Olivia talks about Grease
NOT since Doris Day has Hollywood produced wholesome, apple-type singing movie star complete with upturned nose, blonde hair, freckles, squeaky clean image and the fragrance of laundry soap
That particular ray-of-sunshine girl disappeared with the advent of screen nudity, profanity-ladened dialogue and a new Holly wood rating system designed to accommodate sex in the most explicit terms.
But that delectable, all-American girl may re-surface with the release of Grease, a lavish movie version of the popular (and still running Broadway musical tribute to youth of the Fifties.
Only she won’t be American. She is Australia’s Olivia Newton-John, the recording star who stars with current teenage rage and Oscar nominee John Travolta.
Olivia has made a fortune in four years with eight albums, four of which were certified platinum for selling at least a million copies each.
A native of England reared in Australia, Olivia is bent on making the transition from vocalist to actress. The odds are weighted against her. Only Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross, among genuine superstar vocalists, have managed to become movie stars in the past 20 years. Not to scorn the talents of Julie Andrews or Liza Minnelli. Before Barbra and Diana, Doris Day was the exception.
Scores of top-flight women singers from Peggy Lee through Rosemary Clooney to Petula Clark and Dinah Shore failed to become outright film stars. Judy Garland was a movie star before she became a recording star. Olivia is bright, talented, ambitious and physically designed for the role of musical movie star.
“Turning actress was a departure for me in a way”, she says. “But Grease is a musical so my appearance in it is also an extension, I’ve been offered movies in the past but I couldn’t find a role in a straight drama that suited me. Musicals just weren’t being made the past three or four years for any one except Streisand and Liza Minnelli.”
“I saw “Grease” on stage in London seven years ago and enjoyed it very much. When the lead role in the movie was offered to me I took it happily. I figured a singing role wouldn’t be too much of a jolt for me or the audience.”
Olivia is a refreshing. guileless woman who looks people straight in the eye. She answers questions directly and in plain language.
Language, not so incidentally, is the big-eyed beauty’s principal problem. She speaks an Aussie argot with an accent that would curl the hair of a Mayfair Englishman and set an elocutionist screaming for mercy. Her accent is also charming.
“I was supposed to play an American girl in Grease,” Olivia says “But they changed her to Australian because of my accent. I was perfectly willing to learn my dialogue with an American accent. I could have done it because there’s no trace of Australian accent when I sing. Even when I lived in Australia I sang American. Everybody does.”
“Making movies interests me a great deal. It’s time I branched out. I’m 29 and getting on, you know. I play an 18-year-old girl in an American high school in the film. The setting is the 1950s. And it’s easy for me to play a younger female because the part is so beautifully written. The costumes are exactly right”.
“I didn’t have to think too much about playing someone 10 years younger than my age. The nice part is, I was about 10 years old my self during the era of the picture and I remember the music and the attitudes.”
Olivia makes a convincing teenager since she looks at least a decade younger than her 29 years. But that’s not to say she is a wide-eyed innocent.
She has been with her Lee companion-manager Kramer, an Englishman, for five years. She shrugs off stories that have her romancing other men, including Travolta, whom she describes as a dear and platonic friend. The stories linking her with the 24-year-old Travolta bother her most.
“He’s just a good mate,” Olivia says. “We sing a duet together in the film and I have only one solo. But John and I sing along with the rest of the cast in a couple of other songs”.
“I realise John is quite young, but he’s a well trained actor. John helped me a lot on the set when we filmed Grease, especially in the beginning of the film when I was very, very nervous. He was tremendously professional and always very generous in the scenes we shared.”
“One night we worked very late and everyone in the cast and crew was tired. The director was doing a close-up on me, shooting over John’s shoulder. It was a key scene as far as my performance was concerned and John realised it.”
“Because I was exhausted I wasn’t doing very well, but I’d managed to get through a ‘take’ pretty well. Then John would deliberately make a mistake because he knew I was unhappy with my performance so I had the opportunity to do it again and again until it was right.”
For the past three years Olivia has lived on a four-acre ranch in the hills above Malibu, Hollywood’s elite beach colony. She keeps nine horses (five of her own), four dogs and two cats. She rides horseback almost every day.
Although she is an American resident, she retains British citizenship.
“The recording field gave me the opportunity to become successful and well known,” Olivia says. “And now it seems to be opening up a film career”.
“I had a ball doing Grease. Everyone in it was young and enthusiastic. Now I’m dying to do another picture. But this time without music because it’s something I’ve never done before”.
“Singing on stage is fine, but it is too easy to become complacent doing the same thing year after year. Complacency can kill incentive. I’m a little bit lazy and acting helps me dig into myself to discover things I didn’t know before.”
Olivia had never danced professionally until Grease. That’s something else she had to learn and did. “It was a lot of work but I did it,” she says. “It helps a lot when you’ve got somebody like John Travolta as a partner.”
Olivia laughs. “Me become another Doris Day! I’d love it, mate. I used to see all her films.”
by Vernon Scott