The Career of John Travolta (Part 1)

Deep Dive with Kirk Minihane

Kirk Minihane dives into the meteoric rise and turbulent career of John Travolta, beginning with his breakout role as Vinnie Barbarino on 'W

Key takeaways

• Travolta's career is defined by extreme highs and lows, making him a quintessential example of Hollywood's rise and fall narrative.

Main topics

• John Travolta's rise from 'Welcome Back, Kotter'
• The cultural impact of 'Saturday Night Fever' and 'Grease'

Notable quotes

"I've got chills. They're multiplying. And I'm losing control. Because the power you're supplying, electrifying, is the thing."

Conclusion

This episode sets the stage for Travolta's legendary career arc, establishing

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Stella Blue Coffee is more than just great coffee. It's coffee with a purpose. Introducing We Brew to Rescue, a nationwide campaign using proceeds from our new ready-to-drink cans to help fund 1,000 pet adoptions this year. Every can you crack open helps a real pet find a real home. Simple as that. Made with 100 % Colombian coffee, each 11-ounce can delivers smooth, drinkable energy with a boost of protein. Available in Espresso Cafe Mocha and Espresso Sweet Cream. Built for mornings, long days, and everything in between. Drink Stella Blue, fuel your day, and help save a pet's life. You can follow our progress in real time throughout the campaign by watching the adoption tracker on our site. Grab yours now at StellaBlueCoffee.com, Amazon, and select retailers nationwide. Speaker 1 (0:54) All right, another episode of Deep Dive with Kirk Minahan. It has its own way of listening to it. I assume it's available everywhere, I guess. Episode, I don't even know. Eastwood, Reiner, Rocky, Michael J. Fox, Kevin Bacon, Chevy Chase, James Woods. And I thank you for, if you're listening right now, do me a favor. I never ask you guys to do this. They're asking me to do it to tell you to subscribe and leave a review. I guess that's important. I don't know why. But if you want Kirk Minahan to keep working and doing something, or if you like this, if I like something that came out once a week for a couple of hours and helped me drive to work or run or walk around or do whatever, do you guys listen at one and a half speed? Do people tell me this? Do people listen to this? I'm not capable of doing that. But if you are, well, that's fine too. But leave a review and leave a... Speaker 1 (1:50) or something. I don't know why it matters, but I guess evidently it does. I've never understood that. So just do it for this, okay? And do it for the Kirkman Hand Show if you want. Another podcast you like, I guess, is the long-form, just start more and more long-form podcasts just in time as long-form podcasts become completely irrelevant, replaced by eight-second TikToks and stuff like that. Speaker 1 (2:14) you know, yeah, just in time as it becomes more and more relevant. I jump in and do more and more of them. Sounds about right. So here we go. Here's the episode for today. This series, as you know, is careers. And I haven't gone outside of film yet, and I won't today. But I will, I promise. But you guys know I have a fetish for up and down careers. High highs, low lows, and nobody, and I mean nobody, exemplifies that better than this guy. as big a star as you could possibly be and then as low as you can get and a comeback and as big a star as you could possibly be and then low and then one more pretty good comeback and then the weird last 20 years or 15 years or whatever and just strangeness and Bad toupees and Scientology and flying Oprah's crowd to Australia once and mispronouncing at the Oscars and just weird Santa dancing commercials and just the strangest of it all of as big a star as there was when I was a kid. Basically, I don't know, maybe two or three, just as big. I'm sure you figured out by now. If not, I'll let you know right now. Speaker 1 (3:29) I've got chills. They're multiplying. And I'm losing control. Because the power you're supplying, Speaker 2 (3:41) electrifying, is Speaker 1 (3:44) the thing. By myself in the studio going backwards, like Danny Zuko did, played by John Travolta in the motion picture Grease. Yes, John Travolta is the subject of this week's Deep Dive. The theme song playing or no? No? Is the subject of this week's deep dive. Speaker 1 (4:09) Deep, deep dive. It's okay. It's available in the USA, other countries as well too. Russia, Afghanistan, and Nairu. It's deep dive with Kirk Manahan. He tried to commit suicide, did the best that he can. It didn't work out, so he's all alone in his studio looking at his telephone that has newspapers.com and other stories. He's not looking for... Speaker 1 (4:40) acclaim or any kind of glory, just join him in D-Do Jive. It is time for another deep dive. Thank you very much, Kirk Minahan, for that theme song. Speaker 1 (4:53) So Travolta grows up, as we know, with Jersey, New York, has a family, acting family. His sister was in some of his stuff, was, of course, on Happy Days, and played Scott Baio's mother on Charles in Charge, Eileen Travolta. I thought it was his mom when I was younger, but it was his older sister. Anyway, so we'll just start where it matters with Travolta. So the story of Travolta really begins, I think, Speaker 1 (5:22) With welcome back, Connor. I mean, it has to start there. Speaker 1 (5:30) And if you don't, I mean, I'm so old that I assume everyone knows what Welcome Back, Carter is. So that's an ABC show. So, so Javold does a bunch of stage work before this. He does Grease off Broadway and on Broadway. Does some other plays as well. Tries out like eight times for Jesus Christ Superstar, doesn't make it. And if you look up Javold commercials, actually you find a bunch of commercials he did for Japan in like... The 80s. Back before guys were cashing out making like $3 or $4 million for Japanese commercials. But before they did commercials, like in the early 70s. Let me see if I can find the Travolta. I found the Travolta commercial for Japan. It was Tokyo Drink. It's just a Japanese drink. He's just pumped. Doing push-ups here. Speaker 1 (6:33) There you go. That's just staying alive. He's still working out at Speaker 2 (6:37) that point, 84. So he Speaker 1 (6:39) winds up getting the role in Welcome Back, Carter, Gabe Kaplan's autobiographical TV series. He was a sweat hog, so he winds up going back. Gabe Kaplan said he was a sweat hog as a kid. He goes back in the series as a teacher, going back to his old high school to teach the sweat hogs, of which he was one. Speaker 1 (7:02) Grumpy principal. Cute wife. Tells her the joke of any and every episode. Then the sweat hogs were the stars of the show. Horshack. Freddie Boom Boom Carter. Juan Epstein. And Vinnie Barbarino, the breakout character. Played by John Travolta, who's really dumb on the show. And when I was a kid... It played in syndication every day. It was on Channel 56 here in Boston. I remember there was a promo. It was like, don't you think you ought to watch Connor? Don't you think you ought to watch Connor? So I think it was like 5 o'clock. I don't know what it paired with at that point. But it was on every day. So I watched every episode. I haven't watched it forever. I think I'd probably like it now. I remember Vinnie Barbarino liked Star Trek. And he was like so dumb, he'd do the, what? He would do his song. He was the breakout and a good-looking guy. Nobody in the history of the world has looked like John Travolta, too. He's one of those guys who's like a unicorn. We'll go through the roles. He's turned down. But I have a hard time putting him in other roles. And I know Grease is a famous example of a movie that he was in that was a period piece. But I always thought it was hard to picture Travolta playing like... Speaker 1 (8:15) from like the past. You know, I just, you know, I don't see him doing that. But anyway, so he's a welcome back Carter. And it's a hit for the first couple of seasons on ABC, like in the top 30, you know, and people really like it. It of course is after Travolta being the thing that kicked off Travolta, the theme song, the John Sebastian theme song is definitely what it's most famous for. It went to number one on the pop charts. Let's see. I have the. I have, I brought some research. I have my full Fred Bronson book of the Billboard number one hits that I have used in the bathroom many times. The actual, so. Speaker 1 (9:00) 434th number one song in history of the Billboard charts is Welcome Back by John Sebastian, 1976. Here's the rest of the top five that week. Silly Love Songs, Wings, Fooled Around, I Fell in Love, Ellen Bishop, Yay, Boogie Fever, three, Right Back From Where We Started From, Maxi Nightingale, two, Welcome Back, number one. Two weeks, 10 weeks before the theme from SWAT was number one. Speaker 1 (9:28) So it says here, the series premiered September 1975. Again, Gabe Copland stars as a teacher who returns to his own high school. The producer of the series, Alan Sachs, mentioned to his agent he was looking for a Love and Spoonful type of song to be the program's theme song. Well, John Sebastian was the theme, was a member of Love and Spoonful. Do you believe in magic? I'd be Speaker 2 (9:50) happy like an old time movie. Speaker 1 (9:52) Magic. So he wrote the song. Speaker 1 (9:57) He wrote a song, didn't like it, threw it away. Wrote another song immediately. He's walking back to Carter, he says. So he was, and he had been, he hadn't been in the hot 100 in like eight years or something like that. So he's still going, by the way. I listened to an interview with him, John Sebastian, maybe six months ago with a podcast I like. He's still out there singing stuff. It's interesting too, like that's the first of, he's in, sings in one of them. And then it's just around a shitload of hip-hop songs over the next five, six years to come. It's unbelievable. So Welcome Back Carter launches him. And something very interesting happens with Travolta that didn't really happen before. He is acting in movies while he's on a sitcom and television. There was no crossover really before him. Not really. Like we talked about Rob Reier before. He had to leave to do film. Like sitcom people were there for a reason. They just didn't elevate to other stuff. You weren't getting people from, you know. The cast of Bonanza, like a Western or Eastwood had to basically leave Rawhide to go in the film. Speaker 1 (11:09) Travolta is in Carrie. Plays Billy in Carrie, who the Brian De Palma film, of course, with Sis Basic in 1976. Films that while he's shooting Welcome Back, Carter. Plays an absolute shit bird in this movie. Pauline Kael basically is like, he's like Warren Beatty's scumbag younger brother, essentially. And Joel is really good in it. And young, and he works with De Palma again and wanted to work with him some more. Wasn't able to do it. But Carrie is his first real film, his first motion picture, which is a pretty wild debut to be in an iconic movie. You almost forget Travolta's in it until you watch it again. So that kicks off his film career, which is, again, sort of insane. Speaker 1 (11:57) So he's still doing Welcome Back Carter, but already even at that point, he's kind of trying to get out. He had a small role, I should say, in a movie called The Devil's Reign in 1975, which I'm going to tell you why that's interesting right now. An actress named Joan Prather is in that film. You would know her if you're my age. Played Grant Goody's wife, the actor David Bradford in It Is Enough. I had a crush on her when I was a kid. Speaker 1 (12:29) So she's on the set of The Devil's Reign with John Travolta. And they get to talking and they become friends. Nothing, you know. We'll get into maybe some of that as well. They get to talking about Travolta's system. He just keeps talking about how unhappy he is. His mind's racing a million miles an hour. It's 1975. And she says to him, listen. Speaker 1 (13:00) My religion has been really good to me. It's kept my mind clear. You should look into it. And she gave him the L. Ron Hubbard book. And Travolta became a Scientologist based on her, meeting her on the set of that film. Not the last time. Very soon from now, you'll hear about 80s Enough again. Do you guys remember 80s Enough? Speaker 1 (13:24) But people my age who are the only ones listening to this podcast, driving around, certainly remember 8 is Enough. She's on it later on in the series. But it's about Dick Van Patten plays a guy who is like a newspaper writer, has eight kids, and sort of his travails or whatever. Greg Kutheve, I think, sings the theme song to 8 is Enough. It is enough to fill our lives with love. Speaker 1 (13:52) Do I have that right? I'm about to find out. No one else in the world is doing this right now. Just remember that. It's right on this building. Let's see. Why can't I see? It's because Speaker 2 (14:08) of my Speaker 1 (14:08) glasses. Oh, fuck yeah. Speaker 2 (14:14) In the early morning. Speaker 1 (14:20) I like that girl. Speaker 2 (14:22) Sunrise Speaker 1 (14:22) smiles on everything. Portrait of the happiness. Speaker 1 (14:34) Here and always will. This is not Good Eve, though, I don't think. Speaker 2 (14:51) Good Eve Speaker 1 (14:55) is a good looking guy. So, yes, he becomes a Scientologist, which he is to this day, to my knowledge. Speaker 1 (15:03) I've never met John Travolta. I will tell you my one person who's met John Travolta's story if you want it now. I don't know if it's true or not. Also, by the way, let's be very clear. This could be, this is speculation. When my parents were very sick, my parents, my mom was a huge John Travolta fan, by the way. Loved Greece. Fucking loved Greece. I took them to Ireland the year before they died. My dad wanted to go back to where his parents grew up. Speaker 1 (15:36) Had some cousins there and he wanted to say goodbye, you know, without saying it. So we went to the house where his mom, the street call will not continue. You're not going to walk me into crying again on this podcast. But we were, we went to the house that his mom was born in, the house, the area where his dad grew up incredibly poor. We just went there and kind of looked at it. Speaker 2 (15:58) It was Speaker 1 (15:59) amazing. But anyway, we had a driver. We had a guy. This guy, Eric, very nice guy, drove us around in the van for a week. And he told us he'd recently had the actor John Travolta and a friend of his, a companion of his, traveling for four or five together. They just seemed like they were pals, just palling around Ireland. Two pals, two boys, two buds, two fellas, having the time. Speaker 2 (16:22) Anyway, Speaker 1 (16:23) so. Speaker 1 (16:27) So Travolta continues to welcome back Carter, but he wants more. Like he wants to be in films. And I find this story in a, let's see here. This is from 76. Los Angeles, AP. Producer Robert Stigwood has announced, quote, signing of Johnny Travolta to a three-picture contract, which will begin with Tribal Rights of the New Saturday Night, which I'm pretty sure you can figure out what movie that becomes. We'll certainly get to that. But so he then makes a TV movie that's pretty, pretty fucking popular when it comes out. The boy in the plastic bubble. So Travolta plays a boy who has to live in a plastic bubble. Speaker 1 (17:16) His parents are played by Robert Reed. Robert Reed, of course, is Mr. Brady. Mr. Brady from the Brady Bunch. Brady Bunch, a huge state. Who knows? We may get there one day, too. They have trouble conceiving a kid. So he has a fucked up immune system. He's born to all these to live in a bubble. So the woman who plays his mom in the film. It's a TV movie. It's Speaker 2 (17:45) a hit. Speaker 1 (17:46) It does well. It's nominated for four Emmy Awards. And the ratings are very good for it. It's a true story. The kid who it's based on didn't really like it. But you should watch it. It's pretty fun. I don't know if it is anywhere. It was on a little bit when I was a kid. I've seen it. But Diana Hyland plays the mom. She was born in 1936. Travolta was born in 1954. Speaker 1 (18:15) So Diana Highland and Travolta fall in love. She plays the mother in the TV movie Boy with the Plastic Bubble. And they have a relationship. She's diagnosed with breast cancer at 75. Winds up spreading. Way different than today. There's a different time back then. Today is way, more likely way back then. It's 50 years ago. And she dies. But Travolta's at her side in 77. Speaker 1 (18:49) So this is like his, you know, 18 years his senior. This woman dies. And it's the beginning of a guy. And I've talked about this about Travolta. Like an incredible amount of tragedy in this poor guy's life. It's fucking unbelievable. So she dies. But before she died, she had been cast. as Dick Van Patten's wife in the pilot of Eight is Enough, turns up not being able to do it. Dick Van Patten is next to Travolta at her bedside when she dies. So this happens to him. So now he's in a successful TV film. He's in Carrie. Welcome Back, Carter is, you know, is a hit a couple years in. Welcome Back, Carter is on the show. So remember as a kid, maybe it's because he was in the cage. Remember having a Welcome Back, Carter? Like cards. Like baseball cards. Speaker 2 (19:41) I don't know. I obviously don't have them anymore. Speaker 1 (19:43) But they were out. They were a big lunchbox as well, I know. It was a board game, which we'll get into. It's about 17 years away for Travolta here. So Travolta's next. You know, Travolta's seen, really not as anything. He's sure he's pretty good in carry, but he's probably best known as dumb Vinny Barbarino. I mean, honestly. Barbarino was like a miniature. J.J. Walker, you know, or Fonz. Like, Fonz is like a breakout character on a sitcom. And, you know, back then, if you were on the 22nd rated show, 24th rated show on television, somebody's 25 million people were watching you. So, you know, that's a huge thing. Speaker 1 (20:40) So he's trying to figure out what to do film-wise. What's next? Well, he does this movie they're talking about. It's a magazine article. It's called that, but the Saturday nights of New York. John Avildsen, who directed Rocky. He wants to direct it. It's about the sort of streetwise, cynical, sarcastic, kind of dumb, but not that dumb. You're a kid who wants more. He just wants to dance. He wants that disco lifestyle, you know, in all that it entails. Well, Avison drops out. John Battam comes in and directs it. Speaker 1 (21:17) The movie, of course. You know, one of the things with Travolta is like, I don't know how much I need to get into Saturday Night Fever and Grease and Pulp Fiction, but Saturday Night Fever comes out and is beyond a phenomenon. Like, it is a massive hit, and it's a massive cultural movie. It's famously, by the way, Gene Siskel's favorite movie of all time. I don't know if that matters to you or not at all. But Travolta becomes, overnight, a gigantic film star. Speaker 1 (21:50) And an important one because he's not just good in Saturday Night Fever. He's fucking incredible in Saturday Night Fever. If you watch him in that movie, you're just looking at a movie. You're like, oh, he's like, we're good with TV. He's now a huge movie star. Here's Ebert in 78. Speaker 1 (22:18) The year after. Variety reports, Saturday Night Fever has passed 61 million in rentals. Not bad, but even more raising is the fact that this summer, months after its Christmas 77 release, Fever is still grossing $750,000 a week, even though it's now playing mostly in cheap ticket third-run theaters. Like, he just becomes a gigantic... Movie reviews are like this. Abilene, Texas reporter, Tom Setzer. Speaker 1 (22:47) Get the crow and pile it high on the plate. I'll have to choke down the double helping of seeing John Travolta and Saturday Fever. I laughed when people had pronounced his last name. Stop watching his sweat hog antics on Carter. And wretched, he says, is that a bottom-level job as the heavy and carry, which he's wrong about, but that's wrong. For those doubting Thomas' like myself, Travolta can act. His starring debut in Fever, which is true, it's the first time he ever starred in a film, marks him as an incredible actor and more importantly, as an electrifying screen presence. Remember Sylvester Stallone's the year before in the Rocky phenomenon? Expect the same thing with Travolta. I mean, we're fucking off to the races. Obviously, everyone knows the story of Saturday Fever. Speaker 1 (23:32) And, you know, it's just, you know, here we go. Yeah, he's like, you know, he's basically the king of like this Brooklyn disco in the film. Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night. Speaker 1 (23:50) Nick Cohen appeared in New York Magazine, this sort of sociological study of what's going on there. And it stays pretty true to the source if you've read it. Geraldo wanted to do it. He talks about doing, you know, he worked five months getting in shape for the picture from the time I finished Boy with the Bubble from October 1st to February 18th. Geraldo always seems very precise about dates, which this is what the report writes, which is very in line with Scientology. I danced three hours a night, four or five nights a week. By February, I wanted to run, so I started jogging. I was like a horse wanting to get out. I dropped 20 pounds. I'm a pretty good dancer, but that floor stuff, let me tell you, you have to be in shape for that. So yeah, so Saturday Night Fever comes out. Obviously, the movie's really very successful critically and very successful commercially. As a box office, it makes. Remember, this is 1977. Speaker 1 (24:52) $237 million worldwide. This is with no budget. I mean, you know, $277 million in 1977. Today, $1.3 billion. Is that true? Jesus Christ. That is true. How is that fucking possible? If I'm wrong, just tweet at me. But it's you. Of course. Speaker 1 (25:35) What it's best known for is the soundtrack. It just is. When you think disco, you think Silent Fever. When I say this, and the soundtrack, the album I have, the cover of that is sort of the famous cover of Travolta with the pose with the Bee Gees behind them. They're all in that white outfit. The Silent Fever soundtrack is released in November of 77. The movie is released, by the way. Speaker 1 (26:08) About a month later, December 77. Budget's $3.5 million. $237 million. It's one of those weird movies where nobody else in it has a career after that. Not really. Not huge, just him. He's nominated. We'll get to that. Let's talk about the soundtrack. The soundtrack. Here's just some of the songs. You should, of course, know this. The soundtrack went. It was number one everywhere. I'm looking at like, so on Wikipedia, it'll go to like the charts. I have a different chart for it. I can go to Wikipedia on the second. Here's the countries where they're ranked, where it's ranked. Australia won. Austria won. Canada won. Finland won. Germany won. Italy won. Japan won. New Zealand won. Norway won. Portugal won. Spain won. Sweden won. British. UK number one. U.S. number one, U.S. soul chart, which was their, you know, not the R &B hip-hop, but it was the black chart for years, number one. Year-round charts,