The most famous beauty school dropout is dropping back in.
GreaseactressDidiConnmade a rare appearance at a July 23 performance ofGrease: The Immersive Movie Musicalat Battersea Park in London.
In keeping with the theme, the 75-year-old—who played the character of Frenchy in the 1978 film—donned a pink jacket embroidered with her name, reminiscent of the classic jackets worn by The Pink Ladies in the classic movie musical.
And for Conn, playing the role of Frenchy—who famously leaves high school to attend beauty school before dropping out—felt almost like fate was intervening.
“My agent said, ‘You gotta go looking like the character,’” Conn recalled of her original audition in a video posted toInstagramJune 30. “All I knew was that her name was Frenchy. I did know that she wanted to be a beautician. I’m driving home and what do I see? But Frenchy’s Beauty Parlor.”
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Inside Didi Conn’s Private World After Grease Fame
Of course she stopped into the salon, adding, “Little Frenchy, she did my hair with at least two cans of spray. I had a big hairdo and I learned so much about beauty school. When I went to the audition I told them the story about Frenchy.”
While the experiencecertainly felt serendipitous, the casting team later toldConn that theyknew she was right for the role “as soon as I opened my mouth.”
And friendship was certainly the word on set, especially as Conn and costarOlin’s death from breast cancerin 2022 at the age of 73
“She was a little bit nervous about doing this film and her first scene in the movie was with Frenchy,” Conn shared. “I started improvising with her. I said, ‘Oh, I’m so happy I have a new neighbor all the way from Australia.’ And Oli
“She started to play with me. And when our directorRandal [Kleiser]said action, we were right in the mode of the character,” Conn smiled. “Afterwards she gave me the biggest hug and thanked me. And that’s how our friendship began.”
For morebehind-the-scenessecrets fromGrease, keep reading.
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Linda Ronstadt and Marie Osmond were among the names suggested to play Sandy, Travolta recalled to Entertainment Tonight, “and I said, ‘They’re wonderful, but every guy in the world wants Olivia Newton-John as their girlfriend.’ And I knew that ’cause I felt the same way…And I said, ‘If you don’t see this, you guys are nuts.'”
Carrie Fisher, Bye Bye Birdie star Ann-Margret and The Partridge Family’s Susan Dey were also on the list of possible Sandys.
When producer Allan Carr raised the idea of Newton-John, she didn’t immediately say yes. (But when she did, Sandy was rewritten to be Australian.)
“I was very anxious about making another film, because my music career was going well,” the “Physical” singer recalled to Vanity Fair in 2016, “and I did not want to mess it up by doing another movie that wasn’t good.”
“I go home…and I have a Diet Coke,” the Barry star told CNN’s Chris Wallace in November 2022. “John Travolta, who has done the movie, goes home and buys a plane.”
So he wasn’t yet a major movie star when they shot Grease in the summer of 1977, though by the time it came out on June 16, 1978, he was—and Oscar-nominated to boot.
But the life-changing projects were essential for Travolta in another way: His girlfriend Diana Hyland had died of cancer on March 27, 1977, and being busy helped.
“It acted as a giant distraction for me,” Travolta told Vanity Fair. “It was probably the healthiest thing I could have done was to be in back-to-back movies, because I was very sad.”
The two films shared a producer, Robert Stigwood, who was also the Bee Gees’ manager and brought Gibb in at the last minute to replace a song that had already been written.
Director Randal Kleiser was admittedly concerned about starting the whole movie off with a tune that didn’t have a 1950s vibe, but “Grease” spent two weeks in the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and was nominated for a Golden Globe, as was “You’re the One That I Want.” (They lost to Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” from Thank God It’s Friday.)
“Hopelessly Devoted to You” was the only Grease tune written for the movie (by John Farrar) that ended up nominated for a Best Original Song Oscar (again losing to “Last Dance”)—and it was the film’s only nomination.
For starters, the film’s Kenickie, Jeff Conaway, had a run on Broadway as Danny, and Travolta played T-Bird member Doody in a touring production.
Other Broadway Dannys in the 1970s included Peter Gallagher, Patrick Swayze and Treat Williams, while Richard Gere starred in the original West End production in 1973.
Venice High School (bleachers and other exterior campus shots), John Marshall High in Los Feliz (graduation carnival) and Huntington Park High (the gym dance) stood in for Rydell High, and the iconic drag race scene was shot in the L.A. River Basin between the 1st Street Bridge and 6th Street Viaduct.
Those bridges are familiar from dozens of movies, including The Naked Gun, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Furious 7.
“I would get up close to them and see if they had any crow’s-feet around their eyes and that would show they were beyond the surreal age that we had determined would work,” Kleiser, who had previously directed Travolta in the 1976 TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble and was the actor’s personal pick to make Grease, told Vanity Fair in 2016. “High-school kids could not have crow’s feet.”
In Grease: The Director’s Notebook, Kleiser detailed how cinematographer Bill Butler used soft lighting on 29-year-old Newton-John to erase any lines on her face—”not that Olivia had many,” he noted.
Presley died Aug. 16, 1977, at Graceland while they were still filming Grease in L.A.
“I have to be completely honest with you,” the actor told Vanity Fair. “I wanted the number. And because I had clout, I could get the number.”
Conaway, who died of pneumonia exacerbated by chronic drug abuse in 2011, wasn’t particularly happy about it and neither was choreographer Patricia Birch.
“It’s Kenickie’s goddamned number!” she told the magazine. “I was upset with it, because I thought Jeff needed a number. John was very good doing it, but it should have been Kenickie—it was Kenickie’s car!”
The production quickly cast 19-year-old Lorenzo Lamas as Sandy’s boyfriend-for-a-minute whose “brains are in his biceps.” He had to dye his dark hair blond so he would contrast more with Danny. But, Lamas recalled to Vanity Fair, “I would have dyed it purple to be in that movie.”
You can see her among the waitresses gathered around the TV at The Frosty Palace, the diner hangout that was recently reconstructed for the Paramount+ prequel series Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies.
Didi Conn, who played beauty school dropout Frenchie, recalled to ET that her Australian co-star first tried on the bad-girl look at night when they were on set shooting the drive-in scene, and nobody realized who she was.
“It was a natural reaction,” Travolta told ET about Danny being brought to his knees by his first glimpse at Sandy’s makeover. “It was so much fun to see her dressed up in that garb.”
Alas, producer Carr’s original idea for a follow-up—Summer School, which would have seen the T-Birds and Pink Ladies reunite for Rizzo and Kenickie’s wedding—was not the one that got made.
