Miss Goody Two Shoes Grows Up
By Lesley Salisbury
When Olivia Newton-John went to America, they called her Miss Goo Two-Shoes and she seemed an unlikely candidate for American superstardom. But the heroine of the current world success, Grease, took the States by storm and is now a shrewd dollar millionairess. She returns to England to star in an ITV spectacular at Christmas.
SHE ARRIVED in America five years ago on the strength of one hit record and on the arm of her new shoe salesman boyfriend.
Miss Goody Two-Shoes they called her when she arrived. Squeaky clean, with milkshake looks white sweaters, white trousers, toothpaste-white smile, wholesome girl-next-door image, she seemed an unlikely candidate for American superstardom.
But Olivia Newton-John has done it. The sweet-voiced Anglo-Australian took the States by surprise and then by storm.
She has won a wardrobe-full of singing awards, six of her seven albums went either to gold or platinum, her total record sales are hovering around the 25 million mark. she’s a dollar millionairess, and now she’s co-starring with the world’s new heart-throb in a movie that grossed 58 million dollars in its first month in the U.S. alone.
It’s her appearance in Grease that marks the Americanisation of Olivia. She vamps on-screen in skin-tight black satin pants, sleazy, low-cut blouse, red stiletto heels, cigarette dangling from scarlet lips.
Cliff Richard must have had quite a nasty turn when he first saw her… For it was Cliff who took Olivia under his wing and helped make her a star in Britain, where she arrived at 16, wide-eyed and innocent, as the result of winning a talent contest in Australia.
The shy, unshowbizzy Olivia met Bruce Welch, Cliff’s friend and Shadows drummer, they became engaged, as couples did in the mid-Sixties, and friends expected Livvy to settle down and start a family.
Then suddenly her career started to take off. She had two hit singles. If Not For You and Banks Of The Ohio. She toured Europe with Cliff, building up a huge following for herself, then became a regular guest on Cliff’s TV series. Her affair with Welch faded…her career soared.
In 1971 and 1972 she was voted Best British Girl Singer by readers of the Record Mirror. In 1973 came Let Me Be There and her first Grammy as Best Country Vocalist. Then came Lee Kramer, a shoe salesman who had made a small fortune importing cowboy boots to Europe, and her assault on America.
Britain watched in surprise as Olivia recorded one hit after an-other in the States and built up an army of fans among America’s middle of the road country music lovers.
Even Cliff Richard was impressed. He followed Olivia to America two years ago after his hit song Devil Woman made the charts - his first American success. An unknown there, he toured the States telling Americans who he was and how many hits he had had over the past 20-odd years.
Meanwhile, Olivia is queen of middle of the road. And now, with the huge box-office success of Grease, the film she made with John Travolta, she’s queen of the movies. Despite the last-reel metamorphosis from Miss Goody Two Shoes 24 to Greasers’ Delight, the film does nothing to change Livvy’s long-standing image as the nicely brought-up button-nosed Doris Day of the Seventies.
True, she’s rocking and rolling for the first time in her 13-year career yes, she’s now 29 and yes, she still looks like a teenager but she can’t escape her cute, country, candyflose image, however hard she tries.
“I know I appear to be wholesome and some people think I’m too good to be true, but innocent I’m not,” she says.
“This clean image is nothing I’ve cultivated. I’m really terrible underneath. Honestly, I do everything that most normal people do. I even have vices”.
What they are she isn’t saying, but they can hardly be wicked enough to pull her down from her pop pedestal.
Olivia, curled up in socks and dungarees on her exquisite print sofa, says: “During my break-ups with Lee (and there have been many) I’ve never had an affair with another man. I’ve only had two affairs ever”.
“It’s just the way I’m made. People don’t want to hear that you’re nice, but that’s what I am. In fact I’m pretty boring. I don’t take drugs, I don’t get into anything strange. Until now there were no love scandals at all.”
She’s talking about the rumoured “affair” that she and the torrid Mr. Travolta enjoyed while making Grease.
“I guess gossip was inevitable.” she sighs. “I’d never had that sort of gossip about me before, so it was something of a novelty and I didn’t worry. But I was in the middle of a break-up with Lee at the time our longest break-ups one of so the rumours took quite a hold. It wasn’t true, though”.
“We became good friends and spent a lot of time together. He gave me a lot of confidence.” She and Travolta became such close friends that when Olivia was appearing in cabaret recently at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, the blue-eyed idol turned up to keep her company. On stage.
Pandemonium broke out when a black-suited figure leaped on stage and started jiving to the music. It was only when Olivia joined in and the music switched to the number one Grease hit You’re The One That I want, that the penny dropped. “The audience went wild.” Livvy says. “We remembered all the dance steps. It was the kind of show you wish all your friends had seen.”
All her friends, like nearly all of America, have seen Grease, and she’s still thrilled with her reviews.
“It’s always been in the back of my mind to do films,” she admits. “I was just waiting for the right part.”
It came when she was having dinner with her friend and fellow-Australian singer Helen Reddy. Another dinner guest was Grease producer Allan Carr who promptly offered Livvy the role as the s the goody-goody girl-next-door who ends up out-jiving John ‘Legs’ Travolta himself. “I had a ball doing the character change,” says Olivia. “The film crew were always treating me like Sandy, this goody-goody naive girl. She wasn’t like me at all. Well, bits of her were. I suppose…”
“Well, one day - the day before we were supposed to shoot the scene that has Sandy’s change I showed up like the other girl and the crew practically leapt on me.
“I said to myself what have I been doing wrong? this side is so much more fun than being sweet and innocent.”
Not that Newton-John is about to change. Behind that prim and prettily proper image is a shrewd, determined, ambitious lady.
She is busy recording a new album, looking for top-quality film scripts, limiting her TV appearances because she is wary of over-exposure, investing wisely.
She was tough enough to insist on a film test with Travolta before she agreed to do Grease. She wanted and got script rewrites and equal billing, and she recently threatened to cancel a Japanese tour if the government went ahead with its dolphin-killing programme. The government backed down. the tour was back on.
The new Newton-John is becoming someone to reckon with. She leases jets to whizz her off to a private water-skiing lake in the California desert for an afternoon’s relaxation. When she’s packing them in Las Vegas she flies home every afternoon for two hours horse-riding. She is recognised wherever she goes - Japan, the Middle East, Europe, Australia, America. An American superstar in the best tradition.
And what does the future hold for the new superstar? Let her answer that prospect herself: “Obviously Lee and I are living together. We’ve talked about marriage because I do want to have a family and I do insist I wouldn’t bring children into the world unless I were married. Now that I’ve hit 30. I can’t leave it too long”.
“But I have a lot of commitments in my career just now. I’ve worked all my life to get where I am and I am not going to make the mistake like so many others who have achieved success of never taking time to enjoy it”.
After her European tour and other engagements in London and Manchester, she returns to Los Angeles.
TRACK FACTS
The Grease soundtrack (RSO Records) features Olivia Newton-John’s two huge hits You’re the One I Want and Summer Nights.
But if you prefer her without John Travolta cooing in her ear, try her Greatest Hits album (EMI). Included are tracks like If Not For You, Banks of the Ohio, I Honestly Love You, Let Me Be There and Take Me Home Country Roads.
Other albums (all on the EMI label) which are still available are Making A Good Thing Better, Come on Over, Don’t Stop Believing, Long Live Love and First Impressions.
Photo captions: - Olivia Newton-John with the two important men and present in her life. Above, with Bruce Welch, Shadows drummer to whom she was engaged in the mid-Sixties. Their romance waned as Olivia's career soared. Below, with her boyfriend and manager, Lee Kramer. Previous page - From schoolgirl to siren: Olivia Newton-John arrived in Britain 13 years ago as a wide-eyed teenager, winner of an Australian talent contest. Her sweet image went with her to the US five years ago years in which she has blossomed into one of the screen's most unlikely sex symbols, co-starring with John Travolta in Grease.