Diana Hyland: First Love, First Pain
The day John Travolta met Diana Hyland, he was just a young actor with a career that was expected to be brilliant but not yet, she was already an established actress. They had been summoned to star in the television drama The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. The film told the story of a boy born without immune defenses who grew up in a plastic room and fell in love with his neighbor. Travolta was the protagonist and Diana was the one chosen to be his mother. Something credible since he had turned 22 and she, 40.
The legend says that between takes and takes the attraction began. The shared scenes lasted minutes and the talks, hours. He told her that he was a boy from New Jersey, with five siblings, a father who sold tires, and a mother who were an actress and acting teacher. She confided to him that she was a girl from Ohio and that she got her first role at age 19 on the Robert Montgomery Presents. “In 55, a year after you were born,” she added, but no one cared. Age was part and not all. Because everything was the rest. Everything was that they loved to act, they believed that "the best is yet to come" and they disbelieved in perpetual love.
Diana told him that she had been married to actor Joe Goodson. She had been divorced the year before and was the mother of Zachary, her adored son who had just turned three. She confessed to him that it was not easy to raise him alone because "this career has many ups and downs and it is difficult to project." But when John thought he was going to start off with a victimization speech, he heard, "I went through a tough divorce but pulled through." It was at that moment that he discovered that she was not only important, but she was also, beginning to be essential.
“I was never more in love with anyone in my life. I thought I had been in love before, but no. From the moment I met her I was drawn to her. We were like two maniacs talking all the time on the set of Bubble. After a month it became romantic," the man with the sky eyes once recounted. It is that John, the idol of adolescents until that moment, had lived love affairs, but no great love. Those loves that don't change the big world but your world does. Until Diana arrived.
And then they cheered up and announced the coexistence and scandalized and continued. Because love is like that, it destroys you. They did not hear the "could be your mother", much less the "could be your son". Neither did the "he's going to get tired right away" that they prophesied to her, nor the "you're going to get bored soon" that they guessed to him. Nothing mattered to them, because they knew what mattered: they loved each other. If John was asked about the age difference, he would reply, “I have more fun with Diana than anyone in my life. And the strange thing is that before we met she thought that she would never have a successful relationship. She told me that she thought the same. So, bam, we met and fell in love."
Living together was so good that they looked for a bigger house in one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in Los Angeles to settle in for the three of them. They planned a trip to Rio de Janeiro, and the next day, John appeared in a white suit "for high temperatures" that first made Diana laugh and then approved, because she looked "Beauty and elegant" on him.
The present and the future seemed to be theirs. Travolta was cast as Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. And then, the trip of life. That one, the unpredictable one, the crouching one, the one that leaves you breathless and broken by the side of the road.
A few hours before Christmas dinner in 1976, Diana began to feel bad. She went to a medical consultation. The diagnosis was very hard: breast cancer, the treatment, an urgent mastectomy.
The disease was very advanced, and much more science could not do. In a few weeks, cancer consumed her life. John unhesitatingly left filming to stay with the woman he loved. He held her hand as he lay dying, accompanied her with her tangible love and her encapsulated pain so that she could go in peace. Diana passed away on March 27, 1977, the last thing she saw was the man who looked at her with the most beautiful and sad eyes in the world.
At the funeral, Travolta appeared dressed in the same suit in which he had dreamed of traveling and that he now wore to say goodbye to his wife. When everyone left, he took it from her, wrapped it up, and put it in a box. He sent it to her mother and asked her to keep it. She never put it on again. She did with the suit what she did with his pain: she put it away, hid it, and silenced it, but she never managed to forget it.
Kelly Preston, different love, the same pain
“Suddenly, I saw him appear on the other side of the room, walking towards me with that attitude, with his two dogs … and I thought: 'That's it.'” This is how Kelly Preston told how she fell in love at first sight with Travolta when she met him, in 1987, in a test for a movie.
At that time, the actress had already divorced her first husband, actor Kevin Gage. She had also had an affair with George Clooney, for those times equally beautiful but not nearly as famous. It was the year 1988, they decided to live together and they spent a year together. In love, Clooney decided to give his girlfriend an original gift: a speckled pig named Max. Breaking up, Kelly left it to him. She later dated the wayward Charlie Sheen for a while. All actors, all attractive and engaging.
After Diana's death and the smash hit Saturday Night Fever, Travolta had not been shown in any other relationship.
But then Kelly arrived, and the actor was in love with her again. After four years of dating, they got married at the Hotel Crillon in Paris on September 5, 1991. They arrived at the wedding in the actor's other great love, a Concorde. It was months after he offered her an engagement ring at a 1991 New Year's party in Gstaad, Switzerland. They repeated the wedding in Florida, but under the rite of Scientology.
The relationship was solid and stable. And those problems were not lacking, For years, Kelly had to endure continuous rumors about the S- of her husband. The most enduring claimed that since the mid-80s she had a hidden romance with none other than Tom Cruise. The rumor was so strong that she even became the cover of Star magazine in an edition that sold out copies, and that the protagonists of her responded with silence.
The accusations continued. In the year 2000, a masseur accused him of S- harassment, but although he filed the complaint, the case was filed because "none of the acts or statements could be corroborated." In 2012, another masseur denounced him for "aggression and emotional damage".
But none of these rumors could with the love of this couple. Until again life decided to hit them where it hurts the most. The marriage had three children: Ella, Benjamin, and Jett. When Jett was two years old, they discovered that she had Kawasaki disease, a syndrome that causes inflammation of blood vessels throughout the body.
In 2009, Jett, who had just turned 16, suffered a seizure while taking a bath and passed away. After her death, Travolta and Preston founded the Jett Travolta Foundation, a charity to help children with special needs. “I think we both tried to deal with the pain as best we could. It was a time when it was very difficult to look at each other, but the strength of our relationship helped us," Kelly acknowledged at the time.
But life went on, different but it went on. "Happy anniversary to my wonderful wife," Travolta wrote on Instagram on their 28th anniversary of marriage. “To my dear Johnny, the most wonderful man I know. You have given me hope when I have felt lost, and you have loved me patiently and unconditionally... you have made me laugh more than any other human being... you have shared the most beautiful ups and downs," she replied.
But fate, fate, or whatever runs our lives struck Travolta again. And once again the massacre was the same diagnosis heard decades ago. Now it was Kelly, as at her time it was Diana, who had to face breast cancer. For two years, Kelly coped with the disease. And just as they faced rumors in silence, they battled cancer without cameras or lights. On July 12 of this year, Kelly passed away. She was 57 years old.
It was the actor who reported the news. “It is with a very heavy heart that I inform you that my beautiful wife Kelly has lost her two-year battle with breast cancer. She fought a courageous fight with the love and support of so many,” she expressed. The tear that he lived gave him a glimpse of these words. “Kelly's love and life will always be remembered. I will be taking some time to be with my children, who have lost their mother, so sorry in advance if you haven't heard from us for a while. But please know that I will feel the outpouring of love from her in the coming weeks and months as we heal. All my love, J.T.
Since then he has not been seen at events, has not given an interview, or embarked on new projects. Some time ago on the networks he uploaded a home video where he is seen dancing with his daughter, "in memory of mom." Because you can be the handsome man on the planet or the one who suffered the most rumors, but when death takes away the woman you love twice, you will surely repeat "I don't know who washes God's clothes, but I do know that dirty water washes us." we drink it."
