Return to musicals pleases Gene Kelly
'Xanadu' good example
THE OLD-STYLE musical spectacular is making a comeback and Gene Kelly thinks the timing is perfect.
He stars with Olivia Newton-John in the $16-million movie “Xanadu,” running Aug. 22 through Sept. 11 at the Video II theater in Lawton, and a front runner in a whole pack of productions.
“I never thought I’d see it happen.” says 67-year-old Gene Kelly, “much less still be dancing.”
Kelly, of course, danced his way to fame in classics like “For Me and My Girl,” “Anchors Aweigh.” “Cover” Girl,” “On the Town,” and “Singin’ in the Rain.”
Sokeen is Hollywood to put music in its product that many films are packing song and dance even though they’re far from musicals.
GENE KELLY feels Hollywood has never been better prepared for a rush on musicals. “There are better dancers around today than ever,” he says “from classical to pop”.
“America has benefited greatly from a rash of defections from classical schools in Russia, with a great number of equally good dancers moving here from Europe, especially Denmark.”
“Never before has this country been able to provide such good training for dancers.”
GENE KELLY "never though I'd see it"
Musicals, it seems, are most popular in hard times, which might explain their current rebirth, given the onset of depression at home, and the war-like sounds coming from abroad.
As one studio executive has noted: “When people are making money and putting swimming pools in their back yard, you give ‘em realism, blood and guts all the way. But when depressions take away swimming pools, and blood and guts looks like becoming reality, then you give ‘em escape. You make musicals.”
FOR OLIVIA Newton-John it was a case of being in the right place at the right time.
When “Xanadu” came along she was already getting wide exposure in “Grease,” which has since become one of the largest grossing pictures in Hollywood history.
Naturally, “Grease” producer Allan Carr made a bid for her services again in “Can’t Stop the Music,” but he had a falling out with her manager, and then lover, Lee Kramer.
So Olivia moved on to “Xanadu.” thrilled at the prospect of working with her “all-time idol.” Gene Kelly, while Carr signed Valerie Perrine in her place. Today Lee Kramer is confident Newton-John is in the right picture, insisting: “Can’t Stop the Music’ is disco stuff, so untimely. And Village People are as cold as you can get.”
By comparison he calls “Xanadu” - on which he served as executive producer “a musical on the scope of days gone by, a blend of the ‘40’s and the ‘80’s.”
If this film is the hit he forecasts, it will mean a whole new career for Olivia Newton-John, whose singing has plateaued, with the challenge of other female vocalists like Deborah Harry.
Certainly, it is a suitable second act to “Grease.”
SHE SAYS: “I knew this movie was right for me, even before I read the script. It’s a good story, a good idea, and it has Gene Kelly.”
It also has Michael Beck, who starred in “The Warriors,” and a brace of young dancers Kelly describes as “wonderful.”
But if it’s anybody’s vehicle, it will be Olivia’s, who is so sure it will start a trend that she has been dancing solid for almost a year, to be ready for follow-up action.
As Kramer promises: “It will transcend the stature she has achieved so far. She is THE woman of the ‘80’s. She can sing, dance, act and everybody loves her.”
Regardless, here is a woman who has already notched up success extraordinary even by Hollywood standards remaining for almost a decade one of the hottest selling singers in the world.
Yet she is not at all swept up with fame and fortune, still speaking in her native Australian accent, walking in delivering sentences while her “a’s” are still in the parking lot. Her fortune is in glamour, but her heart is in a rural life in Malibu, where she shares a ranch with a bunch of horses and dogs.
She explains: “You can let fame change you, but I’ve come this far, so I’m not suddenly going to be different. Success is something people see from the outside; but I am still the same inside, still have the same friends, still do the same things”.
“And I’ve always been that way. When I was starting out. I went to singing lessons and the man wanted me to change the way I sounded, so I didn’t go back.”
“And when I came to the United States, my accent worked against me for a while. I was told to lose it, but I didn’t want to. I fear that if I change my accent, I am not being me.”
“WHAT HAS happened to me has happened around me, which is how I want it and how it will stay. Unless you start believing your own publicity hand-outs, fame is not going to effect you as a person.”
Olivia thanks her Australian upbringing for her ability to handle success “without going insane.”
She says: “My mother was a very strong person. From her, I got a strong sense of myself.”
By Colin Dangaard, International Features inc
More from the Xanadu movie.