Word: travolta
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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There is a whole future in that ellipsis, which does not take away an inch from Travolta's interpretive skills. A closer look at Fever will reveal both an actor who works his tail off and a man with a sharp eye for stage business. As Tony Manero, he strides down that block of Bay Ridge swinging a can of paint like a talisman, and when he stops for a snack at the corner pizza stand he orders two slices, then eats them one piled right on top of the other...
Good and clever, but Travolta can cut much deeper than that. Trying out a new step with his ideal dance partner, he provokes an admiring question ("Did you make that step up yourself?") and a neat reply: "Yeah . . . No. I saw it on television . . . then I made it up." The modification, and the contradiction, were Travolta's invention, and they say a lot about Tony Manero's stubborn pride and restless insecurity...
...more proof be needed, then the scene on the bench facing the Verrazano Bridge is the clincher. Travolta speaks of the building of the bridge, all its specifications and statistics, like a man surveying an escape route from Brooklyn he is not sure he can ever take. His girl?the one he has been trying unsuccessfully to put the make on?hears the longing and the edge of desperation in his voice and kisses him on the cheek. He makes no move toward her, does not, in fact, even look at her. His eyes are full, and he is crying...
Just now, Travolta holds the winning hand; or most of it, anyhow. There is no wild card. No overheated tales of profligacy and indulgence. No seamy revelations. The usual insinuations, to be sure, but no backstairs gossip that is verifiable, no sagas of ruinous excess and careening self-destruction. Superstars very often provide their own portfolio of legends to join the ones fashioned for the screen: the abandon of Brando, the hipster brashness of James Dean. If the material isn't available, then the superstars get tagged with it?De Niro is alleged to be Garboesque, Pacino sullen and distant...
...Travolta cannot be immune to this mythmaking process. Like autograph hounds, it comes with the territory, and the quiet kid from Englewood, N.J., is already getting typed as a kind of Steiff Toy hoodlum. This has something to do, of course, with the parts that have brought him fame: Vinnie Barbarino in Kotter, Tony in Saturday Night Fever, even Danny Zuko, the cuddly tough guy in Grease, all rough-and-ready proles with a hint of self-mockery and a double dose of wistfulness. Travolta's low profile will be his best chance of holding onto his privacy and whatever...