of a great musical, and Travolta is pretty good as Danny Zooko--by no means overshadowed by his co-star Olivia Newton-John as Sandra D. Grease is entertaining. It could possibly lighten up a dull evening, and if you haven't heard the songs (although by now you must have heard "You're the One That I Want" played ad infinitum on the radio) once or twice by now, they are kind of fun as well...
Grease would be a better movie if Stigwood and Carr had stuck to the basics. They have compiled a fairly impressive group of retread stars to make the era complete; Eve Arden plays Rydell High's Principal McGee, Joan Blondell is Vi, the confidante/waitress type, Edd Byrnes does a good job as Vince Fontaine, host of National Bandstand, and Sid Caesar is a good fascist coach Calhoun. Of course, Sha-Na-Na is there too, as Johnny Casino and the Gamblers, and "everyone's favorite '50s group...
...Under Stigwood, the group had nine hefty hits, mostly deep-pile ballads that were like carpeting for the ears. "We would write rock songs-good ones-and they'd say, 'That's nice, where's the ballads?' " Robin remembers. "That was all they wanted." The boys were also suffering from the aftershocks of sudden success. They drank to excess, indulged in lots of speed, lived crazy and spent big. "There was a time," recalls Barry, "when I could walk out the front door and every car to the end of the street was mine, from...
...boys cooled off and cleaned up their act. Their sound gradually became more sinuous than in years past, bouncier and less simplistic. Barry and Maurice moved to Miami, where the recording-studio conditions are ideal and the living is easy. Their experience in the Stigwood-produced Saturday Night Fever worked out well enough for the Bee Gees to enlist in another Stigwood enterprise, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which will appear this summer. They show up in this one singing 30 old Beatles songs and co-starring with Peter Frampton. "The whole focus of the movie...