John Travolta
Seventies Icon to Scientologist Scion...
by Hysteric Eric

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s, well, yes, it actually is a plane; flown by John Travolta, star of Carrie. Not only is he cleared to pilot jets across the friendly skies, but he has danced with Princess Diana, had a Top Ten hit song, is arguably the world’s most famous Scientologist (level OT5 or higher), and his career has seen more ups and downs than the elevator at the Empire State Building. Born 2-18-1954 the youngest of six children in Englewood, N.J. His father had played semi-pro football, and his mother was a drama teacher. All but one of his siblings pursued entertainment careers, but only brother Joey had some brief flash of fame as a singer. (Oddly enough, it seems he’s the only Travolta sibling NOT to appear in any of John’s movies.) John won a twist contest when he was eight, setting the stage for his future legwork in Saturday Night Fever, Urban Cowboy and Grease. He was appearing local theater by the age of 12, and by 16 had dropped out of school to appear in summer stock and commercials, then moving on to small parts on TV dramas such as Emergency and The Rookies.
One of his first films was the trash classic The Devils’ Rain (1975), a campy period treat about Satanists pursuing a family. Top billed were William Shatner and Ernest Borgnine, and technical advisors Anton and Diane Lavey had small parts. He was introduced to scientology in 1975 by Devil’s Rain co-star Joan Prather, who would later appear on Eight Is Enough as daughter Janet.
In late 1975 he suddenly broke out as a star on the sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter with his role as juvenile delinquent Vinnie Barbarino. Quickly he was rushed into starring roles in films. He became a huge star, with his face seemingly on every magazine, truly a decade-defining figure. He released three records of folk ballads and schlocky 70s pop; his hit “Let Her In” reached number 10 on the Billboard charts. It’s hard now to convey just how crazy for John the world seemed to get, and inevitable that he eventually fall out of favor. The puberty morality tale Carrie, the first of many Stephen King book adaptations, came out in 1976 and was a smash; John played the jerk boyfriend of Carrie tormenter Nancy Allen. “They’re all going to laugh at you,” Carrie’s mom said, but Carrie got the last laugh. Hard to believe there was a time without Stephen King movies.
Next was the TV disease-of-the-week movie The Boy In The Plastic Bubble (1976), a tearjerker about a boy with a weakened immune system that required him to live in a sterile environment. Brady dad Robert Reed played his dad and he met girlfriend Diana Hyland on set. A May-December romance, Hyland, 17 years his senior, would be best known as the first mom on Eight Is Enough, who tragically died of breast cancer in 1977. Travolta would accept the posthumous Emmy that she won for “Bubble” on her behalf.
Superstardom came with the role of Italian disco stud Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. Saturday Night Fever was an enormous unexpected success on a phenomenal scale that is unlikely to be matched again because of the fragmented modern media marketplace. The omnipresent album became the biggest selling record at that time and the film had grossed nearly $26 million three weeks after its release in mid-December 1977. There were board games and disco dance instruction books and posters and lunchboxes and much too much stuff. The original white disco suit went for $145,500 at auction at Christie’s. In John’s first starring role, his energy jumped off the screen and the script cemented his iconic status (“watch the hair”). He makes strutting misogynist jerk Tony Manero somehow likable, with lots of good tender character stuff that lead to an Oscar nomination for Travolta. With one starring film, he was now The Man.
Grease was another huge success with another monster soundtrack (number 1 for 12 weeks!). Grease made even more at the box office than did SNF. Go greased lightnin’! The soundtrack album was number one for 21 weeks, while his duet with Olivia Newton-John, “You’re The One That I Want”, was a number one international smash. Next up he was badly mismatched with Lily Tomlin as his love interest in the best-forgotten stinker Moment By Moment. He returned to dancing and fighting’ form with boot scoot classic Urban Cowboy, which seems to many viewers to be Saturday Night Fever in cowboy drag, but ain’t bad, also largely because of his engaging performance. Urban Cowboy “underperformed” at the box office, but it’s soundtrack was quite popular and set off the first wave of trendy city folk putting on their nice clean “cowboy” clothes on to go line dancing. He reunited with Carrie director Brian DePalma in the now forgotten conspiracy thriller Blow Out, in one of his most underplayed performances. It also did not do well at the box office. 1983 brought Newton-John and Travolta back together for lamentable badfilm Two Of A Kind. Even Scatman Crothers’ presence couldn’t save this one! The lethargic Stayin’ Alive, directed by Sylvester Stallone (!), was an attempt to revisit the Tony Manero character five years later, but had none of the charm or atmosphere of the earlier film, and was marred by poor fashion choices. Fashion felonies would also be committed in the next attempt to re-fire his career, Perfect. Perfect starred Jamie Lee Curtis as a supersexy leg warmer-garbed aerobics instructor and Travolta as an investigative reporter with tight shorts. Perfect got a lot of hype, but soon crashed and burned.
By the mid-80s, he was seen as a has-been and was reduced to TV movies and playing third banana to Kirstie Alley and talking babies in the Look Who’s Talking films. He still managed to maintain his lifestyle from profit sharing on the soundtracks of SNF and Grease. The National Enquirer paid gay porn star Paul Barressi $100,000 in 1990 to “out” Travolta. Barressi claimed Travolta had a sexual relationship with him, but later retracted the story. Travolta married Kelly Preston a few months after the Enquirer story broke. He met Preston on set of their film The Experts. They got married by a French Scientologist minister, but the U.S. authorities refused to recognize it, so they re-married again a week later in the U.S. Big hit Pulp Fiction revitalized his career, perhaps more so than any movie for any actor’s career, ever. Tarantino made Travolta play the Welcome Back, Kotter board game with him before giving him the role that earned him an Oscar nomination for best actor.
He went on to work with action master John Woo in his first American films. First he did Broken Arrow, as an out-and-out villain role, and then in 1996 in the enjoyable Face/Off. In Face/Off, Nicolas Cage and he have surgery to appear like the other, which gives rise to the best part of the movie, where each actor has to do an impression of the other’s acting style! After ten years of trying, in 2000 producer Travolta brought us his pet project Battlefield Earth to the screen. The L. Ron Hubbard sci-fi film swept all categories of the Razzie Awards that year and was often compared to Ed Wood. It would later “win” the Razzie for the Worst Drama of their first 25 years of existence!
In the last ten years he’s had no trouble finding work, having played the president, a gangster, and a aggrieved working man, a general, a dad, a fireman, an angel, and worked for acclaimed directors like Costa-Gavras, Terrence Malick, and Mike Nichols. He’s also made some terrible Hollywood crap like Michael, Phenomenon and The General’s Daughter.
He lives in a little shack in Florida with a 1.4 mile runway for the jets, designed so the Boeing 707 and Gulfstream can taxi right up to two outbuildings connected to the house, kinda like a big carport. The mansion has arrival and departure boards, and an airport lounge. He flew daily from Ocala to Tampa to make The Punisher, and flew a load of medicine down to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. You’d better believe that he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. John is consistently noted in interviews as being a very nice, down-to-earth guy. He has been linked with many actresses over the years, but gay rumors persist. It’s probably just jealousy ‘cause he’s so comic-bookishly good-looking. His lawyer, Jay Lavely, told the New York Daily News: “Travolta is a happily married man. That proves that he’s not gay.”
He and his wife Kelly Preston have two children. His son Jett is named for a character in Hubbard’s sci-fi book Mission Earth. The former Sweathog said he has it written into his contracts that he’ll be done by 6 every shooting day, so that he can go home and spend time with his family. We’ll have to wait for his upcoming autobiography (announced publishing date of fall 2006) for more details.