When it comes to movie musicals, Grease is still near the top of the list for a lot of people. It's hard not to smile while watching the feel-good romp about a bunch of high school kids who just want to race cars and fall in love without everybody judging them. While everyone has their favorite song or dance number from the musical, the carnival scene is arguably the most famous part of the movie, featuring two incredibly catchy songs and a host of almost too cheesy charm. While all of that was fun to watch for viewers, the making of the sequence was actually a lot harder than it looked. Kelly Ward, who played Putzie, remembered how incredibly difficult it was to film the second number of the carnival scene, thanks to the Los Angeles heat:
There were people who were passing out from dehydration and heat exhaustion and so forth during that sequence. It was an oppressively hot set because there was no place to hide. There was no shade, really. It was high summer and we were outdoors and it was hot. Not a lot of cloud cover, and they dealt with that in a number of different ways, with silks and things. But yeah, it was hot. Sunburns abounded.
It's almost the 40th anniversary of Grease (June 16) and a brand-new Blu-ray edition of the movie is hitting shelves next week. In honor of the movie, Yahoo Entertainment interviewed some of the stars of the film to learn all about the making of the carnival sequence that ended the movie. The stars were all unified in the notion that filming the entire movie was an absolute blast from day one and while shooting the carnival was fun as well, it also was pretty brutal.
No shade meant no cover from the beating sun, which left people with sunburns aplenty. Kelly Ward also noted that he forgot to put sunblock on the part in his hair, so he got some wicked burns that plagued him for the rest of production. Couple that with all the singing and dancing, and you've got a real danger of passing out.
It's impossible not to talk about this scene without providing a clip, so get ready to have "You're The One That I Want" stuck in your head for the rest of the day. A quick fun fact from the oral history: The cast didn't rehearse "You're The One That I Want" until the day of. The song was added last minute and replaced "All Choked Up," which is a song from the stage play.
The Grease 40th Anniversary Edition arrives on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital on April 24, 2018. For every movie arriving in theaters, here's our 2018 movie release guide.
