1 for 10 weeks, and spent a total of 77 weeks on the charts.įollowing the double-platinum 1978 album “Totally Hot,” Newton-John returned to the screen for the ill-starred “Xanadu.” The creaky roller disco-themed plot incongruously cast the singer as a Greek muse, opposite 68-year-old Gene Kelly.
The Newton-John/Travolta duet “You’re the One That I Want” was succeeded by two more top-five singles, “Hopelessly Devoted to You” and “Summer Nights,” also drawn from the picture. The Paramount release was an immediate hit, spawning a hugely successful soundtrack album. Newton-John’s career sizzled with the mega-hit “Grease.” Though the 29-year-old singer worried she was too old for her role, she turned in a confident performance in the ’50s-themed musical as virginal high schooler Sandy Olsson, and displayed impressive chemistry opposite Travolta, coming off his “Saturday Night Fever” breakthrough and cast as bad boy Danny Zuko. Though she would tally three more top-five country singles and reliably crossed over to the adult contemporary charts, she was firmly entrenched as a pop star in the U.S. 1, “Have You Never Been Mellow,” arrived in 1975. 6 country the song earned Newton-John female vocalist of the year kudos at the Country Music Assn. Her early career peaked in 1974 with the ballad “I Honestly Love You,” which topped the pop chart and peaked at No. The former number garnered a Grammy Award for best female country vocal performance, and Newton-John additionally scored an Academy of Country Music Award as most promising female vocalist. Her MCA singles “Let Me Be There” and “If You Love Me (Let Me Know)” reached the top 10 of both the country and pop charts. in 1971, but she had to wait two years before making a major impact in the States. ‘She’s too plastic, beautiful and will never happen.’ So, I said, ‘She’s beautiful, she’s not plastic and it’s gonna happen big time.’”īoth “If Not for You” and her version of the folk standard “Banks of the Ohio” managed to chart in the U.S. I loved it and I was put down for buying it. I paid $25,000 for that record, and was second-guessed. “I heard her version on an acetate,” veteran A&R exec Russ Regan recalled in a 2014 interview with author Harvey Kubernik.
had a good feeling he had about her prospects - but that wasn’t shared by everyone at the time. Following that all-but-buried motion picture and its equally little-known soundtrack album, her solo career took off with “If Not for You,” a cover of the countrified Bob Dylan-George Harrison song.The executive who signed Newton-John to MCA Records in the U.S.
#OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN GREASE CHEERLEADER MOVIE#
She made her movie debut with two very obscure film musicals - “Funny Things Happen Down Under” in 1965, followed in 1970 by “Tomorrow,” a sci-fi musical starring a group of the same name that included Newton-John as lead singer, remembered as producer Don Kirshner’s attempt to formulate a U.K. She returned to Britain on a plane ticket she won competing on the Aussie talent show “Sing, Sing, Sing.” Though she recorded for British Decca during her stay, she grew homesick and returned to the Antipodes, but moved back to England to perform with her music partner Pat Carroll.
#OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN GREASE CHEERLEADER PRO#
When she was 6, her family moved to Melbourne.Īctive in music from high school, Newton-John went pro in her teens, appearing on Australian TV. Her grandfather was the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born. But from time to time, I would hear a song from “Grease” or “Xanadu” and, like magic, I was instantly a child again.Newton-John was born September 26, 1948, in Cambridge, England. Little by little, the idea of my guardian angel was packed away with my teddy bear and grade school pictures. Olivia recorded “Physical,” a song La Jefita said was not a good one for me to be singing when grandma came to visit, porque que vergüenza - and I learned every word to that song. I broke a few rules and got away with it.
Prayers went seemingly unanswered and I lost faith in prayer cards. Cheerleader Sandy usually won, and that was OK. When I was tempted to break the rules, a tiny Sandy-in-cheerleader-uniform sat on my right shoulder telling me to follow the rules while a tiny Sandy-in-leather-pants-and-red-Candie’s-heels stood on my left side, awkwardly telling me that you only live once. I imagined a celestial Olivia Newton-John watching over me as I learned to speak English in school, as I stumbled through the multiplication tables, when I fought to stay alive in dodgeball and, most important, when I tried to say something funny in front of Sam, my grade-school crush.
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