Her image changes but her fans stay loyal - Sarasota Herald Tribune

By Jennifer Seder 1979, The Los Angeles Times MALIBU, Calif.

In her brand-new Levi's, striped T-shirt and. lizard-toe cowboy boots, Olivia Newton-John looks very much like the girl next door. Only this girl next door happens to live on a seven-acre spread in the Malibu hills laid out with tennis court, swimming pool, seven-horse barn, riding rings, sauna, steam room, jacuzzi, sunken bathrooms and a James Bond-like security front gate with intercom box.

Newton-John's 11 dogs, including Great Danes, Irish setters, Dobermans, bulldogs and mutts, run free. I was going to give a few away recently, but its' hard to find them a better home than they have right here, she says, almost apologetically. I dread to say I might be getting another soon from a friend.

It's a weekday mid-morning, and the slender, blue-eyed blonde with a Chatty Cathy doll face is engulfed in an enormous, overstuffed floral-patterned sofa in her living room. The room is decorated with what she calls pretty, feminine things such as Japanese vase lamps with ruffled shades, a white, lacquered grand piano and soft-focus landscape oils with pastel backgrounds.

At the moment, a drooling, playful red setter named Jackson and a wheezing, overweight bulldog named Tonka are wrestling under a fragile glass coffee table.

Newton-John's love for animals is not exaggerated. During the interview, the dogs stay while Lee Kramer, her live-in boyfriend and personal manager, leaves the room. Jackson, not Kramer, also poses with Newton-John for photographs.

Kramer, a handsome, younger version of Robert Redford, met Newton-John in 1973 when they were both on vacation in France. At the time, he was working in England with his family's import-export cowboy boot business, but gave it up to follow Newton-John to America and eventually handle her career.

Her hair is long and straight for the photo session. She wears thick mascara, no lipstick, and her face shows traces of exhaustion following a recent bout of hepatitis and week-long hospital stay.

What happened to the daring new curls, the skin-tight black leather outfits and flashy, hot pink stretch pants that the singer is said to be wearing now for public appearances? Oh, I do that, too. I'm into a lot of freaky things lately.

Newton-John's latest album, Totally Hot, is the strongest evidence of her apparent image-change since her first major film appearance in Grease. She's pictured on the cover in biker's jacket, skin-tight leather pants and high-heeled boots. And she's leaning like some groupie on a stark white wall, hands shoved into her pockets, hair combed over her eyes.

It's a gutsy, totally cold reversal for the Cinderella of the record industry, who five years ago launched her country-pop career in the States. Back then, she posed a la Sandra Dee in flutter-sleeve, Sweet Sixteen gowns and gardenia head wreaths and frolicked through bucolic backgrounds complete with rolling meadows and flowering trees.

The easy-listening, pop-rock fans went for her. And, to Newton-John's amazement, they go for her now. Black leather and all. Even her harshest critics who used to call her cornier than The Carpenters have changed their tunes. They now describe her with words like charged-up, spunky and full of force.

I was shocked by the reaction, she recalls. I've lived with this innocent, clean-cut image for so long that at first, I was really frightened to do something different. I just kept doing the same, unadventurous things with my hair and face to bring out my universal appeal.

I was the all-English girl when I lived in London, the all-Australian girl when I started out in Melbourne at 15. And now I'm the all-American girl in Los Angeles. I never had the nerve to break out before I did Grease. I thought, my God, people are going to hate it. But I was wrong. I'm more popular now than I ever was, she says with a stiff little smile. Also, I've never been hit on (propositioned) so much in my life as when I first put on those pants.

(In Grease, Olivia plays a Miss Goody Two-Shoes in ponytail and saddle shoes who eventually out-greases co-star John Travolta in her skin-tight stretch pants, stiletto heels, frizzy-haired wig and pancake makeup.)

The 30-year-old superstar can be wearing passion pink Capri pants and a strapless top, as she was for a recent Las Vegas performance, or one of her many elegant $1,500 Chloe evening gowns. Whatever the look, her ingenue image remains intact. What is it about Newton-John that enables her to maintain an ardent following of hopelessly devoted fans, despite the tough new changes in her appearance and her music?

The answer to what makes Newton-John the one that they want is simple. She conveys niceness - even when she's shaking her bottom and belting out raunchy rock and roll. Also, blonde, blue-eyed girls with sweet, wholesome smiles can't go wrong as long as they keep on singing sweet, wholesome songs the public enjoys.

The critics like to explain my success with one word - bland. It's their favorite word when it comes to me. They knock me for being pretty and what's wrong with being pretty? You have to be out of your mind if you don't want to be pretty. Why is it that if you look a little bit funky, the critics give you better reviews? It's because if you're beautiful, they figure you must be dumb and a no-talent.

The good thing is that it's just the opposite with the fans. They like me because I'm pretty and have a pretty voice. They don't care what the critics say. Why should they? I used to tell people I'd make a great air hostess because it's easier for a pretty girl in that situation. Now, I don't care. Grease was a great personal breakthrough for me. I feel as if I can do anything I want.

Newton-John opens her closet and shows off her latest buys - several pairs of Maud Frizon heels, which are the flashiest and most expensive French designer shoes on the market, with the cheapest models costing $210.

I'm trying a lot of new looks now. Like, I recently discovered shoes. I never much cared for them before, she says.

Her wardrobe includes at least a dozen evening dresses designed by the most prestigious designers Karl Lagerfeld of Chloe, London's Bill Gibb and Yves Saint Laurent. Each time Lee goes to Europe he brings me back a Chloe.

Newton-John's newest clothes, she says, are custom-made, body-hugging separates by Los Angeles designer Fleur Thiemeyer (Rod Stewart's designer and the woman Newton-John credits with putting her into funkier clothes.)

And here's what I wore for my visit with the queen, she says. (Last March, she met Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and was made a member of the Order of the British Empire.)

She holds up a simple, white, size 6 Chloe suit and size 7 1/2 B Maud Frizon flower petal toe heels.

The all-American, all-English girl image prevails.