Travolta Dethroned
Translation:
Since the success of “GREASE” in 1978, where she whispered the famous “ooh-ooh-ooh” we have been waiting for Olivia to confirm the strong impression she had left… and today, she is causing a stir with XANADU, a film directed by Robert Greenwald and starring Gene Kelly and Michael Beck.
This is a dazzling musical comedy where the music of Jeff Lynne and the Electric Light Orchestra, the meeting of the 40s and the 80s, sumptuously combines with tap dancing, acrobatic dances in delirious sets and a love story that borders on magic.
If in XANADU dreams come true, it took a little more determination for Olivia Newton-John to make hers come true.
A Nobel Prize-Winning Grandfather
Olivia was born in Cambridge, England, but she spent her childhood in Melbourne, Australia.
It was first at school that she made her debut as a singer and dancer, in a group she formed with three of her friends, The Sol Four…
But the family did not see this favorably: her grandfather, a Nobel Prize winner, was the German physicist Max Born, and her father was the Principal of Ormond College in Melbourne. However, she persisted and at the age of 15 won a trip to England by singing. She first performed in a duo with an Australian friend, Pat Carroll, and recorded her first album… two years after her arrival.
For this album, she covered a Bob Dylan song: If Not For You (which would also be covered by George Harrison). It was with her second hit Bank The Ohio that she will achieve international fame. She then provides the opening act for the Cliff Richard Show during his European tour.
In 71, the Record Mirror voted her best singer of the year. She then embarks on a gigantic tour that will take her around the world (except in Japan to protest against the massacre of dolphins, a massacre carried out mainly by Japanese fishermen) and which will end in apotheosis at the Metropolitan City of New York in 78… the year of her first major musical film GREASE, directed by Randal Kleiser, produced by Robert Stigwood, with John Travolta as her main partner.
The three songs performed by Olivia You’re The One That I Want, Summer Nights, Hopelessly and Devoted To You went gold and remained in the hits throughout 78.
In 79 she made a new international tour and although projects were presented to her almost every day since the success of Grease, she would wait two years and the proposal to film XANADU to appear again on screens.
She had decided to only accept a project that would completely excite her, that would make Travolta’s shadow forgotten… and this was the case of XANADU and the eternal Gene Kelly an idol of your parents.
Photo: Olivia and Michael Beck her partner in XANADU