John Travolta Says He’s Famous as Elvis or Marilyn

James Joyner @ Gone Hollywood | Saturday, April 28, 2007

John Travolta says he’s as famous as Elvis or Marilyn but avoided early death thanks to Scientology.

John Travolta doesn’t suffer from lack of ego. The “Wild Hogs” star recently boasted that he was as big a star as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe — but didn’t suffer the same fate as them because of his values and religion. “I have fame on the level of a Marilyn Monroe or an Elvis, but part of the reason I didn’t go the way they did was because of my beliefs,” Travolta told the Irish Independent.

The star went on to credit his sometimes controversial religion for the difference between his fate and theirs.
“People make judgments about it [Scientology], but often they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Travolta said. “I would advise anyone who wants to know about it to read up on it. We [the Church of Scientology] are only getting bigger and we help people all over the world, from disaster zones to drug rehabilitation.”

This was a dumb thing to say on a whole variety of levels. Travolta is indeed a big time star and has been since his national debut as Vinny Barbarino on the 1970s sitcom “Welcome Back Kotter” and his emergence as a movie star with “Saturday Night Fever” (1976) and “Grease” (1977). But he’s simply not the cultural icon that Elvis and Marilyn became. The backlash from claiming that level of superstardom dimishes his legitimate status as an A-list celeb.

Scientology strikes me as incredibly dumb. Still, Travolta, Tom Cruise, and a host of truly successful Hollywood stars who are practitioners have indeed managed to avoid the tailspin that so many of their cohorts have fallen into. If Scientology is the reason for that, more power to them.

If L. Ron Hubbard suggested that dorky hat, though, all bets are off.

John Travolta Says He’s Famous as Elvis or Marilyn

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