Allan Carr - Grease and Broadway Success

Grease and Broadway Success

Producer Robert Stigwood hired him in 1975 as marketing and promotion consultant, with his first project being for the film version of the rock opera Tommy. The film was a hit and he expanded his involvement for his next film, re-editing and overdubbing a low-budget foreign film about a real-life disaster. The result was Survive!, and that film's surprise success in 1976 made him a wealthy man and gave him clout at Paramount Pictures.

In 1977, Stigwood asked him to produce the ad campaign for Saturday Night Fever. He turned the film's premiere into a star-studded television special. It worked so well that Stigwood gave him Grease (1978 in film). Carr not only helmed the ad campaign and produced the premiere party and television special for Grease, he wrote the screen adaptation and co-produced the film for six million dollars, casting his client Olivia Newton-John. It became the highest grossing film of the year, and one of the highest grossing films up until that time, at just under $100 million. The film was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and won two People's Choice Awards, for Best Picture and Best Musical Picture. That year he even appeared in a role on the final season of the Angie Dickinson television series Police Woman. Stigwood and Carr would work on several other films, including 1978 Oscar-winner The Deer Hunter.

The following year, 1979, he produced the Village People film musical Can't Stop the Music, a production which, while campy, steered clear of addressing the band members' presumed homosexuality from the script. Again he orchestrated a lavish series of premieres and a television special co-starring his friends Hefner and Cher. Released in 1980 after the crash of the disco craze, the film was a major flop, and Carr won the first annual Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Film, in 1981. Undaunted, he went on to produce Grease 2 (1982) which, while nowhere near the hit of its predecessor, was not a financial loss.

In Paris for the premiere of Grease, a friend had dragged him to see a straight play about a gay couple, La Cage aux Folles. Now, Carr was ready to face the gay theme head on. Returning to Broadway he produced a musical version of the 1973 play, which had since been made into a French film (and would later be remade as an American film called The Birdcage). With a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, the show opened in 1983 and was a huge success, running for five years and 1,761 performances. Nominated in 1984 for eight Drama Desk Awards and eight Tony Awards, the show won three Drama Desks and an impressive six Tonys, including a "Best Musical" win for Carr.