People People Olivia Newton-John Tribute

1948-2022 Her Songs, Her Roles, Her Beautiful Life ‘EVERYONE HAS DIFFICULTY IN THEIR LIFE. I TRY TO LIVE IN THE MOMENT AND ENJOY RIGHT NOW, WHICH IS ALL WE HAVE’—OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN, 2019“Even when I was going through hard times, I managed to find gratitude in my life. I always think that beautiful things come out of bad”—OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN SANDY, SONGSTRESS & SO MUCH MORE THROUGH HER UNFORGETTABLE ROLE, SWEET SMILE & COURAGEOUS VOICE, OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN INSPIRED MILLIONS OF FANS AND CAPTURED MILLIONS OF HEARTS…

FOR FIVE DECADES Dame Olivia Newton-John, who died of cancer at 73 on Aug. 8, 2022, enchanted world audiences with her clear, supple voice, its “high notes bright and open like a window on a summer morning,” wrote British critic Lauren O’Neill. The U.K.-born, Australian-raised singer-actor recorded numerous chart-topping albums and singles, from the country-pop “I Honestly Love You” and “Have You Never Been Mellow” to the erotically charged “Physical.” Indeed, Newton-John underwent an image reboot in the 1980s, morphing from girl-next-door innocence to sultry sensuality, which mirrored the arc of her one enduring film role—Sandy in 1978’s Grease, the peaches-and-cream high school square who transforms into John Travolta’s sharkskin-clad greaser queen. But her appeal transcended mere talent and sexual allure. Newton-John radiated a warm spirituality for which she was…

SHE WAS, IN HER OWN WORDS, an insecure child, perhaps not without reason. In 1953, when Olivia was no more than 5 years old, her parents, Irene and Brinley “Brin” Newton-John, announced that the family would be leaving the only home their daughter had ever known: Cambridge, England. There she’d spent her days toddling about the ancient, grassy college yards and enjoying boat rides on the scenic river Cam. But when her father was offered a prestigious job as a college administrator, the family had to migrate halfway around the world to the burgeoning city of Melbourne. During the voyage, poor Olivia lost her favorite teddy bear, Fluffy, and cried copiously, she would recall in her autobiography Don’t Stop Believin’. Five years later Irene and Brin further upset the young family, telling…

LONDON IN THE 1960S WAS ONE of the most exciting cities in the world, but at 17 Olivia Newton-John hated it. “Everything is so old and dirty!” she complained. She hated sleeping on a foldout couch in the cramped apartment that she shared with her mother. And above all, she hated being away from her boyfriend Ian, who had promised to wait for her … but only for three months. According to Tim Ewbank’s biography Olivia, she repeatedly sneaked out to a travel agent to book her passage back home to Australia, but her mother always got wind of her plans and canceled them. Months passed, and Ian was true to his word: “Liv, you’re not back,” he wrote, “so I’ve started seeing someone.” Heartbroken, she now had little choice but…

NEWTON-JOHN MET THE CHARISMATIC SHOWBIZ impresario Allan Carr in 1976 at a dinner party hosted by their mutual friend Helen Reddy. Carr was full of Hollywood gossip and comic stories and, above all, overflowing with enthusiasm about his latest project: a movie musical set in the 1950s. Already a hit on Broadway, Grease was going to be a smash, he assured her. “I can’t wait to see it,” Newton-John replied innocently. “We haven’t cast the female lead,” he went on. “You would make a wonderful Sandy.” Newton-John was flabbergasted. Sandy, she would soon learn from the stage show she hadn’t seen yet, was a 17-year-old American high school student. Newton-John was 28, had an Australian accent, and the only film she had acted in—the ill-conceived sci-fi musical Toomorrow—had been a complete catastrophe. “My…

AFTER THE MASSIVE success of Grease, Olivia Newton-John seemed poised to build on her budding film career. Her next project, 1980’s Xanadu, was a musical that was, to say the least, bizarre—try to imagine the pitch meeting: A struggling artist (Michael Beck) meets Terpsichore, the Greek muse of lyric poetry and dancing (Newton-John), who springs to life from one of his discarded sketches and collides with him while roller skating through L.A. They fall in love, of course, and wind up collaborating with a big-band leader turned construction mogul (Gene Kelly in his final film role) to build a dazzling disco called Xanadu. It seems a doomed romance—she’s mythological, after all, and has to return to Mount Olympus. But Zeus grants the couple’s wish to be together. Xanadu’s soundtrack proved…