Word: travolta
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1976-1976
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...actor's name is John Travolta. He is 22, and seems to be the successor to David Cassidy and Donnie and Marie Osmond in the hearts of the eleven-to 15-year-old crowd. Taking Don Murray's old role in Bus Stop is just a passing thing for him. Travolta is best known as Vinnie Barbarino, the tough, macho "Sweathog" in ABC's hit series Welcome Back, Kotter. The show is an updated version of Happy Days, a genial exercise in instant nostalgia, and Vinnie Barbarino is barely distinguishable from Arthur Fonzarelli, a.k.a. the Fonz...
...Travolta's approach to his career, however, is very much his own. Despite his youth, he has been acting for ten years. Unlike Winkler, he does not spend his energies talking about the Yale Drama School or other heavy topics. Instead, he has shrewdly consolidated his reputation by recording a bland rock album tailored to subteens. Let Her In, Travolta's biggest hit on the album, is now No. 5 on the Cashbox charts...
...urge to perform runs in the Travolta family. John's mother, Helen Burke, an actress in Englewood, N.J., urged all her six children to take part in local theater. As the baby of the family, John had many acts to follow. At age seven, he flew around the country with his sister Ellen in a road show of Gypsy and at twelve acted in his first amateur production. Recalls Travolta: "That world of airplanes and theaters seemed my only route to freedom." At 16, he quit school and began working in dinner theaters and summer stock. Looking back...
Public Maulings. The days of free-and-easy anonymity are over for Travolta. On his Bus Stop tour he lives like a recluse in his dressing room. The last time he tried to take a date to a disco, the place was overrun. "I don't think any girl could take my schedule now," he says, quite accurately, and claims to have no steady girl friend. He was mobbed by 5,000 fans at a Cleveland record store recently. At the world's largest indoor shopping mall at Schaumburg, Ill., outside Chicago, an estimated 30,000 engulfed...