There's a new Olivia Newton-John (about ABC TV special)
By Harry Harris
Olivia Newton-John, who’s said to be selling more records in the United States these days than any other fe male singer, hopes to redefine her “image” in her first U. S. special, “A Special Olivia Newton-John,” tonight at 10 on Channel 6.
“I’m not “shy” or ‘retiring’ at all,” the slim, 5-foot-6, blond, green-gray-eyed, 28-year-old performer said by phone from California, ticking off some of the adjectives often applied to ber. “I’m not particularly ‘polite.’ “Ladylike?” I’m very flattered. I won’t argue with “wholesome.” But I’d like to prove I’m not completely boring.”
She was only kidding, she added quickly, but she was looking forward to the opportunity to clown, as well as sing.
“I’ve never had a chance to talk before on American television.”
“Basically I’ll be singing (some 20 numbers, in whole or part, one of them - “Tea for Two,” with guest Elliott Gould), but I also go to the sets of several ABC series, to ask the star to do my show.”
She visits Ron Howard and Tom Bosley of “Happy Days,” Lee Majors of “The Six Million Dollar Man” and Lynda Carter of “Wonder Woman.” Other bits involve gossip columnist Rona Barrett and “McMillan” star Rock Hudson.
“These are little pieces of comedy. The writing is quite funny.”
“I used to do that sort of thing in Australia a long time ago. I was off a daily afternoon show, “Time for Terry”, with an English comedian, Terry O’Neill, as a girl-of-all-work.
“That was my first job on television, when I was 16. I sang, did comedy, helped with a game and gave out prizes.”
“Later, when I returned to England, I was on a lot of variety shows and did sketches, too.”
“I was regularly on Cliff Richard’s show. He’s a singer, but there were a couple of comedians and we’d do skits.”
Winner of numerous awards in both pop and country and western categories, Miss Newton-John (“Some people call me ‘Livvy” and some just “Hey, you’”) doesn’t consider tonight’s show a pilot.
“If ABC and I are both happy with it,” she said, “we’ll see what happens next year. But I don’t know that I’m eager to do a weekly show. Specials are more exciting.”
“I’ve had offers to do series, but you can spend more time on specials. I’ve known I was going to do this one for a year. We’ve been working on it for two months.”
“I’ve had quite a few film offers, but nothing that I thought was right for me. I’m not an actress, I’m a singer. If there was a role I was able to relate to….
“It will either happen or it won’t. I’d rather do nothing than something that’s no good.”
“I feel about it the same way I feel about picking a song I’ll know it when I hear it. I usually don’t do a song unless I like it. The last exception was three years ago, in a Eurovision competition. The public chose the one song in six I liked least “Long Live Love”.
“I didn’t like it, but it became the number one hit!”
The granddaughter of a Nobel Prize-winning German physicist, Max Born, whose closest friend was Albert Einstein, she was born in Cambridge, England. Her Welsh father was a professor of German.
“He had a fantastic bass-baritone voice,” Miss Newton-John says. “There was always music in the house, and I guess his love of music rubbed off on me.”
Now living in a Malibu house that reportedly cost $350,000 with “my family six horses, four dogs and a cat” and combining business and romance with Lee Kramer, an ex shoe importer who now manages her career, Miss Newton-John plans to remain in the United States.
She’s not eligible for citizenship for three more years.
“I love it here,” she says. “America has been amazingly good to me.”
Editor’s note - “Long Live Love” was not a number 1 hit, it reached number 11 in the UK charts and was not even released in the US. This could be a misprint.