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Ronald Gabriel "Ron" Palillo (born April 2, 1949) is an American television and film actor, perhaps best known for his role as high school student Arnold Dingfelder Horshack on the ABC sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, which aired from 1975 to 1979.^[1]

Life and career[link]

Palillo was born in Cheshire, Connecticut, and graduated from the Herpolschiemer Acadamy of Performance Art (where he returned to teach during the late 1990s).

After Welcome Back, Kotter, Palillo appeared in supporting roles in various television series and performed the voice in various animated series such as Laverne and Shirley in the Army, Darkwing Duck, and Rubik, the Amazing Cube where he played the lead character. In 1996, Palillo played himself in several episodes of Ellen, where he became the love interest of Ellen's friend Audrey. He also played a small part on Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.

Outside of acting, Palillo is also an artist, having provided the art for two children's books: The Red Wings of Christmas and A Gift for the Contessa. He is credited on these as "Ronald G. Paolillo", which he uses in memory of his father.

Palillo returned to New York in 1991, and played roles as Mozart in Amadeus, George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls.He appeared in The Curse of Micah Rood. He appeared on Broadway in 2008 in Broadway Backwards 4, a charity event for people with AIDS.

In 1996, Palillo hosted a promotional event in New York City's Grand Central Terminal, where he and actors dressed in 1970s clothing distributed special MetroCards publicizing a week of 1970s programming on VH1 to passing commuters. In 2007, he introduced a new clothing line specializing in limited-edition t-shirts produced by Rotter and Friends.

In 2005, his first full length play, The Lost Boy, the true story of Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie, was produced in New York State. A film version of the play is also in discussion.

Palillo is now living in Palm Beach County, Florida, where he teaches at G-Star School of the Arts for Motion Pictures and Broadcasting.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Ron Palillo at the Internet Movie Database
• Corporate Speakers site for Ron
• Would you wear a T-shirt designed by Horshack?
• Rotter and Friends Palillo Designed Shirt

John Travolta
John Travolta in 2007
Born	John Joseph Travolta (1954-02-18) February 18, 1954 (age 58) Englewood, New Jersey, U.S.
Residence	Jumbolair subdivision; Ocala, Florida
Occupation	Actor, singer, dancer, producer, writer
Years active	1969–present
Religion	Roman Catholic (until 1975) Scientologist (1975-present)
Spouse	Kelly Preston (1991–present)
Children	Jett Travolta (1992–2009) Ella Bleu Travolta (b. 2000) Benjamin Travolta (b. 2010)
Website
http://www.travolta.com

John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is an American actor, dancer, and singer. Travolta first became known in the 1970s, after appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever and Grease. Travolta's acting career declined in the early 1980s and continued to deteriorate for the rest of the decade. His career enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s with his role in Pulp Fiction, and he has since continued starring in Hollywood films, including Face/Off, Ladder 49, and Wild Hogs. Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance in Get Shorty.

Early life[link]

Travolta, the youngest of six children,^[1] was born and raised in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City. His father, Salvatore Travolta (November 1912 – May 1995),^[2] was a semi-professional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company.^[3] His mother, Helen Cecilia (née Burke, January 1912 – December 1978),^[2] was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher.^[4] His siblings, Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta, have all acted.^[4] His father was a second-generation Italian American and his mother was Irish American;^[5][6] he grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood and has said that his household was predominantly Irish in culture.^[7][8] He was raised Roman Catholic, but converted to Scientology in 1975.^[6][9]

Career[link]

Early career[link]

After attending Dwight Morrow High School,^[10] Travolta moved across the Hudson River to New York City and landed a role in the touring company of the musical Grease and on Broadway in Over Here!, singing the Sherman Brothers' song "Dream Drummin'".^[11][12] He then moved to Los Angeles to further his career in show business.

Travolta's first California-filmed television role was as a fall victim in, Emergency! (S2E2), in September 1972,^[13] but his first significant movie role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film, Carrie (1976).^[14] Around the same time, he landed his star-making role as Vinnie Barbarino in the TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared (as Arnold Horshack's mother).^[15] The show aired on ABC.

1970s stardom[link]

Travolta in 1983

Around this time, Travolta had a hit single entitled "Let Her In", peaking at number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.^[16][17] In the next few years, he appeared in two of his most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and as Danny Zuko in Grease (1978).^[4] The films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom.^[18] Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.^[19] At age 24, Travolta became one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.^[20] His mother and his sister Ann appeared as extras in Saturday Night Fever and his sister Ellen appeared as a waitress in Grease. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album.^[21] In 1980, Travolta inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film, Urban Cowboy, in which he starred with Debra Winger.^[22]

Downturn[link]

After Urban Cowboy, Travolta starred in a series of financial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Perfect, co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis, and Two of a Kind, a romantic comedy reteaming him with Olivia Newton-John. During that time he was offered, but turned down, lead roles in what would become box office hits, including American Gigolo^[23] and An Officer and a Gentleman, both of which went to Richard Gere.^[24]

Resurgence[link]

In 1989, Travolta starred in Look Who's Talking, which grossed $297,000,000, making it his most successful film since Grease. Travolta continued to the two sequels Look Who's Talking Too (1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (1993). But it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career revived.^[25][26][4] The movie shifted him back onto the A-list, and he was inundated with offers. Notable roles following Pulp Fiction include a movie-buff loan shark in Get Shorty (1995), an FBI agent and terrorist in Face/Off (1997), a desperate attorney in A Civil Action (1998), a Bill Clinton-esque presidential candidate in Primary Colors (1998),^[4] and a military detective in The General's Daughter (1999).

2000–present[link]

Travolta also starred in Battlefield Earth (2000) based on a work of science fiction by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office.^[27] Travolta played Mrs. Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray, his first musical since Grease.^[28]

Personal life[link]