Tributes pour in for singer-actor Olivia Newton-John, who handed away at 73

When Grease launched in 1978, it featured star-crossed lovers, polar opposites, good girl-bad boy, slick leather-based jackets versus pastel cardigans, and a relationship rule that pop psychology will simply garbage: change your self on your companion. Grease was the unique highschool musical and Sandy, performed by Olivia Newton-John, was the long-lasting blonde, blue-eyed, demure “girl-next-door” of Hollywood.

Newton-John died on Monday at her ranch in Southern California at age 73. She was identified with breast most cancers in 1992 and had lived with the illness on and off since then. Since her demise, a number of followers and friends invoked her most well-known position and posted on social media, mourning the passing of “Our Sandy”.

Actor John Travolta, who performed dangerous boy Danny Zuko reverse Olivia Newton-John’s Sandy, tweeted, “My dearest Olivia, you made all of our lives so much better. 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!”

Newton-John and Travolta, who have been 29 and 23 on the time of filming Grease, collectively gave some cult classics with the film’s soundtrack. You’re the One That I Want, Hopelessly Devoted to You and Summer Nights have been regular on pop charts internationally.

Newton-John, a four-time Grammy winner, started performing as a toddler whereas in Australia, with weekly pop reveals, and reached superstardom after transferring to the US. Her first hit got here in 1971 with the Bob Dylan nation rock quantity, If Not for You. Let Me Be There, her country-influenced track, was her first prime 10 single within the US when it launched in 1973 and gained her a Grammy for finest feminine nation vocalist. In 1974, she represented the UK in Eurovision, with the monitor Long Live Love. She completed fourth, behind Abba.

Her country-pop picture was shattered with Grease, particularly with the transformation of “good Sandy” into “bad Sandy” within the movie’s finale. The metamorphosis right into a “Grease girl” was meant to match Danny’s picture, with adjustments in each side of fine Sandy’s style sense. In place of the right ponytail got here an enormous curly mane, vivid make-up with crimson lipstick, and spandex trousers as a substitute of flouncy skirts. Topping all of it off, a cigarette. It stays considered one of Hollywood’s most memorable makeovers.

Singer Rod Stewart posted on Instagram, with an image of “bad Sandy”: “Her spandex trousers in Grease were my inspiration for my ‘Da ya think I’m sexy’ era.” Newton-John’s black swimsuit, which may contest with Marilyn Monroe’s sheer gown for the tightest match, turned a style craze. The ensemble is replicated on Halloween, costume events and crimson carpets even right now by celebrities equivalent to Gigi Hadid, Leann Rimes and Hailey Bieber. Singer Mariah Carey tweeted that she dressed up as “Bad Sandy” for Halloween within the fifth grade and “thought I was everything”.

Olivia Newton-John had as soon as acknowledged that she needed to be stitched into the skin-tight pants as a result of they have been made within the Nineteen Fifties. In 2019, she auctioned the pants and different profession memorabilia to boost cash for the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia, that she arrange in 2012. The centre has been concerned in about 200 medical trials for quite a lot of cancers, together with mind, bowel, breast, melanoma, gastrointestinal, head and neck, pancreatic, prostate and lung most cancers, in line with The Guardian. “I’ve realised over the years, especially when you go through stuff, that stuff isn’t what’s important,” she advised Reuters in 2019. The pants and the jacket offered for $405,700, greater than double the public sale estimate.

Much like her film avatar, in actual life, Newton-John’s picture was primarily “sweet” and by no means “sexy”. Things modified along with her track Let’s Get Physical in 1981, which gave the impression to be in regards to the Nineteen Eighties health craze (hiya, leotards) however was suggestive of intercourse, with traces equivalent to There’s nothing left to speak about/Unless it horizontally.

Let’s Get Physical modified the way in which audiences seen Olivia Newton-John. The track was banned on some radio and TV stations for being too sexual. Yet, the star herself was oblivious of her track’s innuendo. She advised ET in 2021 that she freaked out solely after she recorded the track and advised her supervisor to kill it. He mentioned to her that it’s already on the charts. “It’s doing really well, we can’t stop it,” she remembered him saying. And have been audiences glad for it. Let’s Get Physical stays her all-time largest hit and the No.1 hit of Billboard’s Nineteen Eighties chart.