My Daughter Olivia
By Joel Brady
“I wasn’t able to go to Sydney with her, but I saw her on television and I’ve never forgotten it,” Mrs Irene Newton- John says. “She projected so beautifully; she was so unselfconscious. It was just charming and I thought; ‘I have got to help that girl. She has really got something’.”
What any recording company wouldn’t pay for that type of insight now… ‘That girl,’ of course, was Olivia Newton- John, probably the hottest female entertainer in the world today. The television appearance to which her mother refers was a talent quest on the late Johnny O’Keefe’s show, Sing, Sing, Sing, in the Sixties, and it led to Mrs Newton- John guiding her daughter to Europe.
“I felt I had to take her to Europe so she’d get a proper sense of proportion, because people here tend to make too much of young stars, or they did in those days. I felt she might have got a swollen head which would have ruined everything.”
Of course, even the most supportive mother could not have guessed then that her daughter would go on to sell millions of records, appear in box office hits and dominate the world music charts. “That just didn’t occur to me,” Mrs Newton-John says. “I thought she was very talented, very attractive and so on, but you can never guess these things. I mean, it’s wonderful… delightful. I am very pleased, particularly at how well she has taken it. She is very intelligent and she’s got a good head on her shoulders she hasn’t been spoiled.”
West German-born Irene Newton-John sits in the living room of her spacious Melbourne apartment musing on her daughter’s success. The other members of her family haven’t fared too badly either: Olivia’s elder sister Rona is married to American actor Jeff Conoway, of Taxi fame, and her brother Hugh specialises in respiratory ailments at Melbourne’s Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital.
Part of the living room carpet is covered with photographic prints mainly of Olivia’s friend, actress Chantal Contouri which Mrs Newton-John took several weeks before. Not far away is a beautiful, color blowup of Olivia and boyfriend Matt Lattanzi, silhouetted against the ocean. Taken at Olivia’s Californian beach house, it is another example of Mrs Newton-John’s work. “Oh yes, I’ve met Matt,” she says. “A very attractive young man, very nice; comes from a large family… “ It’s obvious that he has won mother’s approval but Mrs Newton-John gives the impression that even if he hadn’t, it wouldn’t matter.
“I don’t interfere with my daughters’ private affairs,” she says. “I believe it is not a parent’s place to do that. If they ask my advice I give it, but I don’t volunteer it. If they did anything I was very worried about I’d probably say something, but they don’t often do that.” Still, a mother can’t help but worry and, in Mrs Newton-John’s case, it is Olivia who causes most concern. “I worry about her security,” she says. “It concerns me a lot. There are so many lunatics around everywhere, not just in the U.S. so many crazy things have happened.”.
That in mind, Mrs Newton-John says she will be joining Olivia for part of her current tour of America, in the roles of mother, travel writer for an Australian magazine and unofficial photographer. “I seriously started photography after I got divorced (from Olivia’s father, Professor Brinley Newton-John, of Newcastle, NSW). “My husband was quite a good photographer and I’ve always been interested. I seem to have a flair, particularly for portraits, and I love it.”
But her family and her photographic hobby are hardly all-consuming interests. Irene Newton-John is involved intensely in several quality-of-life issues. “I would certainly support anything to do with protecting our environment,” Mrs Newton- John says. “Another thing I am interested in is the quality of buildings.”
Although her apartment occupies a prime site, she maintains that the ‘luxury’ sign placed on it by the developers referred more to the location. Several costly experiences with burst water pipes concealed in concrete and not shown in any plans prompted her to start campaigning for changes in regulations she claims allow developers to buck-pass until “nobody is responsible for these types of problems. It’s most important to try to get some consumer protection for house and flat buyers, because there is really nothing like that at the moment.”
But, despite all the time and energy she is pouring into the cause, Mrs Newton- John will still find time to travel. Last year she spent about three months abroad and this year, apart from joining Olivia on tour, she will attend several lectures and ceremonies commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of her father, West German scientist Max Born. Professor Born, who shared the Nobel Prize in 1964, was one of the few German academics who fled their home country before Hitler took over. He died in 1970. This year, for the first time, his daughter will be travelling on an Australian passport. “I can keep my British one too. I am pleased about that because the British took us in when we left Germany and were more or less refugees. But I am an Australian citizen now.”
“When we came here in 1954 Olivia was about five and my older children were just in their teens. Looking back, I think I was just hoping Australia would be a good place for them to grow up. I haven’t been disappointed.”