Olivia, is she going Hollywood?
Olivia Newton-John’s star has been on the rise since 1973 when she won her first “Grammy” award for “Best Country Vocalist” and has been soaring spectacularly ever since.
Even more miraculous than her award-winning success, though, is the fact that Olivia has retained the same sweet, charming, and unpretentious personality that she possessed as a newcomer, which made her a welcome “breath of fresh air” in the music industry. But will all that change now that she is pursuing a film career in Hollywood?
Olivia is currently starring opposite John Travolta in the film version of the huge Broadway hit, Grease, marking her film debut and a very auspicious one, at that. Grease a “nostalgia” musical that takes place in the Fabulous Fifties, dgals with a summer romance between a wholesome, pom-pom girl (Olivia) and a leather-jacketed toughie (John Travolta), and the adjustments and tribulations they have to face when school starts again.
Just about every actress imaginable in Hollywood wanted the plum role of “Sandy,” the epitome of the 1950’s “teen dream,” but “Livvie,” who has had no previous acting experience, was chosen over and above everyone else.
No one can deny that she looks the part of the innocent cheerleader with her soft, blonde hair; wide, vulnerable baby blues; and that perfect, even, flashing smile. But certainly no one could contest the fact that Liv is a seasoned performer, with a multitude of concerts and television appearances under her belt.
But will Olivia, who revels in the peaceful country-calm of her Malibu ranch with her horses, dogs and cats, be able to withstand being thrown head-first into the Hollywood whirlwind? Insiders are placing their bets that she can…
The ethereal, fragile appearance of Olivia Newton-John is deceptive. There’s a quiet strength in her girlish, whispery voice when she says: “I’ve learned to accept signing autographs. I’ve been doing it since I was fourteen. Fame’s not a ‘sudden’ thing that happened. There really hasn’t been any adjustment.”
“Sometimes, I go to the supermarket in jeans, sneakers, and a dirty T-shirt and people look at me and I think: ‘What are they looking at?’ Like the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working with animals and the plumber came to the house and I was fixing up the stable. He looked at me like something was wrong.”
“Sometimes people’s image of a star is that they don’t think you’re normal. I think of, say, Robert Redford. I’m sure he’s an ordinary, pleasant guy. We all tend to put entertainers on a pedestal and think they don’t do things like mucking out the stable!”
Olivia has had to be strong to get over the obstacles placed in her path throughout her young, 28-year life. Although no one would guess it from looking at her bright, smiling countenance, Livvie had a very difficult childhood. Her parents were divorced when she was only ten years old and in Australia where she was brought up, divorce was then considered a very scandalous thing. Her father, a college professor, was not allowed to work at the university he had been teaching at because of it and her mother, who was over forty at the time, had to go to work for the first time since her marriage to support her family!
“It wasn’t like it is now, with everybody getting divorced and women working by choice,” Olivia remembers wistfully. “Most of my friends’ parents were happily married and I felt pretty alone in this. My sister got divorced too, six years after our parents did. It left me afraid of marriage and I guess that’s why I keep putting it off. I want to be the one to break the chain. As I get older, it’s not quite so terrifying to me. Still, I know everybody has to learn from their own mistakes.”
Yet Olivia did her part in further shaking the family up. Her grandfather was the Nobel Prize- winning physicist, Max Born, and her father shunted aside his lifelong dream of becoming an opera singer to become a professor. So, naturally, it was expected that the Newton-John children would carry on the family’s respected academic tradition.
Livvie laughs and says: “But look what happened to me. Two plus two is five! My older brother did what the family hoped he’d do and became a brilliant doctor. But my older sister left school at fifteen to become an actress which was a bit of a shock and so the pattern had already been broken. In my last year, I had to decide on finishing school or going after stardom. I quit school.”
While she was still in school, though, Olivia had cast the die. She started to sing “just for something to do,” forming a group with three girls called the “Sol Four.” The group dissolved, but Liv continued on with her new career, appearing regularly on Australian television, when a talent-contest prize returned her to her birthplace, England, at the age of sixteen.
She joined up with a bubblegum-music group called “Tomorrow,” then toured with British pop star, Cliff Richard, who was England’s answer to Pat Boone at the time. Olivia’s first single record, a whispering version of Bob Dylan’s If Not For You, finality catapulted her into the international eye and was shortly followed by her first “Grammy” for Let Me Be There.
The following year, she won two more “Grammy” awards for “Record of the Year” and “Best Pop Vocal Performance.” In 1975, she was named “Top Female Vocalist” by both Cashbox and Billboard magazines, the Bibles of the recording industry. There were a lot of other important awards as well, making her the most such-honored female vocalist in the entire world!
No one was more crestfallen than Olivia, however, when in the midst of all this hard-earned success, she was slapped down by a group of traditional country music artists in Nashville after she won the Country Music Association’s “Top Female Vocalist of the Year” award. One of the country singers, Johnny Paycheck, snarled: “We don’t want somebody out of another field coming in and taking away what we’ve worked so hard for.”
Even though all this criticism stung Olivia deeply, she remained cool and ladylike and responded that that kind of cruel criticism “has nothing to do with me. I’ve never claimed to be a country singer; to call yourself that, you’d have to be born in that background. I simply love country music and its straightforwardness. And since the records have also sold well outside of the country audience, it seems to me that we’re broadening the acceptance of country music. I wasn’t out to do anybody out of an award. I didn’t even put myself up for it!”
Olivia weathered attacks such as those and others that said she didn’t have a good voice; that it was too thin and whispery; that her music was bland; and was unfairly accused of making it big on her looks alone with admirable tact and a sort of “turn-the-other cheek” attitude.
Her success and popularity continued to grow and it wasn’t long before movie scripts and offers from major film studios began to pour in. She was also offered the opportunity to star in numerous television series, but turned them down as well because “I think it’s very hard to maintain a high standard on a weekly basis. I prefer to do specials where I can spend time on them and make sure they’re going to be right.”
Olivia’s patience eventually paid off when the role of a lifetime, in Grease, was offered to her and she didn’t hesitate to accept this one. From all past indications, Olivia seems well equipped to avoid falling into the voracious “Hollywood trap.”
But there is one showbiz malady that may plague Livvie that old ogre, stage fright… For as long as Olivia has been singing, she has worried that she will forget her next line or her next move. And this could be quite an expensive fear when the financial aspects of keeping a film cast and crew waiting are taken into consideration. Olivia has said that the feeling starts in her spine and settles in her stomach, to the point where it feels as though she swallowed a block of ice.
Over the years, though, she has learned not to fight it because she knows that the more she worries, the worse the condition becomes. And horror of horrors, she actually did go blank during a concert once “I could feel the band breaking up behind me!” while singing the song Pony Ride. “So I just made up the words as I went along,” she recalls with a shudder. “The audience wouldn’t have known… but I could feel the band breaking up behind me!”
As long as Livvie can keep her jitters under control, it doesn’t seem like anything will be “breaking up” for her after the release of Grease especially with the off-screen help she’s been getting from co-star John Travolta whom she’s become close to since her split from her boyfriend-manager, Lee Kramer.
To quote the title of her latest album, it’s obvious that Olivia is just Making A Good Thing Better!