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Kelly
Preston and John Travolta meeting and greeting last night at
The Waldorf for the Museum of the Moving Image gala. 7:50 PM.
Photo: JH.
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I
saw John Travolta for the first time in “Saturday
Night Fever” at a theatre in Stamford, Connecticut on a Saturday
night in 1977. I had houseguests up from the city that weekend,
and the picture got us all so heated up that we went right home
and put on a BeeGees record and danced and partied a la Travolta’s
Tony Manero for hours afterwards.
In the program of the Museum of the Moving Image which honored
Mr. Travolta last night at the Waldorf, David Schwartz, the museum’s
Chief Curator of film writes:
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John
Travolta
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It took
exactly two minutes and fifty seconds of screen time for
John Travolta to become a movie star. The first glimpse of
him
in "Saturday Night Fever" is a closeup of his legs,
bending to the disco beat of "Stayin’ Alive" on
the soundtrack. His character, Tony Manero, struts down a Bensonhurts
Street,
and we follow him, fascinated.
As anyone around today remembers, the picture made Travolta an
enormous star, a phenomenon. A few months later Barbara
Walters interviewed him (sitting in a plane he’d bought), and asked
him how it felt “to be the biggest star in the world.” The
hyperbole of her question was also the consensus. The star looked
at her and smiled, as if slightly embarrassed or at least incredulous,
and asked, “I don’t know; do you really think that’s
true?” It was that natural display of humility that won
us.
That was forty-four or forty-five pictures ago. After Fever he
made a highly anticipated film with Lily Tomlin (whose
star was way up there at the moment also) called Moment By
Moment which
was an interesting idea but turned out to be a good looking dud,
and his career was already being talked about as maybe, just
maybe, a flash in the pan. The mega-grossing Grease followed,
and then the not-so-sure-of-a-hit Urban Cowboy where
we saw the dancing Travolta once again, and then Brian
DePalma’s Blowout. He
made seven pictures in the 1980s including a not as stellar sequel
to Fever, Stayin’ Alive directed
by Sylvester Stallone.
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Screenshots of Travolta
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In the 1990s, however, John Travolta made 20 films (an astounding
number for a contemporary star), including Pulp Fiction,
Get Shorty, Michael, and Primary Colors, and
before half of this first decade of the 21st century is out,
he’ll
have made 9 more.
We’ve watched Vinnie Barbarino/Tony Manero,
grow up, mature,
get married, settle in, take chances, fail, succeed and become
what few in his business ever really achieve: an established
star with almost three decades of stardom under his belt and
still working.
In his message in last night’s program he wrote that
when he was a kid growing up in Englewood, New Jersey, one
of his first
movie memories was seeing Yankee Doodle Dandy and “marveling
at the way that Jimmy Cagney could dance
and sing and act.” He
never dreamed at that time that he’d be able to do
the same in Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Urban
Cowboy. Later in life one of his greatest thrills was
that he got to meet and become friends with Cagney. |
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Herb
Schlosser, Chairman of the Museum of the Moving Image, addressing
the guests in the
Grand Ballroom of The Waldorf-Astoria
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A
close-up of a table
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The
kid turned fifty this year. Looking at him last night in the
Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf, with his close-cropped (still-full-head-of)
hair, and more
bulk on his frame, he looks a lot less like the kid now, except when you
watch him talking to people and the face breaks out in that smile that’s
warmed and charmed the audience for more than three decades.
In the cocktail hour, before the dinner, he spent a lot of time letting the photographers
get as many frames as they wished of him – a generous gesture not always
available with a lot of the “stars” that come around these parts. Oprah was
there (and seated on the star’s right). She looked as excited and animated
as any fan to be in the same orbit. And James Gandolfini and Kathy Bates and Kyra
Sedgwick and Mrs. Travolta (Kelly Preston), all of whom were presenters
on a program that featured clips from ten of the man’s films, including Fever,
Grease, Urban Cowboy, Get Shorty, Michael, Phenomenon, Face/Off, Primary Colors,
and A Love Song for Bobby Long. |
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John
Travolta poses with a fan while Kelly Preston browses the night's
reading material
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With
the exception of the cadre of beefy, suited “Soprano” types who were ridiculously protective and verbally intimidating about
keeping us civilians in black tie (including this one) from getting
closer than eight feet to the
star’s table – even Presidents let you get closer, guys – it
was a lovely evening, a lovely tribute to a lovely and well-loved guy. And the
whole show will air next Sunday night at 10 pm on USA Network, so you can see
for yourself.
I ran into Will Schwalbe, the publisher of Hyperion Books, as
I was leaving. I asked him what he’d been doing out at something like this
on a Sunday night. “John’s writing a book for us,” he told
me.
“Who’s writing it?” I asked, knowing from personal experience
that a star’s autobiography/memoir is usually not “written” by
the star but by a hired writer (now called collaborators).
“John’s writing it,” he answered.
“John’s writing it without a writer?” I asked, not sure of
the answer.
“Yup.” To be published in the fall of 2006. |
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L.
to r.: Kelly Preston; Kyra Sedgwick; James Gandolfini. |
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Jesse
Kornbluth, who wrote evening's program
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Rochelle
Slovin, Director of the Museum of the Moving Image
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Herb Schlosser
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