Jim Jacobs
Encyclopedia
Jim Jacobs is an American
composer
, lyricist
, and writer
for the theatre
. He is known for writing the book, lyrics and music, with Warren Casey
, for the stage and film musical Grease
.
, but when he was fourteen it was Elvis Presley
. He also cites Buddy Holly
, Little Richard
, and Jerry Lee Lewis
as influences.
When he was a teenager, he would imitate playing a guitar with a broomstick. He eventually convinced his parents to pay for guitar lessons. After four lessons, he quit and decided to buy a guitar book and teach himself. From this, his found a simple chord structure: C, A minor, F, G7-- this would later be Those Magic Changes
featured in Grease.
In 1963, he became involved with a local theatre group that included Warren Casey
, The Chicago Playwrights Center (at that time it was called Hull House Playwrights Center).
For the next five years he appeared in more than fifty theatrical productions in the Chicago area, working with such people as The Second City
founder Paul Sills
, while earning a living as an advertising
copywriter. He also landed a small role in the 1969 film Medium Cool
.
Jacobs' Broadway
acting debut was in a 1970 revival of the play No Place to be Somebody
, followed by the national tour.
in the 1950s. Entitled Grease, it premiered in 1971 at the Kingston Mines Theater in the Old Town section of Chicago. Jacobs remembered, in this interview: "When we went to New York... we were told it was necessary to make the characters lovable, instead of scaring everybody. The show went from about three-quarters book and one-quarter music to one-quarter book and three-quarters music."
Producers Ken Waissman
and Maxine Fox saw the show and suggested to the playwrights that it might work better as a musical
, and told them if the creative partners were willing to rework it and they liked the end result, they would produce it off-Broadway
. The team headed to New York City
to collaborate on what would become Grease
, which opened at the Eden Theatre in downtown Manhattan
. The Best Plays of 1971-72 notes that "Though Grease
opened geographically off Broadway, it did so under first class Broadway contracts." The show was deemed eligible for the 1972 Tony Awards, receiving seven Tony Award
nominations. In June of 1972 the production moved to the Broadhurst Theatre
in the heart of Manhattan's Broadway theatre district. Six months later it moved to the Royale Theatre where it played until January 1980. For fine final weeks of the run the show moved to the much larger Majestic Theatre (Broadway). Casey earned a Tony Award
nomination for Best Book of a Musical. The show went on to become a West End
hit, a hugely successful film, and a
, a spoof on 1940s and 1950s B movies: a captain and crew crash on a deserted island inhabited by beautiful women with ratted hair, tiger-skin swimsuits and rubber spears.
Jacobs served as a judge on the NBC
reality series
Grease: You're the One that I Want! in 2006, designed to cast the lead roles in an August 2007 Broadway revival of Grease via viewer votes.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, lyricist
Lyricist
A lyricist is a songwriter who specializes in lyrics. A singer who writes the lyrics to songs is a singer-lyricist. This differentiates from a singer-composer, who composes the song's melody.-Collaboration:...
, and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
for the theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
. He is known for writing the book, lyrics and music, with Warren Casey
Warren Casey
Warren Casey was an American theatre composer, lyricist, writer, and actor. He is best known for being the writer and composer, with Jim Jacobs of the stage and film musical Grease.-Career:...
, for the stage and film musical Grease
Grease (musical)
Grease is a 1971 musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. The musical is named for the 1950s United States working-class youth subculture known as the greasers. The musical, set in 1959 at fictional Rydell High School , follows ten working-class teenagers as they navigate the complexities of love,...
.
Career
Jacobs was born on October 7, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois to Harold, a factory foreman, and Norma (Mathison) Jacobs. Jacobs attended Taft High School, during which time he played guitar and sang with a band called DDT & the Dynamiters. When he was 11, his idol was Bill HaleyBill Haley
Bill Haley was one of the first American rock and roll musicians. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and their hit song "Rock Around the Clock".-Early life and career:...
, but when he was fourteen it was Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
. He also cites Buddy Holly
Buddy Holly
Charles Hardin Holley , known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll...
, Little Richard
Little Richard
Richard Wayne Penniman , known by the stage name Little Richard, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, recording artist, and actor, considered key in the transition from rhythm and blues to rock and roll in the 1950s. He was also the first artist to put the funk in the rock and roll beat and...
, and Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis is an American rock and roll and country music singer-songwriter and pianist. An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Lewis's career faltered after he married his young cousin, and he afterwards made a career extension to country and western music. He is known by the nickname 'The...
as influences.
When he was a teenager, he would imitate playing a guitar with a broomstick. He eventually convinced his parents to pay for guitar lessons. After four lessons, he quit and decided to buy a guitar book and teach himself. From this, his found a simple chord structure: C, A minor, F, G7-- this would later be Those Magic Changes
Those Magic Changes
"Those Magic Changes" is a pop song from the musical Grease which was performed by Sha Na Na in the film version.In the movie version of Grease, "Those Magic Changes" is played at the high school dance scene, preceded by "Rock n' Roll Is Here to Stay", and succeeded by "Hound Dog". However, in the...
featured in Grease.
In 1963, he became involved with a local theatre group that included Warren Casey
Warren Casey
Warren Casey was an American theatre composer, lyricist, writer, and actor. He is best known for being the writer and composer, with Jim Jacobs of the stage and film musical Grease.-Career:...
, The Chicago Playwrights Center (at that time it was called Hull House Playwrights Center).
For the next five years he appeared in more than fifty theatrical productions in the Chicago area, working with such people as The Second City
The Second City
The Second City is a improvisational comedy enterprise which originated in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood.The Second City Theatre opened on December 16, 1959 and has since expanded its presence to several other cities, including Toronto and Los Angeles...
founder Paul Sills
Paul Sills
Paul Sills was a director and improvisation teacher, and the original director of Chicago's The Second City.-Biography:...
, while earning a living as an advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
copywriter. He also landed a small role in the 1969 film Medium Cool
Medium Cool
Medium Cool is an American film written and directed by Haskell Wexler and starring Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill and Harold Blankenship. It takes place in Chicago in the summer of 1968...
.
Jacobs' Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
acting debut was in a 1970 revival of the play No Place to be Somebody
No Place to be Somebody
No Place to be Somebody is a 1969 play written by American playwright Charles Gordone.It was during his employment as a bartender in Greenwich Village that Gordone found the inspiration for his first major work, No Place to be Somebody, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Drama...
, followed by the national tour.
Grease
At the same time, he and joe were collaborating on a play about high school life during the golden age of rock 'n' rollRock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
in the 1950s. Entitled Grease, it premiered in 1971 at the Kingston Mines Theater in the Old Town section of Chicago. Jacobs remembered, in this interview: "When we went to New York... we were told it was necessary to make the characters lovable, instead of scaring everybody. The show went from about three-quarters book and one-quarter music to one-quarter book and three-quarters music."
Producers Ken Waissman
Ken Waissman
Ken Waissman is a Tony Award-winning American theatre producer.Waissman's first Broadway credit was the 1971 Paul Zindel play And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little with Estelle Parsons and Julie Harris...
and Maxine Fox saw the show and suggested to the playwrights that it might work better as a musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
, and told them if the creative partners were willing to rework it and they liked the end result, they would produce it off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
. The team headed to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to collaborate on what would become Grease
Grease (musical)
Grease is a 1971 musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. The musical is named for the 1950s United States working-class youth subculture known as the greasers. The musical, set in 1959 at fictional Rydell High School , follows ten working-class teenagers as they navigate the complexities of love,...
, which opened at the Eden Theatre in downtown Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. The Best Plays of 1971-72 notes that "Though Grease
Grease (musical)
Grease is a 1971 musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. The musical is named for the 1950s United States working-class youth subculture known as the greasers. The musical, set in 1959 at fictional Rydell High School , follows ten working-class teenagers as they navigate the complexities of love,...
opened geographically off Broadway, it did so under first class Broadway contracts." The show was deemed eligible for the 1972 Tony Awards, receiving seven Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
nominations. In June of 1972 the production moved to the Broadhurst Theatre
Broadhurst Theatre
The Broadhurst Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre located at 235 West 44th Street in midtown Manhattan.It was designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp, a well-known theatre designer who had been working directly with the Shubert brothers; the Broadhurst opened 27 September 1917...
in the heart of Manhattan's Broadway theatre district. Six months later it moved to the Royale Theatre where it played until January 1980. For fine final weeks of the run the show moved to the much larger Majestic Theatre (Broadway). Casey earned a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
nomination for Best Book of a Musical. The show went on to become a West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
hit, a hugely successful film, and a
Later Career
He would also write a two act musical Island of Lost Coeds with Warren CaseyWarren Casey
Warren Casey was an American theatre composer, lyricist, writer, and actor. He is best known for being the writer and composer, with Jim Jacobs of the stage and film musical Grease.-Career:...
, a spoof on 1940s and 1950s B movies: a captain and crew crash on a deserted island inhabited by beautiful women with ratted hair, tiger-skin swimsuits and rubber spears.
Jacobs served as a judge on the NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
reality series
Reality television
Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...
Grease: You're the One that I Want! in 2006, designed to cast the lead roles in an August 2007 Broadway revival of Grease via viewer votes.
Awards
- 1969 - Joseph Jefferson AwardJoseph Jefferson AwardsThe Joseph Jefferson Awards are given annually by a volunteer non-profit committee to acknowledge excellence in theatre in the Chicago area. Founded in 1968, the awards are given in tribute to actor Joseph Jefferson...
nomination for best actor in Jimmy ShineJimmy ShineJimmy Shine is an American musical with music and lyrics by John Sebastian and a musical book by Murray Schisgal. The plot of the musical centers on its title character who is a struggling artist in Greenwich Village during the 1960s... - 1972 - Tony AwardTony AwardThe Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for best musical GreaseGrease (musical)Grease is a 1971 musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. The musical is named for the 1950s United States working-class youth subculture known as the greasers. The musical, set in 1959 at fictional Rydell High School , follows ten working-class teenagers as they navigate the complexities of love,... - 1972 - Tony AwardTony AwardThe Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for best book of a musical GreaseGrease (musical)Grease is a 1971 musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. The musical is named for the 1950s United States working-class youth subculture known as the greasers. The musical, set in 1959 at fictional Rydell High School , follows ten working-class teenagers as they navigate the complexities of love,... - 1972 - Grammy AwardGrammy AwardA Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
nomination for best score from an original cast show album GreaseGrease (musical)Grease is a 1971 musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. The musical is named for the 1950s United States working-class youth subculture known as the greasers. The musical, set in 1959 at fictional Rydell High School , follows ten working-class teenagers as they navigate the complexities of love,... - 1973 - Cue Magazine Award
- 1979 - ASCAP award for longest-running show in Broadway history