Olivia Newton-John : Singer and Actor Passed Away

Remembering Olivia Newton John 

Olivia Newton-John touched my teenager heart in the 1970s with her songs If Not For You, Have You Never Been Mellow, I Honestly Love You, A Little More Love, and Sam. She  passed  away aged 73 on last week.  Her name reminded her music which I enjoyed  with my friends in my  twenties.

She took America by storm as Sandy in the evergreen musical Grease with John Travolta. Olivia's 1981 album Physical topped the charts with the title track for several weeks.

Olivia was born in Cambridge, England in 1948 and moved to Melbourne , Australia with her parents when she was just five years old. She took to performing at a young age and her career took off after moving to America. Newton-John scored her first hit in 1971 when she recorded the Bob Dylan song, “If Not for You” and was the UK’s 1974 entrant in the Eurovision song contest, finishing fourth. Her music career included five number ones in the Bilboard Hot 100, one of them being the sensational pop hit “Physical”. 

But definitely release of film Grease had made Olivia a celebrity overnight around 1978. Grease was actually a Broadway musical in the early seventies. The film was set in late 1950s California, Olivia played Sandy, a young Australian girl who falls in love with local boy Danny Zuko (John Travolta) over the summer holidays. The pair are unexpectedly reunited when Sandy starts her first term at Rydell High, the school that Zuko attends and he is very much the cool guy around Rydell. A ‘greaser’ and leader of the T-Birds gang, Zuko is as far away from the boy Sandy fell for over the summer break and the pair struggle to rekindle their romance thanks to their wildly different personas. Ultimately, love wins out as Sandy trades being the shy girl for being the sexy, confident young woman and whether that is the right decision, given that Zuko doesn’t make a huge effort to change his image, is up for debate, but the film ends with a triumphant musical number as Sandy and Danny drive off (or fly off, bizarrely) into the distance for their happily ever after. 

She returned to the big screen in 1980 with another movie musical, Xanadu, opposite Gene Kelly and Michael Beck. 

She continued making music and acting throughout her life, appearing in films such as It’s My Party (1996), Sordid Lives (2000) and Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017). She also appeared on TV shows including The Man from Snowy River, Sordid Lives: The Series and Glee. The legendary star even hit reality TV, dropping in as a guest judge on American Idol, RuPaul’s Drag Race and Dancing With the Stars.

Unsurprisingly, as fans honour the late star following her tragic death, the film is flying high in the world of streaming and at the time of writing is in the top six most streamed films on Paramount.