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1. Who plays Danny Zuko?
John Travolta
Travolta was in his early twenties, fresh from Saturday Night Fever, and had played Doody in a touring production of the stage show years earlier. Henry Winkler turned the part down, worried about being typecast as a greaser after the Fonz.
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2. Who plays Sandy?
Olivia Newton-John
Newton-John was a country-pop singer with no real acting record, and insisted on a screen test with Travolta before she would commit. Sandy was rewritten as an Australian so she would not have to attempt an American accent.
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3. What is the name of their high school?
Rydell High
The school is named after the teen idol Bobby Rydell, and its exteriors were shot at Venice High School in Los Angeles. The carnival that closes the film was filmed at John Marshall High, across town.
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4. What is Danny's group of friends called?
The T-Birds
Danny leads them, with Kenickie, Doody, Sonny and Putzie, in black leather jackets with the name across the back. The Scorpions are their rivals, the gang that turns up at the dance and races Kenickie for his car.
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5. What is the girls' group called?
The Pink Ladies
Rizzo leads them, with Frenchy, Marty and Jan, in pink satin jackets, and Sandy is not admitted until the very end. Rizzo's first verdict is that the new girl looks too pure to be pink.
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6. Who plays Rizzo?
Stockard Channing
Channing was in her thirties playing a high-school senior, the oldest of a cast that was mostly well past graduating age. She gets the film's one serious solo, There Are Worse Things I Could Do, after the pregnancy scare.
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7. Which Pink Lady leaves school to study beauty?
Frenchy
Frenchy drops out to enroll at beauty school and botches her own hair pink, which brings on the Teen Angel's advice to go back to high school. Didi Conn, who plays her, was one of the few cast members to come back for the sequel.
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8. Who appears as the Teen Angel?
Frankie Avalon
Avalon had been a teen idol of the late 1950s, and his cameo is a joke about the era's clean-cut hitmakers descending to advise Frenchy. Beauty School Dropout was shot on a white dream set, with the beauty-school girls in silver curlers as his chorus.
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9. What song tells the two different versions of Danny and Sandy's holiday?
Summer Nights
Danny claims a conquest and Sandy describes a gentleman, and the two accounts agree on little beyond the beach. The number was in the original stage show, which had opened in Chicago in 1971 before moving to Broadway.
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10. What is the name of Kenickie's car in the big garage song?
Greased Lightnin'
The car belongs to Kenickie, played by Jeff Conaway, who had played Danny himself on Broadway and took the smaller part for the film. The song was Kenickie's on stage too, and was given to Travolta at his request.
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11. Which song from the film was nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Song?
Hopelessly Devoted to You
John Farrar wrote it for the film, along with You're the One That I Want, so neither is in the stage show. It lost the Oscar to Last Dance from Thank God It's Friday, while the title song, written by Barry Gibb and sung by Frankie Valli, was not nominated.
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12. What television event comes to the school?
A televised dance contest
National Bandstand broadcasts live from the Rydell gym, hosted by the DJ Vince Fontaine, and the hand-jive contest is the climax of the show. Edd Byrnes, of 77 Sunset Strip, plays Fontaine, another nod to the real 1950s.
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13. Who crashes the dance with Danny?
Cha-Cha DiGregorio
Cha-Cha DiGregorio, from St. Bernadette's, calls herself the best dancer there and is Danny's old flame as well as Kenickie's date. She and Danny win the hand jive after a slighted Sandy leaves the floor; Annette Charles plays her.
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14. Where does the big car race take place?
A concrete river channel
The race is at Thunder Road, the gangs' name for a stretch of the concrete Los Angeles River, with Leo of the Scorpions driving against Greased Lightnin'. Danny takes the wheel after Kenickie is knocked out by a car door.
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15. What song pairs Danny and Sandy in the finale before the group celebration?
You're the One That I Want
Sandy turns up at the carnival in black leather and Danny has gone the other way, in a letterman sweater, so both have changed for each other. The single was a number one on both sides of the Atlantic, and We Go Together closes the film.
