Travolta's Latest Comeback

By Richard Corliss

John Travolta is talking about the allure of the classic Hollywood stars--their knack for establishing immediate intimacy with the audience. He mentions Barbara Stanwyck, who played the toughest, smartest broads of the '30s and '40s and who received an honorary Oscar in 1982, presented by Travolta. "If you'd met Stanwyck," he explains, "she would have crushed you with her ability to adore and adorn you, almost like a Southern belle." Then, to the journalist he's met only an hour before, Travolta says, "Stand up." When a movie star of three decades' eminence tells me to rise, I obey, and I'm now facing Travolta, nearly nose to nose. He clamps me in a python embrace. His blue eyes and soft voice start to flutter. "Oh, you came here to give me my Oscar!" he whispers in a dewy approximation of Stanwyck's purr to Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve (right before she devours him). Without easing his grip on me--he's still in the moment 25 years ago--he says in his own voice, "And I'm standing here thinking, 'She's an 80-year-old woman, and I am captivated.'"

And I'm standing there thinking, I am a captive. But a willing one. Though I'm startled at having been spot-cast to play Travolta to his Stanwyck, I'm also tickled by what his actress wife Kelly Preston, who a few minutes before served us iced tea and scones, might find a curious sight: one middle-aged, heavyset man bear-hugging another. In a way, Travolta's giving me an in-person demonstration of the intimate bond he has created with moviegoers and is ever ready to display. "I have a tacit agreement with the audience," he tells me when we return to our respective couches, "that 'John's gonna do this thing now, and it'll entertain us.'"

And it's not as if Travolta--the sultry young stud of Saturday Night Fever and Grease, the wily thug of Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty and Face/Off--hasn't been up close with another guy recently. In his new movie, Hairspray, based on the 1988 John Waters comedy and the 2002-Tony-winning musical, he does a funny-passionate dance with Christopher Walken. And Walken leads. Travolta, walking in the pumps of Divine in the earlier film and Harvey Fierstein on Broadway, plays Edna Turnblad, the beyond-zaftig Baltimore mom of a '60s teenage girl who dreams of appearing on a local TV dance show. (Walken is Edna's incorrigibly besotted husband.)

It's the most vivacious movie musical in ages, and Travolta is a big reason why. Encased in a foam-rubber fat suit, and channeling Blanche DuBois and Miss Piggy, he reveals his feminine side in a way that could have made Stanwyck smile in appreciation. And though Edna hasn't quite the agility of Saturday Night Fever's Tony Manero, Travolta is still a dancing champ at any weight.

Travolta hasn't sung in a musical in nearly 30 years, but he was practically born to the form. In the New York City suburb of Englewood, N.J., his Italian father Salvatore owned a tire shop, but his Irish mother Helen ran what John, the youngest of six, calls "the family business": show business. Mom directed local theater works; the other kids acted or studied music. John worked at becoming an actor-dancer-singer, and at 17 he almost won the title role in the Broadway Jesus Christ Superstar. The part he did get that year was in a summer theater revival of The Boy Friend. He has a word-perfect memory of the audition: "The producer, who was 93, said, 'There are people here who can sing and dance better than you. But nobody has as much fun on stage. I can't resist you. You're contagious. I am going to hire you because I have so much fun watching you.'"

The kid rose quickly through the ranks: Broadway debut at 20 in the World War II musical Over Here!, the lead role in the Broadway Grease at 21, TV fame as sexy Vinnie Barbarino on Welcome Back, Kotter at 22. Then the Fever struck. Travolta radiated old-time star quality in his first major film role; he had the strut, the moves and the blinding white suit to be a disco dreamboat. Six months after Saturday Night Fever, which had a boffo domestic box office of $94 million, came Grease, which earned twice that.

And six months after Grease: a stupendous flop, Moment by Moment ($11 million). He had endured the first big up-down in a notably seismic career. Urban Cowboy boom, Two of a Kind bust; Staying Alive a zig, Perfect a zag. The sassy-baby Look Who's Talking was his top grosser since Grease; then he had another recession until Pulp Fiction pegged him as the cool bad guy and won him a string of hits. Another soft phase set in until this year's comedy smash Wild Hogs.

As numerous as the turkeys he hatched are the hits he turned down. He essentially gave Richard Gere a career by saying no to Days of Heaven, American Gigolo, An Officer and a Gentleman and, two decades later, Chicago. By declining Splash, he gave Tom Hanks his big break. Again, Travolta regrets nothing: "I don't want to be the only male star in Hollywood!" Stars sometimes swap roles; Hanks got Travolta's part in The Green Mile, Travolta took over for Hanks in Primary Colors. "And I'm glad I did." As a near-Bill Clinton, in Mike Nichols' film of the Joe Klein novel, he showed how an indiscriminate application of charisma can be toxic to the recipient and the carrier.

Truth is, Travolta loves being a movie star: loves the acting, the recognition, the access it gave him to the legends he grew up venerating (Stanwyck, Cagney, Brando). He's got the houses in Florida and Maine, several planes he pilots, the gorgeous wife and two kids, Jett and Ella. In return, he's gracious to the fans-- "If you're out there demanding attention from others, it's silly not to expect a little backflow"--and even the paparazzi. "I've never had trouble with photographers. You stand up there, you give them the 10 minutes they want, and there's no frenzy."

This openness helps explain why, though audiences may have often lost their interest in Travolta's films, they never lost their affection for him. He's so well liked that fans automatically edit out the discordant aspects of his big films--the gritty family animosity in Fever, the fact that he's killed halfway into Pulp Fiction (only to return in the time-warp finale)--and enjoy the villains he plays for their power, allure and brio.

Audiences also accept or indulge or ignore his prominent role in the Church of Scientology, the controversial belief and behavior system devised by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. Travolta, a Scientologist for 32 years, shepherded and starred in the 2000 fantasy Battlefield Earth, based on a Hubbard novel; the film was an egregious flop. Yet Travolta doesn't get the flak that wounds another famous Scientologist, Tom Cruise. As an activist and a personality, Travolta is Teflon, Cruise is Velcro.

"I think that'll all smooth out," Travolta says of the bumps in Cruise's rep, "because he's a good boy. Part of it is that his nature is more intense than mine. Our velocities are different. But we're talking about the same issue." Travolta says he doesn't impose Scientology on crew members, but he makes what he sees as his expertise available on the set. "If you feel you can help somebody, you have to try, the way I'd offer a drink to a thirsty man. But I don't force anything on anyone."

Maybe he trusts in his powers of seduction to convince people of the improbable. That's what lured him into Hairspray: the notion that he could make audiences believe he was a woman. Divine, Waters' female-impersonator muse, and Fierstein, with his mincing gestures and gravelly basso, had made Edna a working-class drag queen. Travolta had another idea, which he pitched to producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron and director Adam Shankman.

"I told them, 'I don't want to be a drag queen. I'm better at playing a character than playing a gimmick. I really want to be a woman--to be all the women I grew up watching in the movies.' It took some discussion, but I convinced them."

In every aspect of his character, from the authentic Baltimore accent to the costumes (fake mink stoles, not feather boas), Travolta says, "I was looking for realism within the surrealism. I was a kid in the early '60s, living in a neighborhood like Edna's. I know what people wanted a woman to look like. Not Phyllis Diller in Vegas; they wanted Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, Anna Magnani. So Edna needs to be voluptuous. She can't have a refrigerator build. Give her larger breasts, a larger ass, and don't forget the waist. She has to be pleasant looking. Make her Elizabeth Taylor gone to flesh."

He's quite a show, but he's not the whole show. Hairspray is an ensemble piece of many sleek, speedy parts. Nikki Blonsky, 17 when she started filming, is a wide tornado as Tracy Turnblad, would-be dance diva and unlikely civil rights leader. Michelle Pfeiffer, 50 and still an ice goddess, nails the venomous role of a princess past her prime, hating the young because she's no longer one of them. The biggest contributor is Shankman, who sets a high level of style and adrenaline and never lets up. If people can be corralled into seeing Hairspray, they should come out loving it.

It looks as if Travolta made the right choice for this movie. At 53, he's still juiced by a meaty role, still comfortable being a star. Is it something he can do for another three decades? As usual he takes his cue from the audience. "If I ever get the feeling that it's not interesting for them," he says, "I'll change my path somehow. But right now it's going nicely, don't you think?"

What can a commoner say to movie royalty? A reverent "Yes, Miss Stanwyck."