Sandy Olsson/Yung/Dumbrowski
In “Grease Live!” Sandy’s family is from Utah, and her parents are extremely controlling, to the point of not allowing her to attend school dances. It’s believed that in this version, her family are strict Mormons.
This background works for most any time period. But if we want to tie her story closer to the ‘50s, and/or just want her to be from Australia or someplace else, here’s another idea:
Sandy’s father has a prestigious position in….some business or another. The “change of plans” that caused the family to abruptly move to another state/country/side of the globe happened when his longtime business associate was Blacklisted as a Communist. Mr. Olsen/Young/Whoever ended that partnership on the spot and moved his family as far away from that associate as possible. He is obsessed with his family’s good, upstanding, “family values” reputation.
And Sandy of course just wants to be a teenager.
“You’re lucky to have parents who care so much; mine don’t care about anything.”
~ Danny Zuko, “Grease Live!” (2016)
This single line goes worlds to explaining Danny’s dependence on the T-Birds, and why he’s drawn to a sensitive girl like Sandy.
So why don’t his parents care about anything?
Danny is the result of a shotgun wedding. Dad the veteran unknowingly knocked up Danny’s mom just before shipping out to Japan. Mr. Zuko returned from the War with untreated PTSD, and a son he didn’t plan on. Because of the time period, Danny’s parents were pressured to get married. They don’t exactly fight, they just exist in a loveless marriage, begrudgingly raising their kids in a house full of untreated PTSD and substance abuse.
Note: I have absolutely no clue where the Grease Wiki gets the “Kenickie Murdock” from. The name “Murdock” is not given to Kenickie in either the movie or the TV version, and I can find no evidence of it being in the stage version either. The only “Murdock” in the play/movie is Mrs. Murdock the shop teacher, and there’s no indication of any relationship to Kenickie, bar maybe the car connection. In any case, Kenickie itself is a last name.
Kenickie’s “Mom” tattoo is pretty damn corny, but if you can get past that, it’s a detail that drops a bombshell of backstory hints.
For all his edgelord behavior, Kenickie is stunningly chivalrous when he learns Rizzo may be pregnant. Even nowadays, a true asshole would run out on her. Here it’s the ‘50s, he wants to be there for her and his hypothetical unplanned kid. Rizzo knows what a hardass Kenickie is, yet thinks crying in front of him is “the worst thing I could do”--worse than dating his enemy and telling him “it’s someone else’s kid.”
Here’s my spin: Kenickie’s mom died from some disease like Cancer or radium poisoning. It was slow and emotionally scarring, and Rizzo knows about it. She knows seeing a woman he cares about in emotional distress again would break him.
His father is alive, but absent, if not literally then at least emotionally. Kenickie was apparently gone the entire summer, none of the other T-Birds knew where he was for three months. The Bargain City he was lugging boxes at was apparently out of town. Who was he living with for the summer? His grandparents? A friend of the family? Who knows.
She’s “the school tramp” (“Grease Live!”) and the neighborhood thinks she’s trashy. Yet she doesn’t seem to live in a ghetto or anything, if the opening cartoon is anything to go by. She’s from a working-class family that just has a bad reputation, probably for incredibly stupid reasons given that it’s the ‘50s.
Betty’s mom had her out of wedlock and didn’t bother to hide it. She did eventually get married—to the neighborhood gambling addict. The last person to find out that this guy wasn’t Betty’s rea father was Betty. Since having that bomb dropped on her, Betty’s one scruple is that she doesn’t lie.
Has a relatively normal family. She’s Jewish (because Didi Cohn). No one in her nuclear family has any numbers tattooed on their arms though; they’ve been in the States since the Twenties. Why does she have her own TV in her room in the ‘50s? She doesn’t; the Pink Ladies just commandeered the family set for the night.
What do her parents think of her academic decisions? They’re a bit exasperated by her dropping out, pursuing that beauty-school pipe-dream, and having to stay in high school a bit longer to make up for it. But it’s not of the world. Frenchie has a relatively normal, if sit-commy family.
The only thing really making her an outcast is that she eats a lot and she’s quirky. Mom frequently gives her grief for her unhealthy eating habits and sketchy friends, but on the whole Jan has a pretty normal life. Or maybe not-so-normal by ‘50s standards. Nothing gets Jan down. Not being called “fat,” not being compared to a cartoon beaver, nothing. Her family doesn’t adhere to the ridged rules of ‘50s society. Her parents are beanik-y artists.
His skittish personality runs in the family. His father is hyper-paranoid that the Russians will nuke us any day now, and upkeeps the family bomb shelter obsessively. Dad has so much unnecessary crap hoarded up for the supposed Armageddon that Doody has no trouble finding parts for Greased Lightning right at home.
…has been flukning school a lot. It’s implied in the TV version, and goes universes to explaining why he particularly looks so old in the movie even compared to the other “teenagers.”
Even with your slash-goggles off, his character screams “in the closet” pretty hard. He takes ogling girls to extremes, and “jokingly” feels up Kenickie during “Summer Nights” in the movie. The only indication that he might be into girls for real is his admittedly adorable flirtation with Jan, and even could just have been playground-romance. Or he could be bi.
Having boy-toys all over the world means that Marty probably has some familiarity with the different subcultures overseas. She has a feu greasers here in the States and one in Canada; a Teddy Boy in England; a drag-racing Raggare in Sweden; a Bōsōzoku in Japan; and a wildly-dressed Halbstarke in Germany, who sends her the weirdest gifts.
…is not the token racist, because that’s just lazy writing.
Aside from that, I don’t know that I can give him a serious backstory, because his movie-counterpart is just so distractingly old for the part. I jokingly head-canon that he’s a conman in his 40s hiding from both the mafia and the law, trying unconvincingly to live the false identity of a high school student.
Or maybe he’s a cop on assignment to infiltrate teenage drag-racing gangs.
The tight-laced principal doesn’t want any of her students to know that when she was in high school, in the Roaring Twenties, she was the wildest flapper in California.
As a young woman in the ‘30s, she was part of a small gang of robbers akin to Bonnie and Clyde or the Dillinger gang. This is what led to her prison time. She got a shortened sentence for her work as a wrench-wench during the War. She misses the old times, which is why she assists the T-Birds in their illicit vehicular activities.
