New Book Reveals How Broadway Producers Greased The Way For ‘Grease’ To Become A Success

Grease would not have become the word without messing around with some words.

In a forthcoming book named Grease, Tell Me More, Tell Me More, the original producer Ken Waissman reveals a ruse he came up with to save the show from shutting before ever making it to Broadway. It helped build “word-of-mouth [marketing], which, in the end, is what makes or breaks any show,” he said.

When the musical opened off-Broadway on February 14, 1972, “we felt devastated,” Waissman admitted.

“Business had increased with each preview week, but we were still grossing under the weekly breakeven,” recalled the producer. The losses had put him and his producing partner about $20,000 in debt, and they were both praying for positive reviews in the local newspapers.

The director, Tom Moore, was pacing back and forth in the theater, worried about what would happen with the new show. “I was just twenty-seven and three and half years out of Yale Drama, and this was my first big New York production,” remembered Moore. “My entire future could be changed by the time the curtain came down,” he said.

His future in the theatre industry did not look too promising after The New York Times published its review.

“When the paper arrived at the [opening night] party, and started getting passed around, a heavy funeral weight descended,” recalled Waissman. “Nothing breaks up an opening-night party quicker than the moment the Times review arrives, and it’s mixed to negative,” he said.

The drama critic at the newspaper, Clive Barnes, wrote that “[t]here is a cosy aggressiveness to the show, a deliberately loud‐mouthed and facetious tastelessness that some will find attractive, especially, I imagine, those who were teenagers in Middle America at the end of the 1950’s.” “It is meant to be funnier than it is,” he continued. “But, the show is a thin joke,” Barnes griped.

Jim Jacobs, who created the show with Warren Casey, was outraged at Barnes, and wanted to “punch him out.”

With an unfavorable review from The New York Times, “it was going to be very hard to get press,” Waissman thought. “It seemed like, in those days, if The New York Times did not give you a good review or at least a respectable review, then nobody wanted to do stories nationwide,” he explained. The producers would need to pay a lot of money to push the show, digging themselves deeper and deeper in debt.

After letting the tensions simmer overnight, “we gathered at [the advertising agency] to see the other reviews and decide what actions to take,” remembered Waissman. The producers wanted to see all of the cards on the table before making their move.

The drama critic at the Daily News, Douglas Watt, had given Grease a rave review, describing it as “a lively and funny musical, as well as the dancingest one in town.” “It’s a winner,” he proclaimed.

However, Richard Watts at the New York Post did not care for the show at all.

He complained that Grease was “the noisiest show in town.” The tone was too cynical, Watts wrote, and “the boys and girls, with a couple of exceptions, struck me as an unattractive lot who looked as if they hadn’t carried on their education beyond approximately the seventh grade.”

Reading the reviews, “my attorney and my general manager, both looking out for us, thought that we should put up a closing notice right away, so that we could close that Sunday,” Weissman recalled. “Cut your losses, [and] close the show,” advised his lawyer.

But, the producers refused to throw in the towel.

“Since we can’t afford the $20,000 debt tonight, we won’t be able to afford it three weeks from now either,” reasoned Waissman. In addition, “[p]utting up the notice would … get around town in a flash, labeling the show a flop,” he said.

The producer sensed that the struggling show would soon be able to get its act together and produce a profit. “[S]ince the box office gross had increased for each of the preview weeks,” Waissman believed that “the ‘pilot light’ was burning, which meant that word of mouth appeared to be driving it.” Audiences were dancing in the aisles, and all the show needed was a push to overcome any reluctance of theatergoers to now purchase tickets after reading Barnes’ review.

Waissman had an idea.

“Since the Daily News critic, Doug Watt, and the New York Post critic, Richard Watts, had names that sounded similar, I suggested that we take the rave review by Doug Watt, lay it out to look exactly like a Richard Watts review, and buy advertising space on the New York Post’s theater page, reprinting the Daily News rave in the exact New York Post format,” Waissman recalled. “We made sure the repackaged Doug Watt review for the Post arrived exactly five minutes before the cutoff for the next day’s ads … [hoping that] it would be too late for anyone to pick up on what we were doing and stop the ad,” he continued.

The advertisement “ran the next day, and it looked like the New York Post had given us a rave,” Waissman remembered. “We got so many comments from people saying ‘I saw you got a great review in the Post,” he said, adding “[t]he following week, we made a profit.”

The trick was similar to a publicity stunt Broadway producer David Merrick came up with 11 years earlier in which he invited individuals with the same names as the leading drama critics to his musical Subways Are For Sleeping, and published their favorable comments in a newspaper advertisement. “I was a huge admirer of David Merrick,” admitted Waissman.

But, unlike Subway Cars Are For Sleeping, which shut after 205 performances, Grease became the longest-running Broadway show of its time, shutting after 3,388 performances in 1980.

“It is a fascinating story that I never even heard before,” admitted actress Adrienne Barbeau, who performed as “Rizzo” in the original Broadway production, adding that current Broadway producers should take note of it.