Olivia Newton-John, the Grammy-winning superstar who reigned the pop, country, adult contemporary and dance charts with hits like Physical and You’re the One That I Want and won countless hearts as favorite Sandy of everyone in the blockbuster film version. of Grease, is dead. She was 73 years old.
Newton-John, a longtime resident of Australia whose sales topped 100 million albums, died Monday at her Southern California ranch, her husband John Easterling wrote on Instagram and Facebook. “We ask that everyone respect the family’s privacy during this difficult time,” the message read.
American actor John Travolta, second right, and actress Olivia Newton-John, second left, speak to the press during the Deauville American Film Festival in Deauville, France [File: Mychele Daniau/AFP]
Between 1973 and 1983, Newton-John was one of the most popular artists in the world. She had 14 top 10 singles in the US alone, won four Grammys and starred with John Travolta in Grease and with Gene Kelly in Xanadu. The fast-paced Travolta-Newton-John duet, You’re the One That I Want, was one of the biggest songs of the era and has sold more than 15 million copies.
Physical, the bouncy, R-rated smash released in 1981, was No. 1 for 10 weeks and was named Billboard’s song of the year despite being banned by some radio stations. An aerobics-friendly promo clip, shot in MTV’s early years, won a Grammy for Best Video.
“Grease” co-star John Travolta shared his condolences on Instagram.
“My dear Olivia, you have made all of our lives so much better. Your impact was incredible,” Travolta wrote.
Both musically and image-wise, he reinvented himself during those years. The blonde and ever-smiling Newton-John initially favored soft pop-country songs like Please Mr Please and Have You Never Been Mellow and soft-breathing ballads like I Honestly Love You, which in 1975 won a Grammy for Best Vocal and Record female octopus of the year
But she picked up the pace in Grease, especially after Sandy ditched her white sweaters and blouses for waist-length black leather pants. The physicist even made Newton-John blush when he told his soon-to-be lover, “There’s nothing else to talk about / unless it’s horizontal” and finally shouted, “Let’s be animal! Animal! “
Actress Olivia Newton-John visits the cast of Broadway’s Grease to promote Breast Cancer Awareness Month at the Brooks Atkinson Theater on October 7, 2008 in New York City [File: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images/AFP]
“I recorded it and suddenly I thought, ‘Oh my God, maybe I’ve gone too far!'” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2017, recalling how the song had been suggested by manager Roger Davies. “I called Roger and told him say: ‘We have to throw this song away!’ He said: ‘It’s too late. It has already gone on the radio and is climbing the charts.’ I was horrified!”
He had a few hits after Physical, but his career waned and Newton-John was more likely to make the news due to his private life. In 1992, while preparing a concert tour, her father died and she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Her marriage to actor Matt Lattanzi, with whom she had a daughter, actor and singer Chloe Lattanzi, broke up in 1995 and a years-long relationship with cameraman Patrick McDermott mysteriously ended. McDermott disappeared during a 2005 fishing trip in California, and his fate remained unknown for years afterward. Numerous reports claimed he was living in Mexico with a new girlfriend.
“He was lost at sea, and nobody really knows what happened,” Newton-John told Australia’s 60 Minutes in 2016. “It’s human to wonder. But you know, these are the things in life you have to accept and let go. Because whenever you’re going through tough times, there’s always those worries.”
The entertainer, whose career spanned more than five decades, devoted much of her time and celebrity to charity after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992. [File: Chris Delmas/AFP]
Newton-John’s recent albums include Stronger Than Before; a holiday collaboration with Travolta, This Christmas; and the autobiographical Gaia: One Woman’s Journey, inspired by her battle with cancer and the loss of her father.
Newton-John married John Easterling, founder of the Amazon Herb Company, in 2008. She has been involved in numerous charitable causes, serving as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Environment Program and as a spokesperson national of the Environmental Coalition for Child Health. She also founded the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Center in Melbourne, Australia.
Newton-John was the daughter of German literature professor Brin Newton-John and Irene Bron, whose father was Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Bron. The Newton-Johns moved to Australia when Olivia was five, but returned to England as a teenager and lived with her mother after her parents split.
She had early dreams of becoming a vet, but was winning singing competitions in high school and by the time she was 20 had toured army bases and clubs and recorded her first single, Till You Say You’ll Good Mine. In 1971, he covered Bob Dylan’s If Not for You and began a close association with a friend from Australia, John Farrar, who produced the song and later wrote You’re the One That I Want, Magic and several other hits more for her
Olivia Newton-John attends the 85th Annual Hollywood Christmas Parade in Los Angeles in 2016 [Phil McCarten/Reuters]
He had loved country music, especially the records of “Tennessee” Ernie Ford, since childhood, but his early success failed to impress critics and some fellow musicians. A Village Voice review compared her to a geisha who “makes her voice smaller than it really is just to please men.”
When Newton-John beat out Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn for the Country Music Association’s top artist of 1973, Tammy Wynette helped found the Country Artists Association, a club designed to exclude Newton- John and other crossover performers.
But Newton-John had an admirer from the world of show business who with her became one of the most unforgettable teams in cinema. Travolta had starred in the stage version of Grease and, for the planned film, thought Newton-John would be “the ultimate Sandy, the nice girl who gets tough in the final act and gets her man.”
“I was worried that at 29 I was too old to play a high school girl,” Newton-John, who insisted on a screen test before accepting the role, told The Telegraph in 2017.
“Everything about making the film was fun, but if I had to pick a favorite moment, it was the transformation from what I call Sandy 1 to Sandy 2. I got to play a different character and wear different clothes, and when I I put. that tight black dress to sing You’re the One That I Want, I had a very different reaction from the guys on set.”
She is survived by her husband; daughter Chloe Lattanzi; sister Sarah Newton-John; brother Toby Newton-John; and several nieces and nephews.