![]() After we wrapped she made a point to not lose contact. She would accept so graciously, she took so much time to talk to everyone. People would recognize her and invite us in for apple cider. We filmed A Mom for Christmas in Ohio and it was Halloween, so Olivia took her daughter, Chloe, and I trick-or-treating. “Being around her, you would never know she was a celebrity. “Her generosity and kindness were her true superpowers, it just so happened that she was insanely talented and gorgeous as well,” she tells Rolling Stone. Īccording to co-star Juliet Sorci Duncan, who played Jessica, Newton-John was unlike anyone she had ever worked with. But I’d watch A Mom For Christmas every holiday season on the Disney channel, even drunkenly putting it on for my family one year when I realized someone had uploaded all 91 magical minutes on YouTube. She’d go on to appear in others, including 1994’s A Christmas Romance and even hosting the children’s series Timeless Tales from Hallmark, all of which are all but entirely forgotten these days. The IMDb page for A Mom for Christmas lists in their trivia section that Newton-John completed her crying scene in one take, but that shouldn’t be a revelation: Newton-John could do anything, including mastering a role as a mannequin in a TV film she was clearly over-qualified to star in. The department store is on the verge of replacing all its mannequins with horrifying faceless ones, but as with most Christmas films, it ends happily: Amy is saved and gets to be human forever. She even learns fire safety after decorating a Christmas tree with 12 taper candles and burning the entire living room down. Amy also encounters her own experiences, like sleeping (“You just lie there!”) and falling in love with Jess’ dad (Doug Sheehan). But she makes the most of her time by being the dream mom Jess always wanted, helping her navigate a school crush while encouraging her to overcome stage fright. ![]() ![]() Like other mannequins portrayed on film, Amy is only human temporarily she must return to the store on Christmas Eve. She confides her deepest wish to Roberts - she wants a mom for Christmas - and suddenly Newton-John materializes at her front door. 11-year-old Jessica (Juliet Sorci Duncan) is on the receiving end of this bullying, but she’s mostly busy staring at other girls shopping with their moms, wishing hers hadn’t died when she was three. This is still the era of peak American mall culture, so in this film kids regularly hang out here, standing around in the women’s clothing section and calling each other “dweebs” for wearing dresses that were possibly too floral. The film obviously includes several Newton-John songs (written by her longtime collaborator John Farrar ), but at the forefront is her performance as Amy, a mannequin in a Cincinnati department store that has black-and-white tile floors and a magical clerk played by Doris Roberts. All of these women knew how to shine bright and shine far, but nobody did it better than Newton-John, who died on Monday at 73. Or you can skip all the way to 2000’s Life Size, when a tomboy Lindsay Lohan gets a doll for her birthday and it transforms into Tyra Banks. Some were utterly confused and looking for a thimble (Anne Francis in a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone ), some were inhabited by ancient Egyptian spirits traveling centuries to find true love (Kim Cattrall in 1987’s Mannequin ). Live mannequins had appeared in TV and film long before 1990. Unpacking the masterpiece that is A Mom for Christmas might take some time, so you might want to sit down. ![]() In 1990, years after Grease, “Physical,” and Xanadu, Olivia Newton-John made her TV movie debut as a department store mannequin brought to life - and no, this probably wasn’t the living-mannequin story you’re thinking of right now.
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