The actor John Travolta called his main source of inspiration
It’s perhaps an often-forgotten fact that even giants of the film world like John Travolta started as mere fans of the form.
Before he was the boy in the bubble, before he’d played high school loudmouth Vinnie Barbarino on the 1970s sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter and before he’d even thought about putting on his dancing shoes, there was one man that Travolta stood in awe of.
That was tough guy-turned-dancing sensation and Clint Eastwood’s ultimate silver screen hero, James Cagney, whom Travolta went so far as to call “the only one outside my family who was a main source of inspiration.” It was a lifelong enthusiasm, one that went all the way back to early childhood.
In order to deal with a spirited and sometimes unruly young Travolta during his early life in New Jersey, the Grease actor’s mother would pretend to call Cagney: “Jim here wants you to do as you’re told!” The star recalled being terrified to take the phone and learn either that the phantom Cagney didn’t like him – or was, in fact, a ruse put on by his mother.
While Travolta’s young relationship with the Yankee Doodle Dandy star was one-sided, he eventually had a legitimate friendship with his hero soon after his own rise to stardom, attending Cagney’s famous St Patrick’s Day party in Beverly Hills and then hosting the older actor for a long weekend at his ranch in Santa Barbara.
Cagney, then in his own final act, called the telephone trick a sweet story, reminiscing to Rolling Stone about how Travolta’s mother “encouraged him by using me as a symbol, and she did that with both his training at home and his work as a young actor.”
Travolta and Cagney are fitting counterparts, with both men lauded for their versatility in playing both the heel and the song-and-dance man. Perhaps it was Cagney’s wingspan stretching all the way from Angels with Dirty Faces to Yankee Doodle Dandy that gave the world a Travolta who seems just as at ease as a heavy like Pulp Fiction’s Vincent Vega or his double turn in John Woo’s Face/Off as he is cutting loose as Danny Zuko or even Edna Turnblad in Hairspray.
Speaking just a few years before his own passing, Cagney appeared to give his young fan his seal of approval. “John, he’s got plenty to learn,” he said. “But he will. And then he’ll use it correctly. When I saw Cowboy [1980’s Urban Cowboy], I said, ‘The kid’s got it all.’”
Shortly thereafter, Travolta entered a fallow period in the late 1980s, leading all the way up to his career comeback in Pulp Fiction. No one will deny it’s been a rocky road for the leading man ever since, with particularly eyebrow-raising performances coming in Battlefield Earth and 2019’s misguided turn as an autistic autograph collector in The Fanatic, helmed by Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst.
A cursory glance through the list of roles to Travolta’s name nevertheless shows plenty of moments worth remembering, and perhaps for some young up-and-coming star out there, it’s a blueprint worth learning from, as Travolta did with his own hero.
