But it was not Olivia’s first movie. that was toomorrow, a 1970 British science fiction musical from James Bond producer Harry Saltzman which landed with a thud. It took two years to make and lasted only a week in cinemas. Asked about it by American interviewer Mike Douglas on the eve of the premiere of greaseOlivia spoke with typical Australian frankness: “It was pretty bad.”
Even Olivia’s stellar turn in grease might itself have never come to pass: she was not producer Alan Carr and director Randal Kleiser’s first choice for the role of Sandy. Carrie Fisher (starwars) and Susan Dey (The Partridge Family) were. The role was also offered to Marie Osmond, of Donny & Marie fame, who passed because she was uncomfortable with Sandy’s transformation from sweet to sexy in the film’s dénouement.
Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta in Grease.Credit:AP
Like many Hollywood stories, however, the hand of fate intervened. Another legendary Australian, singer Helen Reddy, threw a dinner party in Los Angeles and invited Carr who ended up sitting across the table from Olivia. As Carr tells it, the moment they started speaking, he knew he had found his Sandy from her.
It was Olivia, Carr would later say, who needed persuading to say yes. She had been burned by her experience de ella on toomorrow and did not want to jeopardize a successful music career with another roll of the dice on silver screen fame. To persuade her of her, Carr changed Sandy from an American (as she is in the Broadway show) to an Australian, allowing Olivia to use her native accent.
“She had a brilliant voice, and I didn’t think there could be any more correct person for Sandy in the universe,” Travolta would later tellVanity Fair. “I never let up on it. I insisted that we cast her”.
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despues de Grease’s success – New York Times′ Vincent Canby described the film as “a larger, funnier, wittier and more imaginative-than-Hollywood movie with a life that is all its own” – Olivia’s American star was properly lit.
Her films were not always commercially successful, though. Xanadu and Two of a Kind, which reunited her with Travolta, were notable failures at the time, but Olivia somehow spun musical gold out of box office straw. the Xanadu soundtrack, a collaboration between Olivia and the Electric Light Orchestra, was a hit. and Two of a Kind gave her three more hits: Twist of Fate, Take a Chance and Livin’ in Desperate Times.
then there was Physical, which came with a provocative, neon-powered music video that encapsulated the 1980s in just three minutes and 44 seconds. And Koala Blue, a retail empire that began with a single store on Los Angeles’ trendy Melrose Avenue and grew to 60 stores worldwide.
Like many things about the 1980s, however, as the blue eyeshadow faded, so did the business model. In the third act of her life, Olivia divided her time between Australia and California and focused on health and wellness, in part due to her own cancer diagnosis. She still wrote and recorded music, releasing work that was perhaps her most artful and creatively nuanced de ella, even if it could never match the commercial enormity of Grease’s infectious, campy hits.
The measure of her legacy is the outpouring of love and reflection which followed the announcement of her death. “You made all of our lives so much better,” grease co-star John Travolta said. “Your impact was incredible. I love you so much. We will see you down the road and we will all be together again. Yours, from the moment I saw you and forever. Your Danny, your John.”
Olivia Newton-John as Sandy playing opposite John Travolta as Danny in Grease.Credit:
Another longtime friend, singer Lorna Luft, who played the Pink Lady Paulette Rebchuck in grease 2, described Olivia as an angel on Earth. “We shared being part of the grease family, we also shared our battle [with cancer]. [You] brought awareness, dignity, honesty, knowledge and class to [your] fight and no one fought harder. [Your] phenomenal talent, generosity and friendship was unequaled.”
grease Principal Kleiser said he was heartbroken. “Ella She was one of a kind, and so very kind,” he said. “For over four decades of our friendship, she exuded nothing but love to everyone she met. Olivia was exactly the way you imagined her.” And her grease co-star Stockard Channing spoke of “her sunshine, her warmth and her grace. I don’t know if I’ve known a lovelier human being.”
Actor Viola Davis thanked Olivia for creating “eternal memories”. And Olivia’s friend de ella, pop star Rod Stewart, described her as “the perfect lady, gorgeous, with great poise and with a certain Aussie sophistication”. Australia’s own Kylie Minogue reflected on how, since she was a child, she “loved and looked up to Olivia Newton-John. She was, and she always will be, an inspiration to me in so many, many ways”.
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My own encounters with her were often unexpected and always delightful. We sat next to each other at British producer Nigel Lythgoe’s wedding in Las Vegas. And we shared a mutual friend in Luft. On one occasion, when the three of us were together, at Sydney’s Mardi Gras, Olivia and Lorna took great delight in introducing themselves to strangers as “Grease 1” and “Grease 2″.
Olivia will always be something specific and personal to each of us. In beloved motion pictures, like grease and Xanadu, which evoke memories of our shared childhoods. And in still images, where her innocence and gentle demeanour of her, and her radiant beauty of her, are frozen in time. Olivia Newton-John and Sandy Olsson, forever, one and the same.
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