Between that and the lowly Astros unexpectedly vying for their first division championship, 1979 might have been the strangest summer Houston had ever seen. Houston City magazine reported that bottles of muddy water extracted from an on-set pothole that Travolta’s character had fallen in were selling for $25. At least one found the correct address and was soon evicted from his closet. Teenage girls camped out in cars in front of Memorial-area homes they thought he was renting. Though his most recent film, Moment by Moment, an awkward May-December romance starring him opposite Lily Tomlin, had flopped, he was still a bona fide matinee heartthrob. Saturday Night Fever had earned Travolta a Best Actor Oscar nomination, and the sound tracks to the two films had become the music industry’s number one and number two all-time best-sellers. The first two films he had carried, Saturday Night Fever and Grease, were among the highest-grossing movies in the history of Paramount Pictures. It was only the fourth leading role for the 25-year-old actor, but he was already arguably the world’s biggest movie star. In the summer of 1979, the Houston news and gossip circles were dominated by the presence of one John Travolta, who lived in the city while filming Urban Cowboy in nearby Pasadena.
