You can tell by the way he uses his walk that he’s got no time to talk. Fortyfive years ago, John Travolta strutted down a Brooklyn sidewalk — and intomovie history — in the iconic opening sequence of Saturday Night Fever.Premiering in theaters on Dec. 16, 1977, the disco blockbuster opened byblasting the Bee Gees anthem, “Stayin’ Alive,” and the combination of theband’s music and Travolta’s swagger catapulted the movie into the box officestratosphere.
Believe it or not, though, not everyone was onboard with that choice of song.Saturday Night Fever producer, Robert Stigwood, originally intended to save”Stayin’ Alive” for a dance sequence that comes later in the movie. “He wantedme to dance my big solo dance to ‘Stayin’ Alive,'” Travolta revealed to YahooEntertainment during a 2019 Role Recall interview.
Watch our full role recall ** with Travolta below or needle drop to2:42 for the Saturday Night Fever ** portion:
But Travolta knew it would be a mistake to bury the song later in the movie.> He just had to find a diplomatic way to help the producer see the error of> his ways. “I said, ‘Robert, it doesn’t have a fast enough rhythm [to dance> to],” he remembered telling Stigwood. “But I could walk down the street to> ‘Stayin’ Alive.'”
That argument persuaded the producer, and Travolta hit the pavement incharacter as Brooklyn disco king, Tony Manero, strutting in time to the music.”They played the song on a boombox underneath the camera,” he said, addingthat it was the happiest ending possible for the beginning of the SaturdayNight Fever phenomenon. “Switching ‘Stayin’ Alive’ to the front of the moviewas the best thing that could have been done.”
Speaking with Yahoo Entertainment on the movie’s 40th anniversary in 2017,Fever director John Badham — whose younger sister, Mary, starred in the 1962classic, To Kill a Mockingbird — agreed that the opening sequence would beDOA with any other song. “The Bee Gees gave me their demo songs, and when Ilistened to their five demos, I just knew that ‘Stayin’ Alive’ had to open thefilm,” he explained.
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Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney in full disco fashion Saturday Night Fever.(Photo: CBS via Getty Images)
“I also knew that the first thing we should see were Tony’s feet in those veryspecial purple shoes,” Badham continued. “You can tell that his mind is not onhis work; it’s on dancing, looking cool, and being a stud out on the street.It puts the focus right away on who the main character is and what’s on hismind. It just happened to come together beautifully like that.”
Saturday Night Fever ‘s boisterous opening scene — and the groovy dancenumbers — often make people forget that the film itself is actually quite darkand dramatic as it charts Tony’s attempts to flee his working classneighborhood in search of a better future. “The core of it is very dark,”Badham confirmed in his 2017 interview, who added that he approached it as a”documentary of Brooklyn” in the late ’70s, capturing all the violence,economic woes and prejudices of the era.
In the movie’s most notorious scene, Tony’s first dancing partner, Annette(played by Donna Pescow), is raped in the back of his car by his friends, andhe doesn’t intervene. “I was kind of reluctant to shoot very much of thatscene at all, and kept trying to look for ways to more hint at it,” Badhamsaid. “But Robert Stigwood was very resistant that we do it relativelystrongly.”
Tony (Travolta) looks to escape a difficult life in Brooklyn Saturday NightFever. (Photo: Paramount Pictures/Getty Images)
“What you see is me trying to hint at it without showing too much,” thedirector explained. “And by playing it a lot off of Annette’s grief andTravolta’s disgust at the whole thing. He doesn’t participate in it, and he’slooking down on those guys who are participating in it, and he’s looking downon her, too. It’s still unpleasant, there’s no getting around that, but it’simportant that he sees it all. It’s one other thing that eventually drives himto leave Brooklyn — that and the death of his friend, Bobby, who falls off theVerrazano bridge.”
Badham said that he “did his research” before making Saturday Night Fever ,visiting discos all over New York City to create the one seen in the movie.Meanwhile, Travolta took charge of Tony’s look, originally preferring a blacksuit-and-white shirt combination as opposed to the world-famous whitepolyester suit everyone remembers. (That suit was later purchased by the latefilm critic, Gene Siskel, for $2,000. Years later, he sold it for $145,000 ata Christie’s auction.)
But Travolta said that his first choice in fashion was overruled by themovie’s legendary costume designer, Patricia Field. “She insisted that it be awhite suit, because you could see it better in the dark,” he recalled. “Iactually had to agree — it made a lot of sense. So I acquiesced and thus theiconic illusion that we’re all familiar with was born.” And to this day, it’sstill staying alive.
Saturday Night Fever is currently streaming on Paramount+.