By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit they deserve. In this installment: choreographer and once-only director Patricia Birch, who helmed the unfairly maligned musical sequel Grease 2.
The Unsung Auteurs column has featured many filmmakers whose principal achievements have been in another field (actors like Paul Newman, cinematographers like Jack Cardiff, editors like Anthony Harvey, and many more), and one director (James William Guercio) who only helmed one feature. Boasting a high-heeled, hard-kicking foot in both streams is dance choreographer Patricia Birch, a legendary figure on Broadway whose dance work on film has been far less celebrated, as is typical of the art. Patricia Birch is also the director of just one feature film in the form of 1982’s Grease 2, a film so maligned (unfairly, by the way) that it likely scuttled what could have been a promising behind-the-camera career.
Born in 1934 in New Jersey, Patricia Birch began her creative career as a dancer on Broadway, featuring in seminal productions of classic musicals like West Side Story (with a career defining run as the tough-talking Jet-adjacent Anybodys), Goldilocks and Brigadoon. The supremely talented Birch eventually went on to choreograph major productions like Candide, Zoot Suit, Raggedy Ann, West Side Story, A Little Night Music and Grease. Acclaimed and successful, Birch’s talents were recognised by the film industry, and the choreographer was invited by director James Ivory to arrange the “Steppin’ On The Spaniel” dance number in his bizarre 1972 social satire Savages. As well as working on the TV show The Electric Company, Birch was also tapped to choreograph the dance numbers on many of the film adaptations of the shows she’d helped create on Broadway, staging the moves on TV productions of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown and Pacific Overtures, and big screen versions of A Little Night Music and Zoot Suit. Birch also choreographed TV specials for Goldie Hawn and Gilda Radner, and found great success on the comedy behemoth Saturday Night Live.
“I didn’t plan anything…I didn’t even plan to choreograph,” Birch told The Observer. “I was a dancer from the West Side Story generation. I’m all over the map, I know that. I jump around a lot.” That jumping around has led to many indelible cinematic moments too. Outside of her work on the Broadway adaptations, Birch has also created some extraordinary pure cinema too, staging the debauched bacchanal of 1975’s The Wild Party (James Ivory’s crazed version of the notorious Fatty Arbuckle scandal of the 1920s with Raquel Welch and Zero Mostel); Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia’s famously charming keyboard dance in 1988’s Big; the stylised throwback sequences on 1996’s The First Wives Club and 2004’s The Stepford Wives; the 1930s moves on 1991’s Billy Bathgate and 2010’s Boardwalk Empire; and the big Vegas number in Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark. Whatever the film, Birch’s originality and artistry always shine through.
The most dazzling film on Birch’s resume, however, is undeniably Randal Kleiser’s much loved 1978 musical classic Grease, which the choreographer originated on Broadway. Starring mover-of-note John Travolta (“You don’t have to do much there,” Birch has said of working with the gifted actor and dancer) and the very talented Olivia Newton-John, there are literally not enough superlatives for this wondrously entertaining love letter to the innocence and energy of the 1950s. While much of the credit for the film has always been lavished on the combustible, near-nuclear chemistry of its stars (Stockard Channing, Jeff Conaway, Didi Conn and everyone else in the cast is amazing too), the direction and pacing of Randal Kleiser are top-notch, while Birch’s dance numbers are utterly unforgettable.
The white-background, hyper-macho, automotive eroticism of the “Greased Lightning” sequence is literally staggering in its both its performance and staging, while the climactic fun-fair boogie between John Travolta and a newly sexed-up Olivia Newton-John is one of the most iconic dance numbers in cinema history. Birch’s most extraordinary work in Grease, however, comes with the central “prom sequence”, in which the choreographer expertly and ingeniously coalesces the needs of the plot with the demands of the dancing. There are so many “moving parts” in this amazing sequence, and yet it all feels effortless. It’s a truly great moment for Patricia Birch, and was one of the reasons for the film being such a gargantuan success. “I didn’t see it coming,” Birch told Vanity Fair of Grease’s huge box office pull and now exalted position in pop culture. “I didn’t pay attention to that. When you’re working, you have to keep your mind on what you’re doing—not what it’s gonna make. It’s not something I live off of, but it made it a little easier for other things to happen along the way. When you have a success like that, people treat you better.”
Part of that treatment included being handed the reins on the sequel Grease 2, with powerhouse producer Alan Carr anointing Birch director after being so happy with her work on the original. With stars Travolta and Newton-John and composers Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey bowing out, and original screen adaptor Bronte Woodard passing away, Birch justifiably hesitated over taking on the role, but eventually jumped in. While in development, many scenarios were floated for the film. Much of the original central cast were offered cameo roles, but declined, leaving only appearances from the film’s “grown up” stars like Sid Caesar and Eve Arden, along with sideline players like Eddie Deezen’s “too bad” Eugene and Dennis C. Stewart’s Craterface. The biggest score is the film’s early cameo from scene-stealing Didi Conn as Frenchie.
Though up against it, Birch crafted something truly fun and ebullient with Grease 2. Essentially a gender-flip (thirty years ahead of its time!), the film sees nerdy goody-goody Maxwell Caulfield (the cousin of Olivia Newton-John’s Sandy) falling sassy bad girl and sweetly strutting Pink Lady Michelle Pfeiffer. Returning more to the grit of the original stage production (Birch had actually fought against the increased “sunniness” of Grease), the sequel is filled with great songs (try, just try, to get “Cool Rider” out of your head!) and expertly staged dance sequences in interesting locations. It’s a beautifully choreographed and well directed film with much to recommend it, but Grease 2 was just so beleaguered by the weight of expectation that its chances of success were always slim.
And while Maxwell Caulfield and especially Michelle Pfieffer both acquit themselves well, they don’t – through no fault of their own – have the one-of-a-kind, lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. The absence of the film’s stars gave Grease 2 the unfortunate appearance of being little more than a cheap cash grab from its financing studio Paramount. And while it may very well have been that too, Grease 2 is also a fun, entertaining romp in its own right. Audiences at the time, however, didn’t see that, and the film was a high-profile failure, irreparably damaging the careers of everyone involved. “Before Grease 2 came out, I was being hailed as the next Richard Gere or John Travolta,” Maxwell Caulfield told MovieTome many years later. “However, when Grease 2 flopped, nobody would touch me. It felt like a bucket of cold water had been thrown in my face. It took me ten years to get over Grease 2.”
Sadly, Patricia Birch didn’t direct another film after the major failure of Grease 2, but she did continue with great success as a choreographer both on screen and on stage. Happily too, Grease 2 has begun to enjoy something of a reappraisal in recent years, with Michelle Pfeiffer even rising above the “shame” by posting a sequence from the film’s opening number on her Instagram back in 2019. There was also the stage show Cool Rider, which was based on the film, along with a current and very warm embrace being given by the LGBTQ community. And fitting for a quiet pioneer like Patricia Birch, Grease 2 is now also being celebrated for its feminist qualities. It’s a damn shame that the failure of the film so definitively ended what could have been a fascinating career for Patricia Birch…
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