This Is Your Story - Banana's Yearbook

Sometimes it seems as if you have always been a star, as if there never was a time when you weren't at the top of the entertainment world. It's sometimes hard to imagine that you didn't have it easy, that you had to struggle to win the success that you're so beautifully basking in now. But it's true, isn't it, Olivia? It's been a long road to the top, a road we're going to travel back on with you now.... This Is Your Story - Olivia Newton-John!

The FLASHBACK-September 27, 1948, Cambridge, England.

A baby girl with enormous blue eyes is born to a distinguished family of scholars. Christened Olivia, you're the daughter of a Cambridge University professor, the granddaughter of a Nobel prize-winning physicist. But even as a young child, you're showing signs that your interests and abilities lie outside of academic life. Your favorite toy is your father's piano, which you love to play.

FLASHBACK-1953.

You're five now, and your family moves to Melbourne, Australia, where your father becomes headmaster of Ormond College, and where you grow up in a refined, educational atmosphere. One sad note during these happy years is the divorce of your parents when you're 11 years old.

You're 13 when your mother gives you your first guitar - a gift she's later to regret. Two years later, you and three friends have formed a group called the Sol Four, and you spend all your spare time singing. Your mother fears that music is interfering with your schoolwork, so she forbids you to sing during the week. But on weekends you're allowed to entertain at parties and clubs around Melbourne.

In spite of your budding talent, growing up isn't easy for you. I hated high school dances, you've recalled. I was very wobbly and scared to death of humiliating myself. I was too scared to move and felt bad about being so gangly. It's only when you're performing that you feel poised and confident.

TOO SOON?

Soon you're winning TV talent con-tests. One of your prizes is a trip to London, which you decide to postpone for a while because you've got to make a big personal decision. Should you stay in school and please your family or drop out and become a professional singer? Melbourne newspapers are interested in your situation - remember the stories they featured about you, with headlines like School or Stardom??

Finally, you make up your mind. You leave school at 16 and become-not an instant star - but the hostess of a local kiddie show sponsored by a soft drink. The show is the Tarax Happy Show, and you're known as Lovely Livvy. You greet guests, hand out prizes, and sing a few silly songs. For this you left school and got yourself in big trouble with your father?!

FLASHBACK-London, 1965.

The Tarax Happy Show is making you miserable, so you take that prize-winning trip to London you've been putting off. Now begins the dreary routine of trying to break into big-time show business. With a friend from home, Pat Carroll, you form Olivia and Pat, girl singers and dancers, and take your act from one dingy English club to another.

Pat remembers those hard times: Before our first important headline date, we rehearsed for two weeks in our flat, practicing spins, hand gestures, using soda bottles as microphones. On opening night we did our routines and got hopelessly tangled up in our microphone cords, tripping and stumbling across the stage. No wonder you've said that you're prepared at any time to fall on your face!

FLASHBACK-1970.

It's turkey time in England, but this occasion is nothing to be thankful for. Remember Toomorrow, Livvy? A disaster masquerading as a space musical. It's your first movie, and a total flop. It was terrible, and I was terrible in it. They kept telling me I had to project, so I went through the whole movie shouting. But Toomorrow is nothing to shout about, and after this experience you vow never to do another movie again.From Toomorrow there's no place to go but up - and you do. At last you've got a hit record, Let Me Be There, your version of a Bob Dylan tune. Rock producer Don Kirschner remembers meeting you then: I walked into her manager's office...and there was this kewpie doll in knee socks. I knew she could be the darling of millions! I walked the streets of London with Olivia just telling her how incredible she was gonna be. Talent is the key to her success, but there's a powerful magnetic quality about her, something that immediately gets under your skin, and you can't shake it!

FLASHBACK, 1971:

The British public has got you under its skin, and Kirschner's prediction begins to come true. For two years in a row you're voted Best British Girl Singer, but you can't slow down and enjoy your success. You've got to make another big decision - should you come to America? Let Me Be There is rising fast on U.S. charts and you're convinced that now's the time to come over.

I decided that if I was going to do it, I had to do it all the way, you've explained. So you pack your bags and leave the security of an established career and head for the vast unknown regions of U.S. show business.

TOO GOOD-LOOKING!

FLASHBACK, 1973: Welcome to America! Your first record here is a big hit, but some people wish you'd turn around and go back home. Suddenly you're getting criticism you've never heard before about your looks! They're saying you're too pretty to be a real singer, that it's just your looks that have gotten you where you are. And you've always thought of your-self as just average-looking!

I find the whole question of looks embarrassing, you've explained. The one great thrill I had in America was that my music was accepted before I was ever on TV or did live appearances. Therefore, I had to hope it was my music and not my face.

Some of the hurt is eased when you win a Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for Let Me Be There. Country? I didn't know what a country hit meant; I didn't know there was a difference between it and any thing else.

You learn fast, Livvy. In 1974 you win the Country Music Award for Top Female Vocalist, and have to deal with the anger of several established country singers who feel the award should not have gone to a foreigner. Even Dolly Parton is annoyed. But you courageously go to Nashville to record several tracks for a new album, and manage to win over all your critics. Everybody in town fell in love with her, says one veteran studio musician. And now Dolly Parton is a good friend of yours!

TOO NICE!

While you're soaring to the top, you manage to stay nice - too nice, according to some people. You're accused of being a manufactured personality. But you're for real, Livvy. Polite, thoughtful, kind, and totally crazy about animals. You buy a beautiful home in the hills above Malibu, big enough to include your four horses, one foal, three Great Danes, an Irish setter and two calico cats. In fact, you're so devoted to your menagerie that when you're performing in Las Vegas you charter a plane to fly home every day so you can ride and play with the dogs, then get back for your evening shows.

People don't want to hear that you're nice, but that's what I am, In fact, I'm pretty boring.

FLASHBACK, 1977:

Allan Carr, a producer, doesn't think you're boring, Livvy. He thinks you're warm, funny, smart, and perfect for the female lead in a musical he's producing, Grease. He's got John Travolta and was thinking of Marie Osmond to play opposite him. But then he meets you at a party at Helen Reddy's house. He describes the part of Sandy and offers you the role. You're tempted, but remembering the fiasco of Toomorrow you insist on a screen test. If you're no good, no Grease.

Soon you're parked at a drive-in with John Travolta, improvising a scene while the cameras grind. It's screen-test time, and the results are perfect! So with you as Sandy, Grease goes into high gear, and you respond to the challenge of a movie musical.

It was pretty scary. But I just had a gut feeling about the part. I thought it was a great vehicle for me because I play two characters, starting as a lovable sweet innocent, then becoming a greaser to try and get the guy. It's Sandy's transformation that's the most fun for you. Can this be you, Livvy, prancing around in skin-tight black satin pants and spike heels, your hair a tough-looking tangle of curls? I had a ball, you recall, and credit John Travolta's gracious cooperation for helping you act, sing, and dance up a storm.

FLASHBACK, 1978:

Grease is a triumph for you personally and at the box office. The hard-to-please New York Times describes you as simultaneously very funny and utterly charming. Your success spills over to the record charts, where songs such as You're the One That I Want, Summer Nights, and Hopelessly Devoted to You take up residence in gold and platinum territory. Movie producers are ecstatic. It's been years since Hollywood has seen a star who can sing, dance, and act like you. Most observers predict a whole new direction for your career.

Today your album Totally Hot is a big hit, and you've learned at last how to enjoy your success. But you still have a hard time believing all this has happened to you. We'd have to agree with you, Livvy, when you say, I feel something magical has happened to me!

By Margaret Howard