Check it out! Man walks down that street so fine. Strides easy. Long, looking right. Left then. Then ahead, then left ... snap! . . . again, follows that little sister in the tight pants a ways, then back on the beam. Arms arc. Could be some old trainman, swinging an imaginary lantern in the night. Smiling.
Stepping so smart. Rolls, almost. Swings his butt like he's shifting gears in a swivel chair. Weight stays, sways, in his hips. Shoulders, straight, shift with the strut. High and light.
Street's all his, past doubt. And more, if he wants. Could be he might step off that concrete. Just start flying away.
It's all there, in the walk that John Travolta takes through the opening credits of Saturday Night Fever. Right there is the little kid from New Jersey who danced in front of the television while he watched James Cagney storm-tapping through Yankee Doodle Dandy. The boy in the chorus who trundled his way through a nine-month tour of Grease. The young man who landed a supporting part on a sitcom, watched himself become a TV star, a pretty face on a poster, and a purveyor of slick, sappy top 40 ballads. All that bought him a shot at what is still, in the static-charged currents of media celebrity, the ultimate fantasy fulfillment, the greatest of all gaudy dreams: movie stardom.
John Travolta snagged that too. Just took a stroll down the Brooklyn asphalt, and midblock he had the street tucked neatly under his arm. By the time he got to the corner he had walked away with the turnaway hit of the season, second only to Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1978 grosses. Saturday Night Fever has started Travolta along a yellow-brick show-biz road that reaches out of sight, raised discomania to a national craze and made superstars of a likable rock group called the Bee Gees for the second, or maybe it's the third time (see box).
When Travolta first appears in Saturday Night Fever, there's an instant charge—a shock of recognition, of excitement, of acceptance. He has the moves, the presence, the princely mystique. No one can fully define star quality, but you can find illustration enough. And, in 1978, that walk is the best one around.
First, you are astonished. Off the tube, in the rarefied, unsparing light of the large screen, this long-lashed poster boy from Welcome Back, Kotter with the hundred-watt blue eyes and the scimitar smile that promises even more than it insinuates, ought to flounder. Instead, Travolta fills up all that space and pushes at the boundaries.
Then you start thinking of comparisons: Robert De Niro blowing the star-spangled mailbox to smithereens in Mean Streets; Al Pacino in uniform at his sister's wedding in The Godfather, telling Diane Keaton how his father enforced a contract, his voice full of casual, measured menace; Dustin Hoffman end-running out of the church in The Graduate. At moments like those, you expect the film to freeze and to see a title appear: "The legend starts here." Travolta's walk said that.
Of course, this is heady company to be keeping, and plunging a 24-year-old with little formal acting training into its midst is probably unfair. Yet suddenly, with one movie, Travolta can be mentioned in that league without apology.