I'm not that naive at all
Translation:
The “Grease” girl is finally fed up with her reputation as a clean-cut girl.
Blonde, blue-eyed, and with a radiant toothpaste smile — for years, Olivia Newton-John was a cute, clean-cut Miss Clean. “.. I had neither a good nor a bad reputation,” complains the Grease Girl. “What’s worse is, I didn’t have any at all!”
But since she asserted herself with so much booty and pop alongside John Travolta, more and more people are beginning to take an interest in the other side of this cute little American flower.
Olivia has made the transition from eternal teenager to grown-up woman. The impetus was definitely “Grease,” she admits in an interview with Freizeit magazine.
“Everyone was amazed that I was able to portray the naive girl Sandy just as convincingly as the lady at the end.” “That’s a real acting performance”, confirms Lee Kramer, Olivia’s friend and manager, after all, “it’s not easy for a woman of thirty to play a 17-year-old teenager”.
Lee and Livvy have known each other for five years. “It was love at first sight,” reveals the blond Englishman… “we met in Monte Carlo. I was just 21 years old and had rented a boat on the Cote d’Azur to really laze around for half a year”.
“One day, my cousin came by with his fiancée and her friend to look at the boat. And when the friend suddenly stood in front of me, tanned and looking at me with the most beautiful blue eyes in the world, that was it for me.”
The two were inseparable for two days, then Livvy had to return to England. Lee: “I dropped everything, got a ticket on the same plane, and we’ve been together ever since.”
The fact that Olivia was also having an affair with Shadows guitarist Bruce Welch at the same time was a bitter pill for Lee to swallow.
“For months, we met in the most idiotic corners of London. Livvy was always afraid that someone would catch us”.
“Bruce was horribly jealous and possessive. If I ever left him, he would kill himself, he threatened to me”, Olivia added, shaking her head. “I just didn’t have the courage to tell him anything about Lee.”
But Olivia isn’t the type to endure such secrecy for long. She confessed everything to Bruce, whereupon he took an overdose of pills. He was saved.
Since Livvy’s song Let Me Be There had just become a hit in America at the same time, it was a welcome opportunity for both of them to draw a firm line under this sad English chapter of their lives.
Lee says. “we decided to push Olivia’s career in the USA”. The decision paid off. Since 1973, she has been one of America’s top stars. She owns a ranch in Malibu, millions and gold records galore.
“Sometimes I feel guilty,” she says, “I have houses, cars, clothes, horses, and other people have nothing.”
It’s not easy to forget that. Is she sometimes afraid that it could all be over? “Afraid of being poor? No,” she says firmly, “I only have one fear, the primal fear that every human being has. Of dying”.
Photocaptions: Olivia in “Rock-Pop”: Admired by a few young Travoltas, she put on a hot show
Inseparable for months: After many fights and crises, Olivia and Lee Kramer now want to get married