Olivia (27 page)

John impressed upon Olivia that he felt the part was so good that even Goldie Hawn would be happy to take it on. His own role in the movie, John assured her, would be a plum one, too, provided he could instigate a few changes. ‘But I really chose it more for Olivia than for myself,’ John revealed. ‘I felt it would be very good for her. And the best thing was that we were both playing against type - for half of the movie we’re quite obnoxious.’ They were both to play good guys gone bad and candidates for redemption.

For Olivia,
Second Chance
represented a considerable gamble. Without a selection of songs to fall back on to carry her through the movie, she knew she would be judged purely on her acting ability, but that didn’t faze her. She felt she had coped well in the promotional videos for her records and she was ready for the challenge. John Travolta promised her he would be as supportive as he had been throughout the filming of
Grease
.

Despite John’s enthusiasm for the project, the portents were ominous from the start. There had been no fewer than five previous films bearing the title
Second Chance
and, when the realisation dawned that not one of them had been a success, the superstitious movie moguls decided not to tempt the fates and changed the title to
Two Of A Kind
.

As with
Grease
, there was to be a first-time director, John Herzfeld. He found himself in charge of a $14million movie with a plot that was far from straightforward: the story originates in heaven with God all set to destroy the world until a band of angels involve him in a wager. If they can arrange for two selfish earthlings to give up their bad ways and fall in love, then the world will be saved.

Zack and Debbie, the two mortals upon whom the planet’s salvation depends, are played by John and Olivia. Zack is a bumbling, unsuccessful inventor of edible sunglasses and barking doorbells who has ended up heavily in debt to a loan shark. Desperate to solve his financial plight and threatened with having his ears sliced off by thugs if he doesn’t pay up, he turns bank robber and confronts a flirty teller and aspiring actress called Debbie at a bank. Despite being held up at gunpoint, she cleverly sends Zack away with a bag full of worthless paper and runs off with the real loot herself. Zack sets out to track her down and, when he finds her, the two villains have the chance to redeem themselves and an opportunity to save the world by embarking on a romance.

John Travolta was given plenty of licence by Herzfeld to introduce the changes he required in the script, Olivia took a crash course of acting lessons to prepare for her role and, with a promising background soundtrack in the offing, all seemed set fair when the cameras started rolling. But while shooting a scene on location in New York on the first day, Olivia was bitten on the hand by a dog called Pascha who had been lined up as an extra with his master. She had approached to give the collie a pat, ignoring the warning of Pascha’s master that the dog was frightened of large crowds. After sinking his teeth into Olivia’s hand, Pascha’s film debut was promptly cancelled, much to the chagrin of Olivia who knew she was the only one to blame.

Despite an advertising budget of $6million and considerable promotion by the two stars themselves,
Two Of A Kind
turned out to be a stinker. Just prior to the film’s release, Olivia had given the movie a major boost by taking one of the background songs from the film high into the US singles chart. The number, called ‘Twist Of Fate’, was co-written again by her Australian friend Steve Kipner. But as with
Xanadu
, the public decided they liked the music but didn’t like the film. And nothing could stop the film critics.

‘Can it really have been that difficult to find a passable screen vehicle for John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John?’ the
New York Times
despaired. ‘Any old romantic fluff should have sufficed, and yet something as horrible as
Two Of A Kind
has been tailor-made for its stars. The results are so disastrous that absolutely no one is shown off to good advantage, with the possible exception of the hairdressers involved. The coiffeurs don’t always upstage the material, but when they do, it’s a blessing.’

The
New York Times
critic wasn’t the only one to pick up on the magnificently blow-dried hair of the two protagonists. The fact that Olivia firmly kept her clothes on during the obligatory love scene with John also caused some amusement, as did the irony of Olivia playing an aspiring actress in such a mediocre movie.

The generally critical reaction and sluggish returns at the box office were a huge disappointment for John and Olivia. Both badly needed a hit. Travolta’s star had fallen dramatically since the dizzy days of
Saturday Night Fever
and
Grease
, and Olivia was desperate to erase the memories of
Xanadu
. John says that
Two Of A Kind
is one of two movies he’s made which he cannot now bear to watch. The other is
Moment By Moment
. ‘I don’t like to look at either of them,’ he says. ‘They don’t have good memories attached. I didn’t enjoy the shooting experience on either of them and I didn’t enjoy the product of either of them.’

For Twentieth Century Fox’s bosses,
Two Of A Kind
’s failure was a thoroughly unpleasant shock. They expected the re-teaming of John and Olivia to excite teenage audiences and to set the box office alight.
Two Of A Kind
did neither.

Just as the soundtrack had proved the saving grace for
Xanadu
, so it proved now for
Two Of A Kind
, albeit without achieving
Xanadu
’s multi-million sales. Olivia contributed three numbers, including ‘Livin’ In Desperate Times’, which reached number thirty-one in the charts. She also co-wrote ‘Take A Chance’ on which she duetted with John. But it was never going to be another blockbusting hit in the manner of ‘You’re The One That I Want’ from
Grease
.

In promotional interviews leading up to the movie’s release, John and Olivia talked of teaming up every few years if
Two Of A Kind
turned out to be a hit. It wasn’t. Instead, the movie effectively killed off any realistic hopes Olivia may have had of enjoying a major Hollywood movie career purely as an actress.

She waited another seven years before venturing into films again in
A Mom For Christmas
, a made-for-TV Disney family movie in which she played a shop mannequin who becomes the mother of a little girl who has no mother of her own and a workaholic father who neglects her. Australian director George Miller, who described Olivia’s as ‘one of the great smiles of the twentieth century’, was hugely impressed by her ability to cry on cue in one emotional scene.

After
Two Of A Kind
’s poor returns, a lot was riding on her next studio album,
Soul Kiss
, which was released the following year. The surprise was that, while ‘Physical’ may have been suggestive, the
Soul Kiss
album sought to portray the singer as a sex siren. And that was even before the LP hit the turntable.

Across the centre spread of the double-fold LP sleeve stretched Olivia in sheer red tights and matching silk top, her lips plumped and pouting and her hair tousled, in a colour photo by top celebrity photographer Herb Ritts. The front cover had Olivia lounging seductively, while the back cover had her in the most daring of poses in a photograph by Helmut Newton. The late German photographer was dubbed the King of Kink for his series of risqué photographic studies of nude women, and his portrait of Olivia for the
Soul Kiss
LP was startling and no less controversial. On the back cover he had Olivia pose as a semi-nude dominatrix in impossibly tight white riding breeches and black knee-high boots and holding a whip in both hands behind her back while she admired herself in a mirror with just a white silk scarf covering her breasts.

The
New York Times
reported incredulously: ‘A topless blond dominatrix stares invitingly into a mirror, her nipples obscured by a strategically placed scarf. She’s a study in the complex theatre of the female persona, the softness of her wet perm offset by the strictness of her white jodhpurs and the riding whip she holds behind her back . . . It’s testament to the power of Newton’s unique libidinal vision that he could make even Newton-John look carnal and knowing.’

Olivia was never entirely at ease with Helmut Newton’s photographic take on her for
Soul Kiss
. She wasn’t being true to herself. ‘It was kind of contrived and I wasn’t comfortable with that,’ she said many years later. But at the time of the album’s release she was happy to try and justify the racier image.

‘Matt has helped me lose my inhibitions,’ she said. ‘He encourages me, supports me and is happy for me to do anything I feel comfortable with. He’s not a jealous kind of husband, he’s not one of those possessive husbands who says: “How dare you look like that for other men.”

‘The new look is tongue-in-cheek raunchy, not meant to be taken seriously.’

If the sleeve photos were provocative, the music, or to be exact, the lyrics on
Soul Kiss
were no less surprising. The title track was a thinly veiled ode to oral sex, and the accompanying video had one magazine reviewer blinking in amazement at its sexually charged images: ‘How about Olivia lying on a bed-like altar, all but pleasuring herself while huge phallic cannons on either side of her shoot out loads of white feathers? Whereas before she was sexy but not overt, now sister girl was letting you know in no uncertain terms that she was hungry and wanted to eat!’

The
Soul Kiss
album also included a track called ‘Culture Shock’ in which Olivia sang daringly to her imaginary beau of how she’d like her man on the side to move in so they could all live together. Olivia Newton-John advocating a ménage à trois was hardly what her fans were used to hearing her sing about and it came as a jolt to many.

For all its shock value,
Soul Kiss
still didn’t have either the impact of the
Physical
album or the same sort of mega-sales. But at least the hugely influential
Rolling Stone
magazine was impressed and gave her a boost by saying: ‘She proves once again that she is the best pure pop singer working today. Check her out live sometime, mark her for range, pitch, phrasing, energy, ballsiness and, yes, commitment to the songs, and see if you don’t agree.’

Elton John obviously did agree, as he and his lyric writer Bernie Taupin came up with a jaunty number called ‘The Rumour’, which became the title track of Olivia’s next LP in 1988. The Rocket Man also took it upon himself to co-produce the album, but disappointingly it only reached number sixty-seven in the US charts. It was her least successful album. Olivia, however, was not overly worried at the downward commercial trend that now seemed to be affecting her recording career. By now she was immersing herself in a different world, as a wife and mother.

Chapter 12

Marriage and Motherhood

OLIVIA, ON THE BIRTH OF CHLOE

 

 

FROM THE MOMENT they first fell in love, Matt Lattanzi always envisaged and hoped that he would make Olivia his wife. He listened patiently to Olivia’s reasons for fighting shy of marriage, but that didn’t prevent him from asking her from time to time as their relationship blossomed. Matt believed they were absolutely right for each other and never swayed from his belief that they should be married.

Olivia was happy to wear a gold ring Matt had given her on a finger of her right hand as a symbol of their love for each other, but she was still terrified to take the final step. ‘If you’ve never seen a relationship that lasts for ever, then you tend not to believe it’s possible,’ was one of her choicer remarks on the subject.

After
Two Of A Kind
was a critical and commercial failure, she went to Australia for a while to distance herself from the Hollywood razzamatazz and have some peace and quiet in which to think about how she saw her future. Another movie now seemed the wrong option, and she was becoming less inclined to embark on long, tiring, arduous and repetitive concert tours. In the winter of 1982 she had performed sixty-four concerts in forty different cities and Olivia had indicated that would be the end of road shows for her. After twenty years of largely being controlled by her career, she decided it was time she paid more attention to her personal life.

Importantly, she was also acutely aware that time was moving on. She was now in her mid-thirties and if she wanted to become a mother then marriage was beckoning. By her own personal choice, she was keen to take the traditional path and become a wife first before starting a family. She realised, too, that the reasons not to marry were diminishing: she and Matt had enjoyed five happy years together, they loved each other very much, and they were having good times and good fun together.

One day back in the US, when Olivia indicated her attitude against marriage was now indeed softening, Matt finally won Olivia round. For the first time in her life, it seemed unnatural to her not to get married. There was no grand proposal from Matt, just an acceptance that they would tie the knot, and the couple started making plans for a Christmas wedding in 1984. Given Olivia’s hitherto entrenched views, relatives and friends were somewhat surprised but nonetheless delighted for them both.

Although it rained on the actual day, 15 December, Olivia took that as a sign of good luck and the wedding itself was still a blend of pure romance and typical Olivia. The seventy guests comprising family and closest friends arrived at her home via the driveway decorated with tiny fairy lights and even Olivia’s animals were suitably dressed for the occasion. The cats wore white lace ribbons round their necks and Jackson the red setter sported white bows in his hair.

Australian designer Nanette Davies, a close friend of Olivia’s, had spent six weeks creating Olivia’s white silk taffeta bridal gown covered with chantilly lace, crystal beads and ribbons. In keeping with tradition, Olivia also wore something old, tiny diamond earrings, and something blue, a garter under her dress.