We have all seen the masterpiece Saturday night fever of 1976 with John Travolta in the role of Tony Manero. We all remember well the joy of those dance scenes, and also the sadness of the dramatic ending scenes. However, no one knows how difficult it was for the lead actor to act in a particular tragic moment in his life.
FILM AND TRAILER
Tony Manero, 19-year-old boy, works modestly in Mr. Fusco's paint shop and looks forward to Saturday night when, surrounded by insignificant friends (Bobby, Joey, Double, Gus), he can go to the modern dance hall "2001 Odyssey" which is a sort of in the heart of the Bay Ridge neighborhood (Brooklyn), separated from the flashy Manhattan by the Verrazzano bridge on which, drunk and drugged, the youngsters are produced in reckless evolutions that will cost the life of the youngest of them.
DIANA HYLAND, JOHN TRAVOLTA'S GIRLFRIEND WAS SERIOUSLY ILL
in 1976 John Travolta is a young actor son of Italian Americans from New Jersey and already has a certain notoriety because of the musical TV series The Saturday boys evening when he knows Diana Hyland on the set of The Boy in the plastic bubble: he is 22 years old, she 40 years old and plays her mother, but she is love at first sight. Diana has a son from her ex-husband and is already a fairly famous actress thanks above all to The Bradford family. The couple seems indivisible but unfortunately the fate is tragic.
Unfortunately for Travolta a personal tragedy was taking place: Diana Hyland's fight against breast cancer. When he started preparing to interpret Tony Manero, she was dying. Travolta he made many trips from New York to Los Angeles to be with her during her illness, so she was in a state of constant tension and distress. Two weeks after filming began, he flew to the west coast to be with Diana one last time.
"She didn't know Diana was sick when she fell in love with her," Travolta's mother Helen later said. to the magazine Mccall , "But he stayed with her when he knew." On March 27, 1977, Hyland died in his arms "
Andy Warhol, who happened to be on the return flight with Travolta in New York he wrote in his diary:
“John Travolta always went to the bathroom, eyes red with tears, kept drinking orange juice and liqueur in a paper cup. At one point she put her head in a pillow and started crying. I also saw him reading a script, so I assumed he was acting. He was very cute and sensitive looking, very tall…. You could see the magic in him. I asked the stewardess why she was crying and she said, 'due to a death in the family', so I thought it was a mother or a father, until I took the newspaper home and found out it was Diana Hyland, that she was dead. of cancer at forty-one, queen of the soap opera.
THE SUSPENDED SHOOTING AND THE ACTOR'S PAIN
John Travolta witnessed Diana Hyland until the end holding her hands in the hospital, coming to interrupt the filming of the film. Unfortunately, the actress had undergone a mastectomy two years before her death and in the last two weeks it had gotten worse. Before filming began, Travolta himself commented on his return to the set
I have given her great joy in the last months of her life, I always feel that she is with me
Karen Lynn Gorney, the film's co-star later said the actor was going through deep pain and had to get over it. Had he gotten into the pain, he would never have been able to get out of it. He was a very professional guy.
Filming concluded, the film was a success and John Travolta received an Oscar nomination.
Article Saturday Night Fever: Travolta made the film despite the fact that his girlfriend was dying From We of the 80-90s.
