We performed Grease my senior year in HS (1984), and those raunchy lines were still in the version we had. I remember that clearly because we had to have a “rewrite” session to clean it up.
We actually used 1954 Studebaker Commander “Convertible” (the top was cut off) for Greased Lightning on stage. Getting that car through the doors (had to tip it on it’s side, and slide it through) and lifted onto the stage was the proudest achievement of my teenage life.
I remember the audience would gasp the first time it appeared each night.
Sometime in the last 10-12 years I think I happened upon an SNL sketch that was pretty funny-—Andy Samberg was in it,that involved a tense session of cleaning up the Grease language for an upcoming production. WE had a REAL car that I “drove” every night. Since our production took place in a huge space that was actually a converted trolley barn with probably 20’ high ceilings, and it had enormous sliding barn doors in the rear opening on a typical Chicago alley, we were able to get our $40 bargain jalopy actually INSIDE the theater, and hidden in the dark alongside the raised stage when it wasn’t needed.It was a ‘49 Hudson, and was painted over with gray primer-—perfect touch was leaping orange flames painted OVER the primer, as if Miller couldn’t wait to get it properly painted and just HAD to get the flames on it.So the normal procedure was at the beginning of the scene I’d drive the car out from the darkness in the rear of the theater, jump out have some lines of dialog with Rizzo, then grab the mike and do that song with rest of the Burger Palace boys doing accompaniment in the background. Then Rizzo would get in the car w. me after a little dialogue she’s get in the car with me and I’d drive as slowly as possible forward and disapper behind a 15’ tall scrim. On that side of the theater the audience, on folded chairs was literally on the other side of the scrim. So I drove ahead, went to put my foot onthe brake about 10 feet or so behind the scrim and my foot somehow got wedged between the brake and the accelerator, and the car shot ahead and crashed into some mocked up wooden stairs we used in the opening , with cafeteria trays stacked up on them. As soon as it was clear what was going to happen, the girl who played Rizzo said Oh god, Bill!! I had to pretend it wasn’t my fault, so I got out, fuming under my breath-—Rizzo got out and stood there for a moment and then crumpled to the ground, fainting dead away. I thought my life and the show was over, but Susie came to in a few seconds and the burger palace boys covered up this mishap with a lame joke from the stage. So from that night on, I wasnt allowed to start the car up or drive it at all. We had to do a tape recording of the engine noise and have a couple of guys push the car out from the rear into the spotlight . The show’s lawyer forbade the car from being anything beyond a bulky prop. The amazing thing was, at the time, I didn’t even have a driver’s license!! I was old enough to have one but never got one So I may be the only person in theater history to have a car accident INSIDE a theater. I always tell my wife that if I ever was a contestant on Jeopardy ,THAT would be the story I would tell Alex (RIP) at that intermission segment. SO, you are one of the few people who weren’t actually there who knows what happened.Don’t tell anybody.