Thank you so much to everyone that joined us for Grease with Cocktails on Saturday night!!
You were automatic, systematic, hyyyydromatic! You were Greased Lightning!!
As promised, these are the cocktail recipes we used, so you can recreate them at home, the trivia shared and a few snaps from the night (huge thanks to regular attendee Shannon for the fantastic cocktail photos).
The Cocktails
Frenchie 78 - our twist on a French 75
25 ml of your favourite gin (we used Beefeater)
10 ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 fresh raspberries, muddled
25 ml sugar syrup
12.5 ml pink fizz (we used Freixenet Cava Rosado)
Shake everything except the Cava vigorously over ice and serve in a wine glass over ice, topped with the Cava and garnished with a raspberry
Down in the Sand - our take on a Sex on the Beach
35 ml Absolut raspberry vodka
20 ml sugar syrup
15 ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
15 ml fresh orange juice, not from concentrate
2 teaspoons of apricot jam
1 teaspoon of fine shred marmalade
15 ml cranberry juice
Shake everything except the cranberry juice vigorously over ice and serve in a high ball over ice, topped with the cranberry juice and garnished with a slice of orange.
Cherry Bubblegum Soda - our own creation
35 ml Absolut raspberry vodka
25 ml bubblegum syrup
12.5 ml cherry brandy
12.5 ml cream soda float
Shake everything except the cream soda vigorously over ice and serve in a wine glass over ice, topped with the cream soda to float on top and garnished with cotton candy and a glacé cherry
Stranded at the Drive In
20 ml dark rum (we used Mount Gay)
20 ml white rum (we used Bacardi)
50 ml popcorn flavoured syrup (we made our own)
12.5 ml double cream
12.5 ml whole milk
Sprinkle of salt
Shaken vigorously over ice, poured into a martini glass and served with a little bag of popcorn
The Trivia
• Did you know The Fonz, Henry Winkler was nearly cast as Danny Henry only pulled out for fear of being typecast.
• Marie Osmand & Carrie Fisher nearly played Sandy.
• Jeff Conway already played Danny on Broadway, as did Richard Gere and Patrick Swayze.
• Olivia Newton John, our princess, couldn’t do an American accent so they re wrote the part the part for her from the original stage show.
• T-Birds were nearly no way so cool, they were due to be called the Burger Palace Boys!?
• Top songs that nearly didn’t make: "Grease," "Sandy," and "You're the One That I Want,". "Hopelessly Devoted to You" was actually added afterwards.
• 'Look at me I’m Sandra Dee' is a bit spooky. The song originally mentions Heartthrob Sal Mineo but he was murdered in 76. They changed it to Elvis and he died the day the scene was filmed!
• The Beach Boys were meant to sing Greased Lightning, then Kenicke, but Travolta stole it in rehearsal.
• Elvis supposed to play Teen Angel but passed away during filming so the role went to Frankie Avalon. Rumours had it that he wasn't going to do it anyway.
• Avalon so scared of heights nearly cut the scene from the movie, saved with matresses.
• Frankie Avalon says don’t chew gum in Beauty School Dropout the song but the cast ignored, apparently consuming over 100,000 pieces during filming
• The school dance took two weeks to film as the temperature topped 100 degrees in the windowless gym with no air con, causing Michael Tucci, who played T-Bird Sonny LaTierri to faint and be taken to the E.R.
• The Carnival however, was filmed in 24 hours as the fair was only in town for the day.
• Until Mamma Mia came along, this was highest grossing movie musical of all time with four top ten billboard songs, grossing $400 mill.
• But the critics hated it. The Today show called it Visual Junk food and the New Yorker called it a klutzburger.
• Rizzo's hickeys were real. Stockard Channing said in an interview that Jeff Conaway insisted on applying them himself.
• After the success of the movie, there were supposed to be 3 sequels, but, after Grease 2 (1982) bombed so spectacularly they were all cancelled. A huge shame as Grease 3 was due to feature the original cast and characters many years later, in another decade, like the 1970s or the 1990s, but this movie never got beyond the planning stages.
• The scene near the bridge after the car race was filmed in an area full of trash, and the water on the ground was stagnant and dangerous. Some cast members became ill from filming
• Most of the principal cast were well past their high school years. When filming began in June 1977, Stockard Channing was thirty-three (in 1958, the year the film is set, Channing was in fact only three years younger than the age she is playing here), Michael Tucci was thirty-one, Jamie Donnelly was thirty, Annette Charles was twenty-nine, Dame Olivia Newton-John was twenty-eight, Barry Pearl was twenty-seven, Jeff Conaway was twenty-six, Didi Conn was twenty-five, John Travolta was twenty-three, Dinah Manoff was twenty-one, Kelly Ward and Eddie Deezen were twenty, and Lorenzo Lamas was nineteen.
Finally, a few words on the wonderful Olivia Newton John, may she rest in peace
• In 2019 she auctioned her leather jacket and pants to benefit her cancer research charity.
• Spanx founder Sara Blakely bought the pants for $405,700 and there was an anonymous winning bidder of the leather jacket, which sold for $243,200. It was later returned to Olivia.
• Jeff Conaway was infatuated with Dame Olivia and was tongue-tied whenever she was around. He later married Olivia's sister, Rona Newton-John.
• During filming the zipper broke on those famous trousers and she had to be sewn into them!
• "Hopelessly Devoted to You" was written and recorded after the movie had wrapped. Dame Olivia Newton-John's contract for Grease stipulated that she should have a solo song. However, nobody had any ideas for a song for her character, Sandy, until Olivia's producer John Farrar came up with "Hopelessly Devoted To You" halfway through the shoot. Director Randal Kleiser wasn't wholly convinced by the song at first and had to come up with an entirely new scene to fit it in. It was eventually filmed and recorded after the movie had wrapped and it earned the film's only Oscar nomination.
Coming soon at Millennium Point:
It's a Wonderful Life with Wine on Sunday 4th December - BOOK HERE
We look forward to welcoming you back to Millennium Point very soon but why not check out our website or sign up to our monthly mailing list to find out about new events first:
All the best from your bargain basement Danny Zuko, your Poundstretcher Kenicke and the Wine Events Co. Crew
PS Remember ... you sounded just like this ...