Olivia's Bravest Fight

There have been few comings or goings on the private cul de sac in the exclusive Big Rock section of the Malibu hills, no sign of anguish behind the high wrought-iron gate hung with the cautionary legend: CHILDREN AT PLAY. But there is little doubt that at the end of the winding drive lined with red bougainvillea, inside the three bedroom house with its breathtaking view of the Pacific, Olivia Newton-John, at 43, is enduring the most difficult stretch of her life.

It has been just a month now since one of Australia's dearest, if graphically departed, stars announced in a carefully worded statement that she had breast cancer and would be undergoing surgery. If that news weren't horrifying enough, it came on the heels of what Newton-John had already publicly called the worst year of my life.

In the days after her operation at Los Angeles's Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, reporters and photographers disguised themselves as everything from doctors to AIDS patients in an effort to get a glimpse of her. Fans sent mountains of flowers and get-well cards, but, as they have for most of her public career, friends and family drew a tight cordon around her, maintaining silence about the singer's private life. Whatever her burdens, Livvy ultimately bore them alone. As all the world knows, her most public travail was the announcement in March of the liquidation of her 62-store Koala Blue clothing company, a financial failure that left an estimated $5 million in corporate assets against nearly twice that in debts.

But in recent months there have been other, more private tragedies as well. Six years ago, the singer and one of her closest American friends, Nancy Gould Chuda, a colleague in California's environmental movement, swapped morning-sickness stories during their parallel pregnancies. Two months after Olivia gave birth to her daughter, Chloe, now 6, Chuda's daughter, Colette, was born. But last year, Colette, age 5, died of cancer, a death her mother ascribes to the use of pesticides on food.

This past June there was also the loss of her friend, singer Peter Allen, to AIDS-related throat cancer. During Peter's radiation treatments in the final months of his life, Olivia kept in constant touch. He was thrilled to hear from her, says his associate Bruce Cudd. She gave him a great boost spiritually. But the saddest loss of all occurred on July 3. Just 24 hours after leaving the bedside of her cancer-stricken father in Sydney during a week-long visit, Olivia learned that he, too, had died unexpectedly. It's hard when these things happen all at once, says Olivia's long- time friend, singer Helen Reddy, who spoke to Olivia by telephone in her hospital room a week after her surgery. More than the cancer, says Reddy, What she really wanted to talk to me about was the loss of her father. There's this moment when you suddenly know you can never again be Daddy's little girl. That is lost to you forever -and that's a devastating blow.

As difficult as the past months have been for her, Newton-John is no stranger to adversity. Certainly, there were plenty of accolades along her road to success, including a l978 OBE, but there have been savage reviews as well. That same year one critic quipped If white bread could sing it would sound like Olivia And in 1980, Variety likened her performance in the big budgeted musical Xanadu to a roller-skating light bulb.

Through it all Newton-John shouldered the sniping and stuck to her guns. But it became obvious over time that, deep in her hearts of hearts, showbiz was not really her metier. I don't have the desire that I think a lot of performers feel - to get the applause, she once said. It's not life or death to me. In fact, when you think of Hollywood, you think of men in Rolls-Royces and living in tuxedos, she told an interviewer in 1977. but like everything the dream is better than the reality.

For a nightmarish, two weeks in July 1983, that reality turned especially ugly when Michael Owen Perry, a 28-year-old American fugitive who was wanted for murdering five members of his family with a shotgun, sent threatening letters to the singer and tried to break into her Los Angeles home. She was so worried she packed her bags and stayed in a hotel before getting a plane to fly out here, her father told reporters from his Manly home, shortly after Perry was arrested.

That same year, following the fizzle of her film Two of a Kind, Olivia returned to the security of her Australian farm. I really needed time to think about what was important in my life, she later said. I had let my career control my personal life too much. I'm not going to let that happen again. And she hasn't. Since her 1984 marriage to actor Matt Lattanzi, 33, one of 10 children of an Oregon maintenance foreman, Newton-John's life has been centred on her husband and Chloe. Even though I hadn't been in L.A very long, I'd had a taste of jaded people, said Lattanzi, who met Livvy in 1979 on the set of Xanadu. She was a big star, but she treated me as if we were equals. I thought that was very impressive. Besides, he adds, I liked her legs a whole lot.

Olivia had no regrets about giving up her single status. I was positive Matt was the right man and I wanted to start a family, she said in 1985, During her pregnancy. I'd had pangs about not having a child, but I was terrified of getting married. It finally just felt like the natural thing to do. Having made the decision to put her career on the backburner, Olivia never looked back. She always wanted to have a family and everything took second place to that, says pop commentator Ian Molly Meldrum, Olivia's friend for more than 20 years. Even Roger [Davies, her manager from 1980 to 1988] understood that. They eventually split, amicably, because he wanted to get on with his career and she wanted to be a wife with her family.

The passage of time confirmed that it was the right choice for Olivia. Nearly 10 years after her last live tour, Newton-John's ecologically correct Malibu home complete with recycling bins on the front path and a backyard compost heap clearly revolves around her child. Livvy's amazing. There's never a raised voice,,/q> says her mother, Irene. he's a great cook. She has endless patience, more so than I ever did. Really, I don't think she was ever as happy as when she had Chloe.

His wife, says Lattanzi, simply turned off one priority and turned on another. It sounds corny, but Livvy had always envisioned the little farm house, the while picket fence, having two children and living a very normal type of life. Sadly, the two children were not to be. In 1988 Newton-John suffered a miscarriage during her fourth month of pregnancy It was devastating, she said two years later. I can handle it now, but it was sudden and unfortunate. I rationalised it, but it took a lot of time. But I was lucky. I have a daughter, a beautiful child, and if I never have another child, I'm blessed already. I can't complain.

Even her home's decor reflects Newton-John's priorities. While Mum's four Grammies are tucked away on a high shelf, the rest of the house is festooned with Chloe's paintings and artwork. As fate would have it, Newton- John's cancer diagnosis occurred against the backdrop of Koala Blue's failure, as she was releasing a retrospective album (her 18th LP) and was set to embark on a 16-city tour of America. It sounds kind of boring to say I've been at home, she said of her recent low-profile, but that's the truth. I wanted Chloe to have a mother and not be raised by nannies.

In the wake of her surgery, rumours spread that cancer had been found in both breasts, a story that her publicist, Sylvia Brown, vehemently denies. She was not happy about undergoing chemotherapy, says Olivia's attorney John Mason, but she knew she had to. She'll have to continue for six months. Still, in recent weeks there have been signs that her energy and routine are returning to normal. She's getting out again, says Mason. And she's beginning to deal with business matters again.,/q>

For now, Newton-John and Lattanzi are also concentrating on construction of their new 560-square-metre, solar-powered Malibu beach house perched 30 metres above the Pacific. On one recent afternoon, as she often does, Olivia visited the site, talked with her husband about plans for the kitchen, and sunned herself on a bench in the garden. She was quiet, says a visitor, maybe a little more so since the traumas of past months. But she looks, he says without hesitation, absolutely wonderful.

That would hardly surprise those who know Livvy best. She's a very strong person and has dealt with life in her own way, says Molly Meldrum, reflecting on more than two decades of friendship. And whatever she's facing at this moment, I have no doubt she's going to shine through it.