Olivia Slips into Her New Career in Grease
Ed - this is a photocopy of the original article
A couple of days later, it’s back to virginal in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel. It’s her day off, with time for a long lunch with the girls at the Polo Lounge, a chat with the press, then off to have a facial “to get all this awful makeup off.”
N-J dresses down, in light jeans and simple shirt. Though she’s near 30 now. she might be mistaken for a teenager except for the key she’s strung around her neck. That proves she’s 21 at least - it’s the traditional gift at English 21st birthday parties.
Perched on the edge of a settee in front of the roaring open fireplace. N-J talks about the difficulties controlling her image. In a midsummer week when she’s the cover girl on two big magazines, she’s become aware that “when you start a film career, you’re more vulnerable, and you’re immediately open to gossip”. Her unlisted phone rang at 3 a.m. recently because the National Star hoped to surprise her into amazing half-awake revelations. None was forthcoming.
N-J “lives alone” behind a high fence on a few acres in Malibu.
Ever since the days when she wanted to be a mounted-policewoman, she’s loved animals. Her Malibu spread shelters half a dozen horses, some Great Danes and Irish setters and a cat or two. “Animals are so giving,” she says. “They don’t ask for anything. They’re perfect.”
N-J was frustrated as a child because “from a baby I had a passion for strays,” but her mother was afraid of dogs. So when she grew up, “as soon as I could afford to have them, I went berserk.”
One of her strongest memories comes from the age of 7: “There was a man in a horse-drawn cart who used to pick up the rubbish. I remember once he was whipping his horse. I ran up, took the whip away from him and screamed and screamed at him. It was so awful.”
She might be as bland as she makes herself out to be: “People don’t want to hear that you’re nice. But that’s what I am. In fact, I’m pretty boring. I’m a normal person, I guess. I don’t take drugs. and I don’t get into anything strange. Up to now, there weren’t any love scandals.”
She will not talk about Travolta, with whom gossipers allege she’s, well, you know. Nor is she interested in discussing the break-up of her five-year relationship with Lee Kramer, who was her more-than-a-manager, but is no longer.
“Right now I’m a novelty. Before, I wasn’t usually written about, but suddenly I’m an item. Luckily, the things I’ve seen so far haven’t been nasty. I thought I’d get upset, but I haven’t - I’ve just laughed. I find it amusing. All that attention is nice in a way.”
N-J has always been moving toward the mainstream and it means more intense scrutiny, even while she was winning her country music awards two and three years ago and was the darling of the country audience. More than John Denver, she succeeded in straddling styles.
“When I branched out, I found that the country people were extremely loyal and stayed with me even when my songs weren’t country.”
People kept coming up to Olivia Newton-John and saying. “Baby, you oughta be in pictures.” That quick girlish grin. antipodean orthodontistry’s finest advertisement, seemed ideal for the wide screen. So every contract “Livvy” signed contained an escape clause allowing her to drop everything and go to Hollywood when the right film came along.
“Grease” was right. The part of an American girl of the rock ‘n’ roll era was perfect for the Australian who sings country-pop. N-J. working in Europe. exercised her clause and escaped into her new career.
“Once you’ve done so many performances,” she says, “you want to move on to other things.” That’s an unexceptionable sentiment from one whose discourse is full of unexceptionable sentiments. The only nasty thing people can find to say about N-J is that she’s too nice. Her Sandra Dee-ish part in “Grease.” the ’50s tribal love-rock musical, will do nothing to change her goody image.
Which is as planned. Two previous film offers “didn’t feel right and the scripts had some violence in them.” And they weren’t musicals. “Music is my ideal introduction, the only thing I have to go on.” N-J says. With typical defensiveness, she adds. “If people don’t like my singing. I hope they’ll like my acting”.
She may be the new Doris Day, maybe the new Julie Andrews. This is the biased view of “Grease” co-producer Allan Carr, who says that quite a few other film-makers have screened “Grease” footage with a view toward casting her.
“Whatever film I did first was going to be a gamble.” she says defensively again. and she won’t talk about further film work. As for becoming the new Doris or the new Julie, that “would be great.” She’s making no boasts now that the press could bludgeon her with later.
The set is a carnival, plunked down on the football field of Marshall High in Griffith Park. N-J and co-star John Travolta are lip-synching through a fun-house song-and-dance routine that comes at the end of the picture, when she stops playing Miss Goody Two-Shoes and learns to out-grease Travolta.
The song is “You’re the One That I Want.” Next Easter, this very 70s pastiche of the ’50s idiom will be the single that will, it is hoped, drive millions of kids into movie houses to see “Grease.” This up-tempo semi tough number will be a shock for the kind of N-J fan who went to her recent concerts and was touched to receive at the door a single perfect rose - dethorned, of course.
As the thermometer burns toward 90 and the Marshall High grass browns. N-J and Travolta keep going through their torrid dance duet while the speakers blast out the pre-recorded song. Her costume is black skintight pants, off-the-shoulder blouse, red backless high heels, tight blonde curls and vampy makeup. This last-reel personality change was one of the big attractions in the “Grease” script “I’m usually very virginal,” she says. “but it’s fun to be different, too.”
Her new album, “Making a Good Thing Better,” contains a real image-changing track, a long, lush ballad, “Don’t Cry for Me. Argentina.” Though the album is the familiar across-the-board mix of styles and the country-tinged title track was the album’s first single. N-J is summoning up courage to issue “Argentina” next. Selections of singles are crucial decisions in a singer’s career. “I’m contemplating whether to release Argentina here.” she says cautiously. Wouldn’t it silence your critics? “It would probably silence the radio.”
she comes back, with her ever-present nervous laugh. Those who’ve heard only her singles might disagree, but she claims, “I love that kind of challenging material. It’s to do with the age thing as well.” The laugh again. “I want to do slightly more adult things now.”
One of the slightly more adult things she’s doing behind her Malibu fence is writing songs for herself. The new album contains one N-J composition, “Don’t Ask a Friend,” which blends in well enough to fool most listeners into thinking a long-time professional wrote it.
N-J is leaving enough rest time after “Grease” wraps this fall to write more extensively. Since she first hit the U.S. charts in 1973 with “Let Me Be There.” she’s been so busy that “I haven’t known for a long time what it’s like to have no plans.”
While she’s reposing with her menagerie, waiting for inspiration to strike, she hopes her image will be out there taking care of itself. “I’m not doing anything to change what people think of me. People find what they want to find in a performer. and I can’t really object to what they’ve found in me so far”.
“My image will change when they find something more of me. Not something different, something more. I’d like to broaden my talents” Nervous laugh “Let’s hope there’s something more of me in there for people to find”.