Success Agrees With Olivia
HOLLYWOOD - (NEA)
Her name is Olivia Newton-John and she made it big by singing, anytime, anywhere, and now that she has become a superstar, she doesn’t sing anytime, anywhere any more.
The thing is that, like so many earlier superstars, when she became rich and famous she also became a home owner. And she acquired things. So, naturally, all she wants to do these days is figure out how she can stay home more.
To visit Olivia Newton-John, you have to drive up the coast and then take a side road into the hills. Then you come to a gate and, when you announce yourself, it silently swings open and you go up a dirt road, past horses and fields and people doing things to the horses and fields. And, finally, you come to a house.
This is the house that Olivia Newton-John’s success built. It is her refuge from all that pandemonium out there. It is a sunny house, because she is a sunny lady. It is full of animals, because she loves animals. It seems to be a happy home, and she seems to be a happy person.
“If there is such a thing as reincarnation,” she says, “the thing that worries me is that I’ve had such good luck this time. If I did come back again, I could never have it this good. I think I’d like to be one of my dogs - only my dogs because they have a great life. So do I.”
She was born in England, but went to Australia when she was five and considers herself an Australian. Her father is Welsh and her mother German, but she never learned how to speak German “because as a kid, during World War II, it wasn’t advisable to speak German.”
Her family was somewhat split between academia and show business. Her father taught German and tutored German and became a headmaster of an Australian school. And her brother is a doctor.
But there is the show business side to the family, too. Olivia’s older sister, Rona, was an actress before she married. And her cousin, Max Born, was discovered by Fellini when he was 15 and is still an actor in Italy. “According to my parents,” she says, “as a kid I always sang, but, strangely. I sang harmonies rather than the melody”.
“My father always had classical music playing - loud. Today, classical music makes me sad. Big orchestras make me emotional. I really can’t take too much of that”.
The family expected Olivia to go on to the university and make something intellectual of herself. The only diverse opinion came from Rona, Olivia’s sister, who urged her to do something with her singing talent.
But Olivia favored neither course. Because of her passion for pets, she wanted to be a veterinarian. But, she says, she failed the courses necessary for admission to that line of study and so decided to become a singer. When she was 15, she went back to England to first study and then sing professionally. It was not exactly an overnight success story.
“I always enjoyed it,” she says, “even though it grew slowly. I’ve been in it 13 years now, and I never starved, but the first few years were somewhat difficult. But even when I worked divey clubs, it was always fun.”
For a while, she teamed -Pat with another girl Carroll and did a double act. She says she and Pat had been competitors in Australia, but teamed up when they both found the going tough in England. Pat is not singing any more: she is married to Olivia’s record producer.
Throughout her years in England, she was first and foremost a singer. But she did do one spot of acting. Some seven or eight years ago - Olivia’s memory of dates is rather spotty-she appeared in a movie in England.
“It was called “Tomorrow” and it was a disaster,” she says. “It opened and closed in a week. I’ve been trying to get a copy of that film for the last five years. And, this year, as a birthday present, found a print.”
Lee is Lee Kramer, her manager and beau for the last few years.
But now she has done her second job of acting, and the results should be more positive. Olivia is one of the stars of the big Paramount film, “Grease,” based on the stage success.
“I think it could be terrific”, she says. “I saw the dailies every day, and I learned from them. I think it has potential, and I honestly feel I have potential as an actress, too.”
Now that she has tested the waters in the acting pond, she thinks she’d like to do more.
For one thing, acting would let her stay home more, stay on her four-acre place with the horses, the cats, the dogs.