HOLLYWOOD – One of the most disturbing trends in the movie business is the number of non-actors who are getting the chance to star in movie. With the number of major Hollywood productions shrinking every year, it’s a genuine cause for worry when TV personalities and pop singers are featured in films instead of the true acting professionals.

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The reason why such personalities as Suzanne Sommers, Farraf Fawcett and Bruce Jenner are making movie is that their broad-based popularity can ensure the sale to TV of any feature films in which they star. Such TV revenue can play an important part in a film’s ability to earn back its cost,, and so the studios are hedging their films.

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Which brings us to the movie career of pop singer Olivia Newton-John, 31, who soon will be appearing in her second Hollywood film Xanadu, a musical fantasy co-staring Gene Kelly which opens tomorrow.

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Newton-John, who has often been described as the music business’ answer to Doris Day, has the distinction of having co-starred in the best-selling movie musical of all time, Grease. It was the first time she went before a Hollywood camera.

Today she is well aware of her limitations as an actress and empathizes with those professional actors who can’t get work. “There are hundreds of fine actresses,” she says in her pleasant voice, “so I think I’ll stick to what I do best. Both of my films have been musicals with a lot of singing, and it’s been important for the films to have a singer.

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“I might accept a purely dramatic role if I felt I could handle it,” she adds, “but up until now, I’ve stuck with what I enjoy most.”

 

Raise eyebrows

 

As for what kind of dramatic role Newton-John might want to play on film if givien the chance, her choice should raise a few eyebrows.

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“I’d like to do Evita,” she says, referring to the musical based on the life of Eva Peron, the Svengali-like wife of Argentine dictator Juan Peron. What’s shocking about that choice is that oh-so-pleasant Newton-John bears as much resemblance to Eva Peron as does Dolly Parton.

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I don’t know if I could do it on stage,” she says, “but maybe the film version. I’d like to think I could do it. Her character interests me, and I like the songs. She was such a scheming woman, and she manipulated people so well.”

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Actually Newton-John is doing quite well herself in manipulating the show business worlds of movies and music. Her Grease success will carry her along in films for another couple of years if Xanadu turns out to be a turkey.

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And because she isn’t obliged to act for a living, she can afford to bevery choosy about what scripts she accepts. For example, it took her two years after Grease to make Xanadu, and right now she doesn’thave a next film. However, she and Grease co-star John Travolta are actively considering making another film together.

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Developing script

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Nancy Gold, a writer-friend of Newton-John’s, is developing a script for the duo, who could turnout to be 1980’s answer to Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.

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In the world of records, Newton-John’s popularity took a dip during the year she was a work on Grease. Since then, however, she has come back with a couple of best-selling albums, Totally Hot and, now the soundtrack from Xanadu.

Magic, her single from that album, is No. 8 with a bullet (which means it’s climbing quickly) on Variety’s chart of the 50 Best-Selling Pop Singles. Other singles will be released from Xanadu, and in the fall she begins work on a solo album.

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So all is going very well for this young star, who failed to follow in her family’s tradition of distinguished educators. Born in Cambridge, England, Newton-John is the granddaughter of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born, who was a friend and associate of Albert Einstein. Her father, a Welshman, was a professor of German at Cambridge, until he moved to an Australian collage when Olivia was five.

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Not the best of students (“I was rebelling,” she says), she dropped out of school at 15, as did her older sister, and channeled her energy into singing in her brother-in-law’s coffee house. Winning a talent contest led to some work in England, which led to nowhere, which led back to Australia, and then back to England, which led to her big break – appearing on Cliff Richard’s star-making, pop music TV show.

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Newton-John now resides in the United States, but maintains her Australian citizenship and her British passport. She likes that arrangement and describes her Malibu ranch house lifestyle as “anyone’s dream.”

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Never got married

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(“I’m just having a good time”), she is a very wealthy young woman. There have been reports that her earnings from Grease and its soundtrack album approach $10 million. “That’s not accurate,” she carefully, “but I don’t want to comment on whether it’s more or less.” She says she has invested most of her money in California real estate.

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In Xanadu, she plays Terpsichore, the daughter of Zeus and the goddess of music and dance, who has taken a contemporary human form. The story of Xanadu is a fanciful one with Gene Kelly coming out of retirement to play a former vaudevillian who years to get back into show business.

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Newton-john helps motivate Kelly and a young Los Angeles billboard painter (Michael Beck) by linking them together in a project to establish Xanadu, a nightclub “where your dreams come true”.

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Newton-John and Kelly, 67, dance together in an opening, and that experience was her dream come true, inasmuch as she lists Singing’ In The Rain as on of her all-time favorite films.

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“I love the 40’s musical the best,” she says, “I always liked the moment when the actors broke into song. But it’s important that the songs advance the story.

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Encounters serious trouble

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“For example, in Grease, I think it works then I sing Hopelessly Devoted To You, because up until then we’re not sure how Sandy feels about Danny. This is the first time she declares herself. So breaking into song like that isn’t phony at all. And I think a lot of new musicals have gotten into trouble by avoiding that kind of scene and trying to be too realistic.

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One new musical that has encountered serious trouble is Can’t Stop The Music, the Village People-starrer that has been a total bust in the United States. The film’s leading role, played by Valerie Perrine, originally was offered to Newton-John by Grease producer Allan Carr, who immediately labeled her ungrateful after she turned it down.

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“When I finally saw the script, I felt it wasn’t right for me,” she says, “It was a completely instinctive decision; it had nothing to do with not wanting to work with Allan, because he did a wonderful job on Grease. The script just wasn’t right, and when I read (a 30-page treatment of) Xanadu, which was only a few weeks alter, I instinctively felt that it was right.”

Talking to Newton-John abut fer film career presents some difficulties because, after all, she has appeared publicly in only one film. But it was an incredible hit.

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“I’m nor sure why,” she says now, “It’s a phenomenon. When I first saw Grease, I thought it was a lot of fun, but I never dreamed what would happen. I mean, I think it has almost a comic-book quality about it. It moves very fast and is larger than life.”

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“Kids obviously identify with the story because it set in school. And John was a huge star when it came out, which certainly made a big difference. The music is very simple and easy to remember.

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“I don’t know,” she adds. Obviously there was some kind of magic in there. It has a lot of energy. My favorite scene? I love when John is trying to learn all those sports in order to impress me. There's almost something Jerry Lewis-like about him there. And I like the You’re The One That I Want number at the end. That was so much fun to shoot.” 

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Important career lesson

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That number provided an important career lesson for Newton-John, one that her critics wonder if she has learned. In that number she was amusingly transformed from a cute little sweater girl into a sneering, black-leather-clad biker.

“I remember it very well. While I was doing it, I was hoping that I wouldn’t lose all of my fans.”

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That’s an incredibly conservative statement, which may explain why Newton-John continues to play it safe musically and on film. Even though it’s hard to quarrel with her commercial success, there remains the issue of an artist’s responsibility to grow and challenge the audience.

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But Newton-John doesn’t see her role that way. Apparently she’s in the entertainment business primarily to please her audience more than to express her self.