John Travolta flags Australian visit after donating ‘majestic’ Boeing 707 to museum

Cannes: When John Travolta heard that his debut film as director, an hour-long fairytale about a boy’s first trip in a plane, was going to be invited to the Cannes Film Festival, he says he “wept like a baby”.

A few months later, he would weep again after the first screening of Propeller One-Way Night Coach, where Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux joined him onstage to present him with an honorary Palme d’Or. “This is beyond the Oscar,” he said, choking back a sob as a thrilled audience rose to its feet. “I can’t believe this. This is the last thing I expected.”

Two days later, he is explaining how his fascination with all things aviatic was intertwined with his familiarity with movies. Travolta’s mother Ellen was a jobbing actress and drama coach.

“When I was a little boy, we were immersed in show business. But show business equalled people going to do a Broadway tour, a nightclub act, a summer theatre job – I was always going to the airport,” he says.

“And every day, [there was] a photograph of Marilyn Monroe arriving somewhere, Elizabeth Taylor somewhere else, Grace Kelly in Monaco – there was always this romantic connection. That’s when photographers were always at the airport.”

When he was in movies himself, he would interview older stars about their memories of travel, what their favourite aircraft were and why. “Because that’s what I was interested in. I never asked anyone about acting.”

Propeller One-Way Night Coach was inspired by Travolta’s first experience on an aeroplane as a child, flying from Washington to Los Angeles. Everything is seen through the very wide eyes of 10-year-old Jeff (Clark Shotwell). He is clearly blown away. Flying has obviously become more mundane over the decades, but the TWA red-eye was surely never quite this luxurious.

The martinis flow; dinner is served with silver-service pomp. When Jeff first sees the plane on the runway, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue gives voice to the small boy’s naive rapture. When he is tired, he is popped to bed in a curtained hideaway while his mother – played by Travolta’s real-life sister Kelly Eviston-Quinnett – chats up the richest bachelor on board.

“They’re all composite characters,” Travolta says, “but the boy is 100 per cent me. The mother is a composite of my sister, my mother and some of her girlfriends. The wild side was more the girlfriends.” The circus performer who looms over in the night and announces he is “the 10-foot-tall man” was real. He was allowed to visit the cockpit. “Everything in it really happened.”

Travolta, 72, currently owns five aeroplanes: a Boeing 737, the Canadian-built jet Global Express, a French Falcon 900, an Eclipse jet and the star of his movie, a red and white TWA propeller plane. “I think it’s the most beautiful plane ever built, other than maybe the Concorde.”

As a qualified pilot, he has racked up over 10,000 hours’ flying time. He flew himself and his daughter Ella Bleu Travolta, 26, from his home in Florida to Nice, an hour’s drive from Cannes, in eight hours and 42 minutes. Ella Bleu plays a flight attendant in the film. Travolta arrived wearing the first in a succession of voluminous berets, redefining him as a French artist.

His favourite plane to fly, he says, was probably his Boeing 707, a Qantas jet. “It felt majestic. Big, four engines and I could be at the helm, like making a toy come to life.”

In 2017, the Boeing developed mechanical issues that meant it had to be retired from service. He has since donated it to the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) Museum in Sydney, shipping it to Australia in parts.

“It’s already at the museum, being put together again,” he says.

The exchange has taken five years to achieve. The Boeing once belonged to Qantas; before shipping, Travolta – who has been a Qantas ambassador since 2002 – restored the airline’s insignia. He is unsure when it will be exhibited. “I think they want me there when it goes on display, so I’m going to try to be there.”

Propeller One-Way Night Coach won far more critical respect in Cannes than anyone expected. Wide-eyed wonder is not much in fashion now, but reviews praised it as “charmingly quirky and distinctively peculiar bedtime story” (The Guardian) and “slim and winning” (Variety).

Travolta reads his own story for children about the flight, which becomes the film’s narration, with disarming sincerity.

“My purpose was to remind people of when innocence meant hope,” he says as I leave. “What it felt like to have the glass half full.” Those were the days.

Propeller One-Way Night Coach streams on Apple TV from May 29.

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