Toomorrow in tights

Ian Katz’s sympathetic essay on Tony Blair’s spelling of tomorrow (G2, November 23) asked with wonderment: “Where on earth did he get that from?

“In 1970, a young Olivia Newton-John was cast in the role of Olivia in a spectacularly bad sci-fi musical movie entitled Toomorrow. She played the lead singer of a pop quartet, also named Toomorrow, so gifted that an alien race doomed to extinction (represented by Roy Dotrice in tights) kidnapped the band from swingin’ London and transported them to their planet so they could record their species-saving “vibrations”. The film was an unmitigated flop.

At a recent screening of this lost “classic”, which I organised in LA at the American Cinematheque, Miss Newton-John told the packed audience that producers Harry Saltz-man and Don Kirshner had hoped to create “the next Beatles”, which could then be exploited as a film franchise.

Over 30 years later a British prime minister is using the spelling of the name of this unlamented, prefabricated group in his personal missives. It is, perhaps, an indication that the filmmakers, and especially Miss Newton-John, left their mark on one British teenager destined for a brighter toomorrow.

Martin Lewis
Los Angeles

More from the screening in LA. The Blu-ray of Toomorrow was released in 2026.