onelegmissing
One Leg Missing
A place to yackity-yack about 50s stuff.
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drew serafine with a pompadour and leather jacket and now im in love oops
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Hang on, where is Danny's left hand at below this shot?
John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John and Jeff Conaway on the set of Grease (1978)
#john travolta#olivia newton john#jeff conaway#grease 1978#danny x sandy#danny x kenickie#mé·nage à trois#gay greasers#look again#oh my
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Olivia Newton-John (1948 - 2022)
my heart hurts. my head hurts. i can’t believe it’s true. grease changed my life, is one of my most cherished movies, and olivia’s turn as sandy was nothing short of iconic. but she was also so much more than that. she was an inspiration. she battled breast cancer for 30 years and never once showed any sign of sitting back and giving up. she used her diagnosis to become an inspiration to those with breast cancer everywhere. she was a successful singer, actress, a wife, a mother and an international treasure. it’s difficult for me to come to terms with the fact she isn’t here anymore. rest in peace olivia, we love you.
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THIS moment
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Gypsy Rose Lee 1956
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Betty Rizzo or Betty Boop? Fantastic picture in any case!
🍨 We got together like -insert garbled noise here- Day 27 of CuteGirlTober is Bomber Jacket! Now I don’t think the Pink Ladies had bomber jackets, looked more like leather, but I definitely thought it fit the vibe! Of course, Rizzo is so iconic, drawing this made me want to watch Grease again!
Hopefully I’ll be finishing the rest of CuteGirlTober today, so keep an eye out! >:3c
Time Taken: 1h 20min.
#betty rizzo#betty boop#pink ladies#grease 1978#grease#1950s#diner#malt#milkshake#stockard channing#fan art#digital art#art#cartoon
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Here's the only funny part of Mad Magazine's "Grease" parody.
....Even the dog's running--wtf does that imply?
If you're suffering insomnia, here's the full parody:
#grease 1978#grease#mad magazine#parody#humor#betty rizzo#kenickie#dog#pregnant#drive in#1950s#greaser#stockard channing#jeff conaway
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Marilyn Monroe photographed by Milton H. Greene, 1954.
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Interesting read about Israeli like during the 1950s.
Some highlights (for me personally):
No television Just cinemas and radios. Home TV was relatively new in the States, so this shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did.
Hashish is likely what Goldstein and Rosenberg had in that shofar-bong
Stalag Pornography?! Not elaborated on in this article, but apparently this was Holocaust errotica? Made in Israel? And popular with the kids of survivors, one decade after the fact? Untreated PTSD + 1950s sexual repression = insanity on paper. Stalag was a very short-lived but bizarre phenomena.
No pizza. D:
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Jayne Mansfield with her little friend.
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"Grease" Backstories
Sandy Olsson/Yung/Dumbrowski
In “Grease Live!” Sandy’s family is from Utah, and her parents are extremely controlling, to the point of not allowing her to attend school dances. It’s believed that in this version, her family are strict Mormons.
This background works for most any time period. But if we want to tie her story closer to the ‘50s, and/or just want her to be from Australia or someplace else, here’s another idea:
Sandy’s father has a prestigious position in….some business or another. The “change of plans” that caused the family to abruptly move to another state/country/side of the globe happened when his longtime business associate was Blacklisted as a Communist. Mr. Olsen/Young/Whoever ended that partnership on the spot and moved his family as far away from that associate as possible. He is obsessed with his family’s good, upstanding, “family values” reputation.
And Sandy of course just wants to be a teenager.
Danny Zuko:
“You’re lucky to have parents who care so much; mine don’t care about anything.”
~ Danny Zuko, “Grease Live!” (2016)
This single line goes worlds to explaining Danny’s dependence on the T-Birds, and why he’s drawn to a sensitive girl like Sandy.
So why don’t his parents care about anything?
Danny is the result of a shotgun wedding. Dad the veteran unknowingly knocked up Danny’s mom just before shipping out to Japan. Mr. Zuko returned from the War with untreated PTSD, and a son he didn’t plan on. Because of the time period, Danny’s parents were pressured to get married. They don’t exactly fight, they just exist in a loveless marriage, begrudgingly raising their kids in a house full of untreated PTSD and substance abuse.
Kenickie:
Note: I have absolutely no clue where the Grease Wiki gets the “Kenickie Murdock” from. The name “Murdock” is not given to Kenickie in either the movie or the TV version, and I can find no evidence of it being in the stage version either. The only “Murdock” in the play/movie is Mrs. Murdock the shop teacher, and there’s no indication of any relationship to Kenickie, bar maybe the car connection. In any case, Kenickie itself is a last name.
Kenickie’s “Mom” tattoo is pretty damn corny, but if you can get past that, it’s a detail that drops a bombshell of backstory hints.
For all his edgelord behavior, Kenickie is stunningly chivalrous when he learns Rizzo may be pregnant. Even nowadays, a true asshole would run out on her. Here it’s the ‘50s, he wants to be there for her and his hypothetical unplanned kid. Rizzo knows what a hardass Kenickie is, yet thinks crying in front of him is “the worst thing I could do”--worse than dating his enemy and telling him “it’s someone else’s kid.”
Here’s my spin: Kenickie’s mom died from some disease like Cancer or radium poisoning. It was slow and emotionally scarring, and Rizzo knows about it. She knows seeing a woman he cares about in emotional distress again would break him.
His father is alive, but absent, if not literally then at least emotionally. Kenickie was apparently gone the entire summer, none of the other T-Birds knew where he was for three months. The Bargain City he was lugging boxes at was apparently out of town. Who was he living with for the summer? His grandparents? A friend of the family? Who knows.
Betty Rizzo:
She’s “the school tramp” (“Grease Live!”) and the neighborhood thinks she’s trashy. Yet she doesn’t seem to live in a ghetto or anything, if the opening cartoon is anything to go by. She’s from a working-class family that just has a bad reputation, probably for incredibly stupid reasons given that it’s the ‘50s.
Betty’s mom had her out of wedlock and didn’t bother to hide it. She did eventually get married—to the neighborhood gambling addict. The last person to find out that this guy wasn’t Betty’s rea father was Betty. Since having that bomb dropped on her, Betty’s one scruple is that she doesn’t lie.
Frenchie:
Has a relatively normal family. She’s Jewish (because Didi Cohn). No one in her nuclear family has any numbers tattooed on their arms though; they’ve been in the States since the Twenties. Why does she have her own TV in her room in the ‘50s? She doesn’t; the Pink Ladies just commandeered the family set for the night.
What do her parents think of her academic decisions? They’re a bit exasperated by her dropping out, pursuing that beauty-school pipe-dream, and having to stay in high school a bit longer to make up for it. But it’s not of the world. Frenchie has a relatively normal, if sit-commy family.
Jan:
The only thing really making her an outcast is that she eats a lot and she’s quirky. Mom frequently gives her grief for her unhealthy eating habits and sketchy friends, but on the whole Jan has a pretty normal life. Or maybe not-so-normal by ‘50s standards. Nothing gets Jan down. Not being called “fat,” not being compared to a cartoon beaver, nothing. Her family doesn’t adhere to the ridged rules of ‘50s society. Her parents are beanik-y artists.
Doody:
His skittish personality runs in the family. His father is hyper-paranoid that the Russians will nuke us any day now, and upkeeps the family bomb shelter obsessively. Dad has so much unnecessary crap hoarded up for the supposed Armageddon that Doody has no trouble finding parts for Greased Lightning right at home.
Sonny Latierri:
…has been flukning school a lot. It’s implied in the TV version, and goes universes to explaining why he particularly looks so old in the movie even compared to the other “teenagers.”
Putzie:
Even with your slash-goggles off, his character screams “in the closet” pretty hard. He takes ogling girls to extremes, and “jokingly” feels up Kenickie during “Summer Nights” in the movie. The only indication that he might be into girls for real is his admittedly adorable flirtation with Jan, and even could just have been playground-romance. Or he could be bi.
Marty:
Having boy-toys all over the world means that Marty probably has some familiarity with the different subcultures overseas. She has a feu greasers here in the States and one in Canada; a Teddy Boy in England; a drag-racing Raggare in Sweden; a Bōsōzoku in Japan; and a wildly-dressed Halbstarke in Germany, who sends her the weirdest gifts.
Crater-Face:
…is not the token racist, because that’s just lazy writing.
Aside from that, I don’t know that I can give him a serious backstory, because his movie-counterpart is just so distractingly old for the part. I jokingly head-canon that he’s a conman in his 40s hiding from both the mafia and the law, trying unconvincingly to live the false identity of a high school student.
Or maybe he’s a cop on assignment to infiltrate teenage drag-racing gangs.
Principal McGee:
The tight-laced principal doesn’t want any of her students to know that when she was in high school, in the Roaring Twenties, she was the wildest flapper in California.
Mrs. Murdock
As a young woman in the ‘30s, she was part of a small gang of robbers akin to Bonnie and Clyde or the Dillinger gang. This is what led to her prison time. She got a shortened sentence for her work as a wrench-wench during the War. She misses the old times, which is why she assists the T-Birds in their illicit vehicular activities.
#grease#grease 1978#grease live!#head canon#backstory#danny zuko#sandy#betty rizzo#kenickie#frenchie#jan#sonny#doody#putzie#marty maraschino#principal mcgee#mrs murdock#leo balmudo#crater face#1950s#greaser#beatnik
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I love how her lipstick matches her top.
Marilyn Monroe photographed by Bob Willoughby, 1952
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Something about the drawing style itself has a very 1950s feel to it.
“A hickey from Kenickie is like a hallmark card…” The T-Birds! Kenickie!
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....!
Behind the scenes of GREASE (1978).
Image 6 shows Olivia Newton-John, mid-transformation to “Bad Sandy”, as she watches John Travolta singing “Sandy”. The scene was shot at the Pickwick Drive-In Theater in Burbank, LA, since demolished to make way for a shopping mall. (How many sites, in the history of mankind, have been demolished to make way for a shopping mall?)
The actors often visited the set to watch each other’s performances. Sometimes they were given cameos: Kenickie for example appears in the background, working on his car, when Rizzo sings “There Are Worse Things I Could Do”. That was suggested by Jeff Conaway, the actor who played Kenickie. The awkward moment when Kenickie and Danny hug was also Conaway’s idea by the way. A good director listens to their actors. Lots of improv took place during the filming of GREASE really—the stuff with Putzie, Doody and Sonny, almost all that was improvised (Doody taking out a water pistol when the Scorpions appear, the Three Stooges routines, the heckling of the athletes, et cetera).
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