Olivia Now She's Making A Good Thing Better with John Travolta
She's sugar and spice, but not without vice
By Dick Pietschmann
“Olivia’a been hearing that she’s just a pretty face for a long time” says her record producer, John Farrar. Now she’s tired of being dismissed as a lightweight. Hopefully, her new movie will change her change her image.
Cute. The word clings to Olivia Newton-John the way her country- flavored songs cling to the tops of the charts. And Livvy (as she’s known to her friends) is fighting mad about it. Who can blame her? Cute is cute, but it’s no substitute for interesting or provocative or gifted. And the English-born, Australian-bred songbird is too ambitious to settle for being just another squeaky-clean girl next door. “This clean image is nothing I’ve cultivated,” Olivia insists. “I’m really terrible underneath. Honestly. I do everything that most normal people do. I even have vices, but I’m not pointing them out. Why point out a pimple on your nose?”
Why indeed? Especially when you have critics to do the pointing out for you. “If white bread could sing,” said one acid-tongued reviewer, “it would sound like Olivia.” Commented another: “She’s pleasant, attractive, sincere and not very invigorating.” During her much heralded debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House in May, she wore a strikingly sexy gown in an attempt to dispel her cloyingly sweet and over wholesome image Still, the critics reviewed her as if she were a milkshake. No wonder the lady’s in a state. Gold records can take you only so far.
“If I were less attractive, maybe they would pay more attention to my talent,” says Olivia of her detractors. “They always think you’re playing on your looks. It’s just how I was made. But that old all-beauty-and-no-brains thing is still in existence.” Clearly, life has its frustrations, even for the fairy princess of pop. But Olivia seems in decisive control despite the annoyances. She recently has cranked up her career to a dizzying pace. Despite her fragile appearance, she possesses the prodigious stamina to work nearly a year at full speed. In an eight-month span ending in September. she will have shuttled with deceptive nonchalance between recording studios (Making a Good Thing Better, her seventh LP, was released in June), concert tours, nightclub stints, TV specials and film (she is co-starring opposite teen idol John Travolta in the movie version of Broadway’s hit musical. Grease).
At 28, Olivia Newton- John is at the crossroads. She may well be the most popular singer in the world, such a favorite is she in Japan, the Middle East and Europe. Her seven albums and 16 singles have sold nearly 25 million copies. But she’s radically changing her life. Some feel she’s tampering dangerously with a winning formula. Not only is she making a big try at movie superstardom with Grease, but she’s also split with Lee Kramer, her live-in manager-lover of the past five years. Curled up catlike on a sofa in her trailer (parked outside a high school in Venice, Calif., where part of Grease is being filmed), Olivia discusses the new direction her life’s taking. “I still don’t believe I’m doing a film,” she marvels. Her blond hair is in twin ponytails for her role as a 50s teenager, her tennis shoes are shucked off for comfort and she’s wearing a huge T-shirt long enough to cover everything but an enticing glimpse of blue panties. Rolling up her sleeves tightly in 50s fashion. Olivia reveals that she’s had her sights set on doing a movie for a long time. “But the scripts I was getting were so bad,” she sighs.
Despite the prevailing impression, Grease is not Olivia’s first film. Back in 1970, before she hit it big she received top billing in a British sci-fi rock musical called Toomorrow (the extra o is on purpose). The film flopped in Britain and was never released in the United States. So you can forgive her for forgetting it and understand why she doubly anxious now. “Doing Grease is like being back in school in the 50s.” she explains. But unlike real school life, Olivia’s movie school mentors are providing extracurricular favors to insure that their star pupil graduates with an “A.”
Director Randal Kleiser has accommodated his star’s undisguisable Aussie accent by altering the script to make the very American character of Sandy into a recent import from Australia. The only people not being accommodating these days are the press, who madden Olivia by insisting that she and Travolta are having a hot romance. “We’re getting along great,” Travolta admits. Olivia’s more reluctant to add fuel to the gossip fire. Before shooting, she was bothered by whispers that she was seeing California’s star-dating governor, Jerry Brown. “No, Travolta and I are not an item, Olivia groans. “I knew that talk would start, no matter who the leading man was. Now they’ll be digging up every single guy in L. A.” Suddenly, she breaks into delightfully conspiratorial laughter.”I’m single, that’s all you need to know. Just me and the dogs and my horses [five of them with Judge, a quarterhorse, her favorite for riding in the hills above her Malibu home. What else do I need’?”
Right now, there’s no man in Olivia’s life willing to answer that question. But Olivia’s not falling apart. Over the years, she’s learned a lot about self- reliance. “I’m strong,” says Olivia. “I get involved, but it doesn’t chew me up.” Fleur Thiemeyer. Olivia’s designer and friend, agrees with that self-evaluation. Olivia seems incredibly calm,” says Fleur. “She keeps the rest inside to relax people. She’s really a hyper person, but not a nervy one.” Whatever nerve Olivia might possess now was a long time coming. All she wanted to do 12 years ago was “get married and have kids.” But when the opportunity first presented itself. Olivia got cold feet. “I enjoyed working too much by then.” she says.
At first, Olivia denies that she’s ambitious. “In Australia,” she points out; “it’s not a thing you’d own up to if you were a woman. It would mean you had to be aggressive and masculine and mean.” Hers was more a hidden ambition. “But I think to get as far as I have I must have had it.” One thing Olivia’s always had in her life is music. “Music’s in my Welsh blood,” she says. Her father is a Welshman who taught at King’s College in Cambridge. Her grandfather was the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Max Born, who was Einstein’s best friend. “And look what happened to me?” she laughs.
One of the reasons for what did happen to Olivia was her father. Before deciding on an academic career. he studied opera. And though that dream was discarded, he filled the house with music, ranging from classical to Tennessee Ernie Ford. Olivia recalls that Ray Charles, Joan Baez and Nina Simone were strong influences. When Olivia was five. her family moved to Melbourne, where her father was headmaster of Ormond College. She lived in Australia for the next 11 years. She is fiercely loyal to her adopted country, which is perhaps one reason why her accent still clings as snugly as her jeans. At 16, she won the top prize in a local talent contest and a trip to London. She dropped out of high school and never went back. But today, she insists it was her mother who gave her the push to leave Australia and strike out on her own. “I wasn’t that aggressive,” Olivia explains. In 1973 came the big explosion. Her single “Let Me Be There,” took off in America. She won the Grammy for best female country vocalist and followed that up with another award from the Country Music Association.
The only blot on her American success was the flack she began to get from Nashville hardliners who didn’t like a “foreigner” coming in and dominating their music. “I felt like I was a scapegoat in the whole matter,” says Olivia today. “I really think now they have to admit it’s been beneficial to them. They’re getting a pop audience they never had before. A lot of people are listening to country music because of me. I’ve become friends with Dolly Parton now, and she feels the same way I do. You don’t have to live in Nashville to sing or like country music.” Olivia still hasn’t decided to live in Nashville, though she records there from time to time. She seems quite happy on her four-acre Malibu ranch with her horses, dog, cats and not a boyfriend in sight. Olivia turns a trifle crisp whenever her love life is probed, but she doesn’t evade the issue. “I need a man with me to help me,” she says candidly. “I’ve always had somebody.” Olivia’s engagement to a British actor ended with her first American success.
After that, her life was dominated by Lee Kramer. Their recent breakup shocked even close friends. Kramer gave up his lucrative shoe business to manage Olivia’s career. “It’s very difficult for a guy not to get involved in my career,” she comments. “The guys in my life have had their own thing, but they can’t help but get involved in what I do because it consumes so much of my time. It takes a strong man to take second place. It’s Mr. Newton-John a lot of the time. They have to have a good sense of themselves to take it. A lot of men are frightened by me, by what I represent and my success. It’s very difficult for me to have a relationship. But it’s very important for me to know one person and to trust one person.” Nevertheless. Olivia is still wary of marriage. The divorces of her older sister and her parents may have something to do with it. “Breaking up love affairs.” says Olivia. “those times are as low as you can get.” Her best times are “meeting someone falling in love.”
It’s a philosophy reflected in the songs she sings and in her personal life style. Hardly the Farrah-Fawcett Majors of pop, she makes a point of “not believing my own publicity.” She eschews most of the trappings of fame, rarely runs with the Hollywood crowd and avoids entourages. Instead, she’s most comfortable barefoot in Malibu with the phone turned off, riding in the hills or slipping into town with her friend Fleur to see a movie. So what if the rest of the world sees her as having fling after mad fling with the likes of John Travolta? So what if she has to face the same “Just another pretty face” problem in movies that she had in music? Olivia’s already overcome more obstacles than she’s given credit for. There’s a song in Grease about her onscreen character, Sandy, that says a lot about the comparisons that Olivia’s facing. “Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee.” the song goes, “lousy with virginity…. You’ve got your crust. I’m no object of lust. I’m just plain Sandra Dee.”
Olivia Newton-John is determined not to be just plain anyone, especially an icon from the 50s. But it’s an uphill battle. Some are still insisting that she’s afflicted with the “cutes,” but right now the smart money’s betting that it’s not a terminal case. At the end of Grease, Olivia’s character undergoes a startling transformation from goody two shoes to sexy siren. Perhaps the same thing will happen offscreen as well. “One thing’s for sure,” says Travolta, “people are going to be surprised.”