Death of singer and actress Olivia Newton-John, unforgettable interpreter of “Grease”

A certain idea of ​​carelessness and lightness. This is the image that stuck to the skin of Olivia Newton-John. The Australian-British singer and actress, inseparable from her character in the musical grease (1978), died Monday, August 8, at the age of 73, in his property in Santa Ynez (California), following breast cancer.

The star with 100 million albums and four Grammy Awards was born in 1948, in Cambridge (United Kingdom). Very early on, Olivia Newton-John devoted herself to music, encouraged by her mother. At the age of 15, she was revealed by a telecrochet in Australia, where her parents emigrated when she was younger. At Eurovision 1974, she represented the United Kingdom, with the naive Long Live Love. Decked out in an improbable baby blue frilly dress, she still finished fourth, losing to the irresistible Waterloo of Sweden’s ABBA.

Unfailing friendship with Travolta

The same year, the artist released a country album, If You Love Me, Let Me Know. His flexible and enveloping voice as well as his songs, whose love is the main concern, quickly earned him the fervor of the public. The Ballad I Honestly Love Youin particular, gave her the top spot in the Billboard rankings in the United States for the first time – she also held it in 1975, with Have You Never Been Mellow.

It is John Travolta who slips his name to play his partner in the film grease – “gomina”, in French –, by Randal Kleiser. The star of Star Wars Carrie Fisher was once considered for this role of Sandy Olsson, in which the blonde Olivia Newton-John reveals herself, radiant, first as a tidy little girl with a ponytail, then as a seductive rebel with feline curls, all in leather. The film, with immediate and worldwide success, relaunched the fashion for drive-in cinemas and propelled the singer to the top. The two actors will retain an unwavering friendship from this collaboration.

Olivia Newton-John, in 1980: “The world is so sad, so depressed, that we need to laugh, to love, to dance…”

In the cinema, Olivia Newton-John then illustrated herself in a one-of-a-kind fantasy, Xanadu – a nod to the mythical residence of Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane, by Orson Welles. Directed by Robert Greenwald, this monument of kitsch, whose decor is a roller disco track, offers the singer the role of Terpsichore, daughter of Zeus and muse of dance. She gives the answer to a living god of the seventh art, Gene Kelly (Let’s sing in the rain, Brigadoon…). Commercial failure when it was released, the film, and especially its soundtrack, ended up becoming cult in the Anglo-Saxon world.

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