Olivia Where Can She Go From Here?
By Phyillis Battelle
With a silky voice and deceptively ingenuous girlishness that masks the emotions of a woman, Olivia Newton-John has worked half her life to earn the title, World’s Most Popular Female Singer. There was no clawing to the top, though a few hearts were mangled as her career soared she was always deciding at the last minute that her professional ambitions were stronger than her settling-down dreams. No doubt her gold record, “I Honestly Love You,” brought cynical responses from the men she left behind in Australia and England. But that’s the past, and today Olivia’s image is so virtuous that even her most straitlaced fans choose to overlook lapses that prove her only human such as a recently ended six-year liaison with her manager, Lee Kramer.
Olivia concedes that she feels “at a turning point,” professionally and personally. This month, to the usual Hollywood hoopla, her second starring movie will open. It is a musical fantasy titled “Xanadu,” co-starring Gene Kelly, in which Olivia sings, dances and acts more extensively than she did in the wildly popular “Grease.” Kramer is the executive producer and once again, millions of dollars are riding on Olivia’s box-office appeal. Olivia comes packaged like petits fours dainty pink sweater, pink ankle socks with lace cuffs, which she plucks at occasionally while searching for words. But “Lovely Livvie,” as she was known when she starred on her first TV show at the age of 15 in Melbourne, is a bright, kind, complex woman who is willing, if not eager, to discuss everything from love (“It is heartbreakingly painful to me whenever it ends”) to death (“I really try to be grown up about it, but I am terrified of dying”).
Hit records and the starring role in the film “Grease,” for which she reportedly received ten million dollars, have made her a multi millionaire who could retire tomorrow and live, “rather comfortably, I think,” for the rest of her life. Last year brought a storm in Olivia’s otherwise halcyon existence when she broke off her long term romantic relationship with Lee Kramer, the aggressive, 28-year-old British entrepreneur who for six years handled her career and shared her life at a 2.5 hectare Malibu, California, ranch. Many who do not understand Livvie’s loyalties were surprised when she chose to keep Lee on as manager. Olivia admits the decision to sever their relationship caused a great deal of anguish. “I’m sure both Lee and I went through every kind of emotion possible. When you live with someone for a very long time, it has to be difficult.” She explains, matter-of-factly, her decision to retain the artist-management relationship: “We’ve been through a lot together, so why not? It seems such a shame if, after six years together, two people decide never to see each other again. It’s too bad, because when a person is part of your life for so long, has watched you grow and shared so many things, isn’t it better to be friends?” Olivia thinks so. “I thought it might be hard, but so far it’s worked out well. I hope it can continue.”
Right now she is, she says, “at the optimum of happiness.” Yet at the age of 31, newly free of romantic ties as well as illusions that “eternal ingenues” like herself can stay on top forever, Olivia is cautiously considering her options. “Right now, I feel like I’m on a freeway,” she muses, “which is straight and going forward. But it has exits. And I can turn off on any side road that I want.” The voice is gentle, but firm. “One exit I could take, if I decide to, would lead to my perfect house. Lately, I’ve found myself doodling little pictures of cottages, with white-washed walls and picket fences. Very old-fashioned, isn’t that? Inside the cottage I see a happy family, children” suddenly Olivia grins a dazzling grin. Ah, you see, you have caught me on a good day. Sometimes when the world situation is bleak, I am very negative and decidedly against having children poor things, what’s the point? But this week I’ve got through being depressed, and I definitely want a family.” She pauses. “But then, you have to find someone to marry first, don’t you?” Olivia mentions that she’s seeing a few men, but “none that she’d care to talk about.”
Cheerfully, but candidly, Olivia admits she worries about growing older. “You think, when you’re 20, that you will never get old, that nothing will ever change. Then you stare into the mirror, a line here, a wrinkle there, and you know it is going to change. It’s not just the cosmetic changes that matter,” she observes. “You realize that there is a lot of superficiality in relationships. And you want to find someone who loves you for what’s inside, so that when the looks begin to go, it won’t matter.” Olivia concedes now that living together without marriage may be psychologically damaging. “I think about that now,” she admits, hesitantly. “Now I’m wondering,” she says softly, “if maybe you should make the commitment to marriage in the beginning, and then work on it rather than live together, testing each other all the time. Because either way, you’re going to find things wrong with one another. And I’m not really sure of this, but I do wonder is it possible that you might try a little harder wher1 you’re married to keep it together?”
No more speculation. That part of her life is over, though Kramer still helps plan her life. The wood-panelled wall behind her chair is hung with a dozen Olivia Newton-John records, framed and labelled. “To Lee Kramer” gifts from the music industry to the young man who presumably guided her toward such hits as “Have You Ever Been Mellow,” “You’re The One That I Want” and “Hopelessly Devoted To You.” “Lee and I fight, about business decisions,” Olivia says, “but I still trust his judgement, his taste; and he cares about me. He’ll fight for me, which makes our management-artist relationship a rare one in this town.” Her career traces back to the days when she won a local talent contest in Melbourne and a TV contract, and wanted to drop out of high school to follow a career. Her parents, who had divorced when she was 10, wanted her at least to finish high school. Livvie’s father, Bryn Newton-John, a Welsh academician, was a college dean. “What I wanted to do was definitely against family tradition,” she says. But Olivia did succeed in leaving home, breaking away, and claims to be closer to her parents now than when she was a child. They visit her ranch often.
She credits them with her refusal to use unladylike language, smoke, drink more than wine “a half-glass actually gets me high.” She rarely attends Hollywood parties, she confides, because drugs are commonly used. Perhaps Olivia, who has put most of her energy into forming her successful career she’s won several Grammys and other music honours, including the OBE, bestowed last year by Queen Elizabeth is ready now to pass on her values to children of her own. Though as she herself says, she’ll have to find someone to marry first.