Trivia for
Saturday Night Fever (1977) More at IMDbPro »

• John Travolta's sister Ann Travolta appears as the pizza lady, and his mother Helen Travolta appears as the woman for whom he gets the paint.
  
  
• Norman Wexler's screenplay was adapted from the "non-fiction" magazine article written by Nik Cohn. Years later, Cohn admitted that the story, supposedly a fact-based account detailing the lives of Brooklyn teenagers in the early days of the disco craze, was a complete fabrication.
  
  
• Filming was frequently halted on the streets of New York City because teenage girl fans of John Travolta would scream when they saw him due to his popularity from the ABC show "Welcome Back, Kotter" (1975).
  
  
• In the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, "maneiro" is a widely-used word, meaning "cool", taken from the character name, Tony Manero.
  
  
• One piece of music from the soundtrack, "Manhattan Skyline" by David Shire became very popular as background instrumental music. It was been played in movie trailers, promotional films and commercials. It's the piece that Stephanie is dancing to when Tony invites her to coffee.
  
  
• Some VHS releases of this movie had the songs "Dr. Disco", "Disco Duck", and "K-Jee" replaced with a generic disco song due to royalty disputes.
  
  
• Fran Drescher confessed later she was not wearing underwear when she did her scene with Tony just before his big solo dance.
  
  
• More than 40% of the cast made their feature debuts in this film including, Joseph Cali, Shelly Batt, Denny Dillon, Fran Drescher, Donald Gantry, Adrienne King, Ellen March, Bruce Ornstein, Paul Pape, Lisa Peluso, Donna Pescow, Ann Travolta and mother Helen Travolta (her only feature cameo).
  
  
• Allan Carr designed the ad campaign for the film. It was so successful, that producer Robert Stigwood asked Carr to help him produce his next film, Grease (1978).
  
  
• The film was rated R when it was released in late 1977. The studio was so eager to attract more young people to the film because they were buying the soundtrack album, that the film was cut by a few minutes and the shorter version was given a PG rating. The PG version was released in 1978. Both versions were released on VHS but only the R rated version was released on DVD.
  
  
• An unedited version of "How Deep is Your Love" remains in the vaults. It is featured when Tony walks aimlessly to the subway, and is riding over to Stephanie's.
  
  
• Amy Irving was at one point considered for the role of Stephanie Mangano.
  
  
• John Travolta originally wanted his disco suit to be black, until it was pointed out that in the darkened disco, his co-star's red dress would make her easier to see than him.
  
  
• In Tony (John Travolta)'s bedroom there's a poster for Rocky (1976), a film directed by John G. Avildsen. The sequel to this film, Staying Alive (1983), was written and directed by the star of "Rocky", Sylvester Stallone. In fact, Avildsen was the original director of this film but was fired by producer Robert Stigwood shortly before principal photography began due to "creative differences". John Badham was approached to fill in at the last minute.
  
  
• The only scene that does not feature John Travolta's feet is the one where he's comparing his shoe to the shoe in the store window.
  
  
• The white polyester suit worn by John Travolta sold at auction for $145,000 by movie critic Gene Siskel.
  
  
• John Travolta ran two miles a day and danced for three hours daily to get in shape for this film. In the end, he dropped 20 pounds.
  
  
• Production had to be briefly halted so that John Travolta could attend the funeral of his girlfriend Diana Hyland.
  
  
• Bobby's car is a 1964 Chevy Impala hardtop. While director John Badham insisted on the Impala as Bobby's car, he was later told by Brooklynites that they would only drive an old Cadillac - and never an Impala. Each Impala (there were two used) was purchased by the film company for $1200. The Impala hardtop (with no post) is difficult to find today and will cost quite a bit more than the $1200 it did in 1977.
  
  
• The soundtrack album sold over 20 million copies, and it was the top selling album in history until it was topped by Michael Jackson's "Thriller" six years later.
  
  
• John Travolta had worked hard on the "You Should Be Dancing" sequence and threatened to quit the film when the studio suggested it should be dropped.
  
  
• When they shot the first bridge scene, director John Badham kept secret from Donna Pescow the fact that when 'the guys "fell off" the bridge they actually landed on a platform a few feet below. Badham and the other actors didn't tell her about the platform because they wanted a genuine look of horror and anger on Annette's face when Tony, Double-J and Joey appeared to fall off. Therefore Donna's reaction to them falling, and her facial expressions turning from horror and shock to outright anger, were real, and her next line, "YOU FUCKERS!", was not scripted.
  
  
• When Tony's dad hit him in the back of the head the third time during dinner, his retort of "Just watch the hair!" and then his complaint about being hit on the hair after he had worked on it for so long was John Travolta's own reaction and not scripted, but since it was so in character for Tony Manero to say, it was left in.
  
  
• The scene where Fran Drescher puts her hand on John Travolta's butt was not in the original script. Travolta and director John Badham thought that it would be something that a woman like Connie (Drescher's character) would do, however, so it was kept in.
  
  
• The working title of the film was "Saturday Night". When The Bee Gees added a song to the soundtrack called "Night Fever", the word "Fever" was added to the film title. This is the second time a John Travolta project had the title altered due to a song (see trivia for "Welcome Back, Kotter" (1975)).
  
  
• This was one of the very first films to utilize the Steadicam, a camera-stabilizing device invented by Garrett Brown (who would win a 1978 Oscar for his invention).
  
  
• Five additional instrumental cues by David Shire were recorded for the film: "Barracuda Hangout", "Tony and Stephanie", "Near the Brooklyn Bride", "Death on the Bridge", and "All Night Train". However, only one was credited, and all remained unreleased.
  
  
• Originally, director John Badham filmed the dance rehearsal sequence with Tony and Annette's characters playing music in the background at the same time with the action and dialogue; a form of production conduct not usually done. The song was "Lowdown" by Boz Scaggs. However, after filming the scene, John Badham got word from Scaggs' people they did not want the song in the picture, and so the sequence was dubbed, with John Travolta and Donna Pescow recording their lines in a vocal booth, and in the end composer David Shire orchestrated an instrumental piece for the sequence; ultimately the song (the title still unknown to this day) was picked up by the National Football Leagues, and used to open and close the Monday Night Football program for over 20 years.
  
  
• Two additional songs for the film ended up not being used. One was The Bee Gees singing their self-penned version of "If I Can't Have You", and Samantha Sang's "Emotion".
  
  
• The original title of the movie was going to be "Tribal Rights of Saturday Night". The film's title was ultimately titled "Saturday Night", as a direct reference to the fact that Tony (John Travolta) and his buddies inhabited 2001 Odyssey on Saturday nights. However, when The Bee Gees submitted the soundtrack, one of the songs, "Night Fever", was thought to embody the film's spirit better than the original. Director John Badham added the word "Saturday" and it replaced the original title.
  
  
• The elevated subway line shown in the film, the West End line, is the same one used in the famous chase sequence in The French Connection (1971) was filmed.
  
  
• Film critic Gene Siskel often referred to this as his favorite film. He saw it 17 times and at one time owned the famous "white suit".
  
  
• This was the first mainstream Hollywood movie in which the term "blow job" was used.
  
  
• Fran Drescher's film debut.
  
  
• Independent film director Lloyd Kaufman nearly dropped out of the film as a production assistant when longtime friend and associate John G. Avildsen left the project.
  
  

• SPOILER: Just to settle a few arguments: In the board game Trivial Pursuit, the bridge that Bobby C (Barry Miller) falls from is incorrectly identified as the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge was of course the Verrazano Narrows which connects Brooklyn with Staten Island.
  
  

Related Links