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Deney Terrio | |
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| Born | Denis George Mahan June 15, 1950 |
| Occupation(s) | Choreographer, television personality, actor |
Denis George Mahan (born June 15, 1950), better known as Deney Terrio, is an American choreographer and hosted the television musical variety series Dance Fever from 1979 to 1987. [1]
Raised in Titusville, Florida, [2] Terrio achieved fame as the dance coach and choreographer for John Travolta in the movie Saturday Night Fever (1978). During his heyday with Dance Fever , he appeared in a number of films, including The Idolmaker (1980), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), A Night in Heaven (1983) and Knights of the City (1986), and guest starred on popular television series of the time, including The Love Boat . Throughout the 1990s, he toured nightclubs, performing with Motion and judging dance contests.
Terrio has appeared on several VH1 specials and co-hosted the 2004 PBS special Get Down Tonight: The Disco Explosion , which featured many popular disco artists from the 1970s and actress Karen Lynn Gorney. During the show, Terrio and Gorney danced to Tavares’ live performance of "More Than a Woman", as Gorney had with Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.
Terrio hosted his own disco radio show, Saturday Night Dance Party, on the Sirius Satellite Radio network, and is a choreographer and competitor at regional Dancing with the Stars competitions.
In 1991, Terrio sued Merv Griffin, the producer of Dance Fever, for sexual harassment; [3] the US$11.3 million case was later dismissed. [4] In 2015, Terrio sued the toy company Hasbro in a federal court for creating an animated gecko and toy figurine named Vinnie Terrio, alleging that his publicity rights were violated by the gecko and figurine. [5] In February 2016, Terrio and Hasbro settled his claims out of court. [6]
In the stand-up comedy special Eddie Murphy Raw (1987), Murphy makes a joke referencing an encounter with Terrio, prompting his father to inquire as to why he was with Terrio in the first place.
Terrio was referred to in the Steve Martin movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), in which Martin's character, a con man and hustler named Freddy Benson, poses as a disabled veteran as part of a plan to extract money from a rich woman. In order to induce her pity, Benson claims that he lost use of his legs after he found his girlfriend having sex with Terrio.
In the final episode of season 1 of Modern Family , Claire tells Phil he looks like Deney Terrio. Jay incorrectly replies that Terrio was a 1970s disco dancer from Ohio.
Terrio was also referenced in season 2 of Black Dynamite when he teamed up with funk-soul musician James Brown to compete against Black Dynamite and Cream Corn.
Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, brass and horns, electric piano, synthesizers, and electric rhythm guitars.
John Joseph Travolta is an American actor. He became prominent during the 1970s, appearing on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979) and starring in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978), and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but he enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s with his role in Pulp Fiction (1994), and went on to star in successful films including Get Shorty (1995), Broken Arrow (1996), Michael (1996), Phenomenon (1996), Face/Off (1997), The General's Daughter (1999), Wild Hogs (2007), Hairspray (2007), and Bolt (2008).
Saturday Night Fever is a 1977 American dance drama film directed by John Badham and produced by Robert Stigwood. It stars John Travolta as Tony Manero, a young Italian-American man who spends his weekends dancing and drinking at a local discothèque while dealing with social tensions and disillusionment in his working-class ethnic neighborhood in Brooklyn. The story is based on "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night", a mostly fictional 1976 article by music writer Nik Cohn.
Saturday Night Fever is the soundtrack album from the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta. The soundtrack was released on November 15, 1977 by RSO Records. Prior to the release of Thriller by Michael Jackson, Saturday Night Fever was the best-selling album in music history, and still ranks among the best-selling soundtrack albums worldwide, with sales figures of over 40 million copies.
Some films feature recognizable dance forms, demonstrating them, shedding light on their origin, or being the base of a plot.
Staying Alive is a 1983 American dance musical film and the sequel to Saturday Night Fever (1977). Directed by Sylvester Stallone, who also co-produced and co-wrote the film with original Fever producer and writer, Robert Stigwood and Norman Wexler respectively, the film stars John Travolta, reprising his role as Tony Manero, with Cynthia Rhodes, Finola Hughes, Joyce Hyser, Julie Bovasso, and dancers Viktor Manoel and Kevyn Morrow.
Karen Lynn Gorney is an American actress who had roles in television shows and films including the soap opera All My Children and the movie Saturday Night Fever.
Walter Anthony Murphy Jr. is an American composer, keyboardist, songwriter, and record producer. He is best known for the instrumental "A Fifth of Beethoven", a disco adaptation of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony which topped the charts in 1976 and was featured on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack in 1977. Further classical–disco fusions followed, such as "Flight '76", "Toccata and Funk in 'D' Minor" "Bolero", and "Mostly Mozart", but were not as successful.
Janet Marie Gretzky is an American actress. She is married to retired ice hockey Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky.
The Stud is a 1978 British drama film directed by Quentin Masters and starring Joan Collins and Oliver Tobias. It is based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Collins' younger sister Jackie Collins.
Jay Gorney was an American theater and film song writer.
"Saturday Night Grease" is the second episode of the eighth series of the British television comedy series The Goodies. The 65th episode of the show overall, it was first broadcast at 8.10pm on 21 January 1980 on BBC2.
Dance Fever is an American musical variety television series that aired weekly in syndication from January 1979 to September 1987. The series was technically created by Merv Griffin, but his agent Murray Schwartz actually conceived the idea of a pilot which piggybacked on a special Merv Griffin Show salute to the movie Thank God It's Friday, which would feature top disco dancers from eight cities competing for a title. Casablanca Records had already paid for the set, so a pilot could be produced at a significant reduction. Merv's vision was to have frequent Griffin guest Deney Terrio as the host, and to have celebrities dancing with professional disco dancers. But pilot show producer Ernest Chambers had no success convincing the stars who were approached to consent to the format. They were afraid they would look bad. On the Sunday prior to the show, director Dick Carson suggested that, since they already had the dancers for the Thank God It's Friday salute, they should select the top four couples from that show and have them compete on the pilot with celebrities as judges. He was quoted as saying "Nobody's ever going to see this thing anyway." Within a couple days, Sherman Hemsley, Barbi Benton, and Herve Villechaize were secured as the judges. After the Thursday night Griffin/Thank God It's Friday special was taped, show staffers Larry Strawther and Paul Gilbert were dispatched to lure the top four finishers to participate in the next night's pilot production, but to keep it a secret. That didn't happen, but despite some acrimony among the dancers, not helped by a one-night stand between a couple of dancers that caused a rift, the pilot was produced and ended up being sold. Another long-time Griffin staffer, Paul Abeyta, produced the show's first two seasons which were written by Tony Garofalo. Later seasons were produced by Paul Gilbert.
Discofox or disco fox is a social partner dance which evolved in Europe in the mid-1970s as a rediscovery of the dance hold in the improvisational disco dance scene dominated by solo dancing, approximately at the same time when the hustle emerged in the United States. Both dances were greatly influenced by Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta. In various regions, it is also known under different names: disco hustle, swing fox, disco swing, and rock fox.
When Disco Ruled the World is a music documentary that aired on VH1 in 2005.
Renegade is an American rock n' roll band composed of Luis Cardenas, Kenny Marquez and Tony De La Rosa. Although all the band members hail from the United States, the band were among the most successful Hispanic or "Chicano rock" acts founded in the United States during the 1980s. Throughout Latin America, the band is known as Los Renegados.
Lester Wilson was an African-American dancer, choreographer, and actor. Wilson attended the Juilliard School. Bob Fosse cast him in a 1963 revival of Pal Joey at the New York City Center. Wilson toured London with Sammy Davis Jr. in Golden Boy. In 1969, he was responsible with 24 of his dancers for the choreography of Johnny Hallyday's show at the Palais des Sports in Paris.
"Saturday Night Glee-ver" is the sixteenth episode of the third season of the American musical television series Glee, and the sixtieth overall. Written by Matthew Hodgson and directed by Bradley Buecker, the episode aired on Fox in the United States on April 17, 2012, and features a tribute to the 1970s movie Saturday Night Fever and its Bee Gees–infused soundtrack.
Forever Fever is a 1998 Singaporean musical comedy film written and directed by Glen Goei. It stars Adrian Pang as a man who becomes interested in disco once he sees Saturday Night Fever. As he competes in a local disco contest, John Travolta's character enters the real world and gives him advice. The film was released internationally by Miramax and was the first Singaporean film to perform well internationally.
*photo of John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever”