Struttin' His Stuff

It's clear the instant John Travolta lopes into the Imperial Gardens on Sunset Strip—clearer even than during his stunning opening Saturday Night Fever walk—he will be revered forever, in the manner of Elvis, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and for the same reasons. No one ever really felt they would know Elvis, Marilyn, Dean, or that they should: certain personalities seem born for the remoteness of the movie screen, not the vulgar. ersatz intimacy of television. Actually having such mythical creatures in one's living room would destroy the lush, intricate fantasies they permit you in the dark of the movie house.

Travolta's personal impact has nothing to do with what he says, sitting next to me in the restaurant, which is "Hi." He barely needs to speak: the grin does, as do the eyes, which glow perpetually in otherworldly blue, like Amy Irving's and Andrew Stevens' eyes in the last reel of The Fury. Neither is his real-life walk especially remarkable. Currently, journalists assert that he always walks as he did in Fever's opening, his weight in his hips, shifting them like gears, but that's ludicrous. That was acting. Actually, he lopes, hunching a bit. vaguely simian, as are his features. But his force is physical, not-quite-accessibly sexual; he burns a hotter temperature than the human mean, as animals do.

This, more than anything else, explains his swift TV-to-cinema progression. Television could not contain him. Those who enter the republic's rumpus rooms via the Chromacolor window on the world aren't really supposed to burn hotter temperatures than the middle American norm. The medium was meant to embrace, say. Mary Tyler Moore. Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin have made the transition, but consider the men who've done more than moonlight a picture and then, if lucky, fade back into regular TV pay: the fate, probably, of Henry Winkler, who, sadly, just doesn't burn hotter.

Not that you're supposed to bring up these matters with Travolta. Waiting in the expensive, crowded Imperial Gardens with his publicist. Michele — his Welcome Back, Kotter taping has run overtime again. he'll be late for dinner — I suggest that it will be interesting to know what John observed about the rather opulent sexuality of Saturday Night Fever's actual Brooklyn discophiles; and Michele. more efficient than foxy. expresses alarm in her proper British accent.