TEEN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (25)
By:
June 14, 2023
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of heartthrobs from our adolescences). Series edited by Heather Quinlan.
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN
I’m in eighth grade and my best friend, Catherine, and I have taken the bus to downtown Minneapolis to see a new movie that’s just opened at the Skyway Theater. The movie is called Grease and it stars Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta.
I know all about Olivia Newton-John. I own If You Love Me, Let Me Know, and have spent hours staring at the album cover in the if-only-I-could-be-her way that a 1970s teenage girl does. The kohl-lined eyes! The appliquéd denim cowboy shirt unbuttoned to below her boobs!
I know less about John Travolta. Saturday Night Fever was released when I was in seventh grade and my parents wouldn’t let me see anything that was rated R. And while I’d certainly watched Welcome Back Kotter, where he played hunky Vinnie Barbarino, he didn’t make an impression on me, save for when he sang “Ba ba ba, ba ba barino” in a gold lamé Elvis outfit.
Catherine and I settle into our seats, unaware that in 1 hour and 50 minutes, we will race to the record store down the block so that we can relive the soundtrack again and again and again. We will overlook the fact that the actors are too old to be in high school. Instead, we will sing, we will dance, we will act out “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee,” standing on our beds, flipping our hair to imitate Rizzo imitating Sandy. We will tell our moms that we liked Sandy better when she dressed in Peter Pan collars and poodle skirts and that we didn’t care for the black leather get up from the final scene. And we will be mystified when our moms disagree and tell us that the tight black outfit was more sophisticated. We want to be Sandy, who appears to be the movie’s lone virgin.
Which is all to say that we hardly notice John Travolta — who plays Danny Zuko — except for the fact that he can dance in a way that is both smooth and jagged, fluid and syncopated. We are too young to understand that what we appreciate about Danny is that the chemistry between him and Sandy is so weak that even though Newton-John is 29 (!), she feels emotionally like she could be part of our eighth-grade squad. We are relieved that she leaves the gym in the middle of “Born to Hand Jive,” when that slutty Cha-Cha DiGregorio finally unleashes some of Danny’s repressed hormones. And when Sandy and Danny drive off into the clouds at the movie’s end, we tell ourselves that they are still mostly friends.
TEEN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Heather Quinlan | Adam McGovern on ANDY GIBB | Crockett Doob on DREW BARRYMORE | Kathy Biehl on THE MONKEES | Josh Glenn on SHAUN CASSIDY | Catherine Christman on ELI WALLACH | Carlo Rotella on VALERIE BERTINELLI | Miranda Mellis on EDDIE VAN HALEN | Paul Finnegan on KIM WILDE | Heather Quinlan on MIKE PATTON | Mariane Cara on NKOTB | Mimi Lipson on ARLO GUTHRIE | Gabriela Pedranti on GUSTAVO CERATI | Michele Carlo on MICHAEL JACKSON | Ingrid Schorr on PAUL McCARTNEY | Carolyn Campbell on ROBERT REDFORD | Erin M. Routson on JOHNNY KNOXVILLE | Amy Keyishian on JIM MORRISON | Fran Pado on TONY DEFRANCO | Krista Margies Kunkle on LUKE PERRY | Lucy Sante on FRANÇOISE HARDY | Lynn Peril on DANNY BONADUCE | Jack Silbert on CHERYL TIEGS | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on CHRISTIAN SLATER | Cynthia Scott on LEONARD WHITING | Elizabeth Foy Larsen on OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!