Tributes Pour in for Grease Star - The Times

Tributes Pour In For Olivia Newton-John
By Keiran Southern in Los Angeles

Olivia Newton-John has died aged 73, her husband announced yesterday. The actress and singer, best known for playing the high school student Sandy Olsson in the classic 1978 musical Grease, died peacefully surrounded by family and friends at her ranch in southern California, according to a statement. No cause of death was provided but the British-born Australian star had suffered from cancer for years.

John Travolta, who played Danny Zuko opposite Newton-John’s straight-laced Sandy, led the tributes. My dearest Olivia, you made all of our lives so much better, he wrote on Instagram. 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 first moment I saw you and forever! Your Danny, your John!

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John Easterling, Newton-John’s husband of 14 years, said in a statement shared on Facebook: Olivia has been a symbol of triumphs and hope for over 30 years sharing her journey with breast cancer. Her healing inspiration and pioneering experience with plant medicine continues with the Olivia Newton-John Foundation Fund, dedicated to researching plant medicine and cancer

The family asked for privacy and requested that fans donate to the Foundation rather than sending flowers.

Newton-John is also survived by her daughter, Chloe Lattanzi, from her marriage with the actor Matt Lattanzi. Lattanzi, a 36-year-old actress, shared a picture with her mother on Instagram over the weekend alongside the caption: I worship this woman. My mother. My best friend.

Grease remains one of the most successful musicals in Hollywood history, grossing more than $366 million at the box office. The film was also a pop culture phenomenon and for millions of fans Newton-John will forever be linked to Sandy and her black leather pants and jacket.

Such was the Outfit’s Fame that it sold for more than $405,000 at an auction in Beverly Hills in 2019.

Newton-John almost never accepted the role that defined her career over fears that at 29 she was too old to play a high school student. However, her fears were allayed following a screen test. Songs from the Grease soundtrack including Summer Nights, Hopelessly Devoted to You and You’re the One That I Want remain hugely popular.

Gabrielle Union, the actress, said: Grease is my #1 movie of all time and made me a lifelong Olivia Newton-John fan.

After Grease Newton-John starred in the 1980 musical fantasy film Xanadu alongside Gene Kelly in what was his final movie role.

As well as an actress Newton-John was also a chart-topping pop star. In 1974 she released I Honestly Love You and it became a global hit, reaching number one in the US, Canada and Australia. The song won two Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year.

Newton-John’s signature song , is Physical, the lead single from her 1981 album of the same name. The R-rated song , which was banned by some radio stations, marked a complete break with the singer’s squeaky clean image. I recorded it and then suddenly thought, Goodness, maybe I’ve gone too far! she told Entertainment Weekly in 20l7, recalling how the song had been suggested by manager Roger Davies. I called Roger and said, We’ve got to pull this song! He said, It’s too late. It’s already gone to radio and it’s running up the charts, I was horrified!

Jane Lynch, who performed Physical alongside Newton-John on the musical television series Glee in 2010, tweeted: ONJ. Angel.

Newton-John’s career never hit the same heights following the 1980s. Her marriage to Lattanzi broke up in 1995 and she married Easterling, founder of the Amazon Herb Company, in 2008.

Her recent albums included Stronger Than Before and the autobiographical Gaia: One Woman’s Journey, inspired by her battle with cancer and by the loss of her father.

Born in Cambridge, Newton-John was the daughter of Brin Newton—John, a professor of German literature, and Irene Born, whose father was Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born. The family moved to Australia when Newton-John was, five but she returned to England as a teenager and lived with her mother after her parents broke up.

Newton-John had a long and well documented battle with cancer. In 2017 she announced that her breast cancer had returned 25 years after she beat an earlier diagnosis. Two years later she shared a message on Twitter reassuring fans that contrary to media reports she was not in imminent danger.

Newton-John helped to fund a cancer treatment centre bearing her name that Opened in 2012.

George Takei,the Star Trek actor, was among the Hollywood stars who paid tribute, describing a her as a great, iconic artist. He said: I trust she is now in the great Xanadu beyond. Know that we are forever hopelessly devoted to you, Olivia. Rest in song and mirth.

Obituary, page 49

Dame Olivia Newton-John Obituary

Olivia Newton-John should have been far too old to play the chaste teenage prom queen Sandy Olsson in the film Grease. She was 29 when the movie was made and yet the image of her dancing with John Travolta at a high—school hop came to epitomise adolescent fantasy in which wholesome and innocent schoolgirls fall for leather-clad bad boys and together find that true love conquers all.

I was worried I was too old so I asked if I could do a screen test to make sure I looked appropriate, she said. But John wanted me for the role and in the screen test it really worked between us. There was an attraction that kept the chemistry going.

Adapted from the Broadway musical of the same name and set in 1950s America, Grease was the peak of her acting success. There were further lead roles, including a reprise of her partnership with Travolta in l983’s Two of A Kind. But in the public’s imagination she was forever cast as Grease’s eternal teenager, seen first in a demure frock with fringe and bob and then in black spandex pants with an extravagant bubble perm as the film tracked a time-honoured youthful rite of passage.

The enduring appeal of the film meant that on the opening weekend of its 20th anniversary re-release in 1998, only Titanic did better at the box office.

That she never repeated the movie success of Grease did not bother Newton—John, who regarded herself as primarily a singer rather than an actress. The two came serendipitously together when the movie’s soundtrack gave her three top five hits in You’re The One That I Want, Hopelessly Devoted To You and Summer Nights.

Her post—Grease movie career stalled but her success as a recording artist soared as she went on to become one of the biggest-selling female artists in history. Her record sales eventually topped 100 million and until the emergence of Kylie Minogue, she was said to be Australia’s most famous female singer since the operatic soprano Nellie Melba.

She was made an OBE in 1979 and a dame in 2019.

Although an Australian citizen and an American resident for much of her life, she was born in England, in Cambridge, in 1948. Her mother, Irene, was the daughter of the Jewish Nobel Prize-winning atomic physicist Max Born, who left Germany for Britain with his family before the Second World War to escape Nazism. Her Welsh father, Brinley, Bryn Newton-John was an MI5 officer who worked on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park, spoke fluent German and was charged with taking Rudolf Hess into custody after Hitler’s deputy had flown to Scotland on his bizarre peace mission in 1941.

She remembered her father keeping a pistol in his pocket, but said: He never talked about what he did, he wasn’t allowed to. Just before he died he gave us tapes in which he talked a little about it but he was still pretty guarded. I wish I’d known more when he was still alive so I could have asked him about it.

The family emigrated to Australia when she was six, after her father retired from government service and was appointed master of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne. Three years later her parents separated. We went from living in the college to my mother and I living on our own. That was pretty traumatic. In those days divorce wasn’t so common; telling my friends was awkward, she recalled.

In adult life her own personal relationships were similarly complex. Her first serious relationship was with Ian Turpie, the Australian actor and television presenter, who was five years her senior. In the 1970s she was engaged to Bruce Welch of the Shadows but they never married. She described Travolta as very sweet, handsome and charming and he confessed to having had a crush on her but she denied that they ever slept together. She also denied rumours that she was a lesbian and in 1984 married the actor Matt Lattanzi, whom she met on the set of the film Xanadu. They had a daughter, the singer and actress Chloe Lattanzi, who appeared on stage with her mother from an early age.

Her marriage to Lattanzi was annulled in 1994 and she had an ll-year relationship with Patrick McDermott, a cameraman, until he disappeared during a fishing trip off the Californian coast in 2005. There were rumours of foul play and a suggestion that he may have staged his disappearance to avoid maintenance payments to his ex-wife, the actress Yvette Nipar. Newton-John, who was in Australia at the time, refused to comment on the speculation but was severely shaken and spent several months on anti-depressants. A US Coast Guard investigation concluded three years later that McDermott had been lost at sea.

In 2008, she secretly married John Easterling, owner of a company specialising in new-age remedies. After an Inca ceremony at sunrise on a mountain in,Peru, a more conventional wedding took place in Florida, although no guests were, invited and only her daughter knew of the union.

Newton-John’s elder sister Rona, who died from brain cancer in 2013, was also an actress and-was married for a while to the actor Jeff Conaway, who co-starred in Grease.

In her early years in Australia, Newton-John’s chief passion was horse riding and she harboured ambitions to be a vet; but at the age of 15 she won a television talent contest. My mum wanted me to finish my education but suddenly I was being offered all these TV opportunities,,/q> she recalled. There was even a controversy in the papers when I was offered a job on a kids’ show —— should she take it or should she finish her schooling? She took the job and appeared on the show as Lovely Livvy.

Part of the prize for winning the talent show was a trip to London, but she delayed taking it up for a year until she was 16. I found it totally over-whelming and I wanted to go home and see my boyfriend. I kept booking my flight home and my mother kept cancelling it;

Her mother wanted her to enrol at Rada but she was more interested in singing than acting. Cliff Richard was an early champion and she appeared regularly in his TV show, but she had been in London for six years before she scored her first chart hit in 1971 with an easy listening, country-tinged version of Bob Dylan’s If Not For You.

She was chosen to sing the British entry in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, Long Live Love, but came fourth. Reinventing herself as a country singer she topped the American charts with I Honestly Love You and Have You Never Been Mellow. Her success persuaded her to move to the US, where she appointed the Hollywood impresario Allan Carr as her manager. He then put up $6 million to produce Grease and ensured that his client was cast in the lead female role.

However, the follow-up Xanadu, in which she danced with Gene Kelly, flopped so badly that the film inspired the creation of the , spoof Golden Raspberry Awards. Xanadu scooped seven of them at the inaugural ceremony, although it didn’t stop the soundtrack giving Newton-John three hits, including Magic, which went to No 1.

The raunchy carnal lyrics of her 1981 hit Physical, which topped the American charts for ten weeks, found her leaving behind her girl next door image, although an aerobics video in which she appeared in leotard and headband and which accompanied the song made an unconvincing attempt at pretending at a more innocent kind of physicality.

At the peak of her chart success, she took several years out while bringing up her daughter, before returning in the late 198Qs with an album produced by Elton John, only for her career to be put on hold again when in 1992 she was found to have breast cancer, on the same weekend that her father died of cancer. Her own treatment meant that she was unable to attend his funeral but she made a full recovery, an experience that sparked an intense interest in yoga, meditation and other alternative and new-age therapies. I think we find strength we don’t expect to have. I made a decision that I was going to be all right and after that I had a deep-down belief that I would be, she said.

After her treatment she returned to Australia and announced she had a mind to retire. But the new—age bug had bitten and instead, she wrote a set of songs that chronicled her illness and recovery and released them as a kind of spiritual self-help manifesto on the album Gaia: One Woman's Journey. My whole cancer journey was so I could help people. I don’t regret it because I see the experienced of going through it and coming out of it as a gift, she said with at piety that seemed almost too good to be true.

Further albums of healing songs followed and she built the Olivia Newton~John Cancer and Wellness Centre in Melbourne, Australia, leading a three—week walk along the Great Wall of China to help to fund the project.

She was also a passionate supporter of environmental causes; she once cancelled a tour of Japan to protest at the slaughter of dolphins caught in-tuna fishing nets and was a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme.

In May 2017, it was announced that for all her faith in natural wellness therapies, her breast cancer had returned and she was undergoing a course of photon radiation treatment.

Olivia Newton-John, actress and singer, was born on September 26, 1948. She died of breast cancer on August 8, 2022 aged 73