Olivia Newton-John

There is a scene in "Grease" that almost everybody can replay from memory.

Sandy appears at the end in tight black trousers, her hair a mess, a cigarette she stubs out with her heel, and she sings "You're the One That I Want".

Up to that moment she had been the sweet girl, all pale dresses and shy manners. In one cut, she stops being her.

Why it worked so well

It worked, in part, because it was not only the character.

Olivia Newton-John came out of country-pop, with songs like "If Not for You" and "I Honestly Love You", and she had a public image of near-total sweetness. She was, in real life, the Sandy from the beginning of the film.

So that 1978 scene was also a statement about her career: leaving the good-girl image behind and daring to try something bolder.

Three years later she confirmed it without ambiguity. "Physical", from September 1981, is an openly sensual song, and it was not merely a hit: it spent ten weeks at number one, and Billboard ranks it as the most successful single of the entire nineteen-eighties.

The tender country girl turned out to be better at provocation than anyone.

The other half of her life

In 1992 she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

She could have kept it private, as almost everyone did then. She did the opposite: she talked about it, and became one of the most visible voices in the world for awareness of the disease.

You have to understand the moment. In the early nineties breast cancer was still spoken of in a low voice. A global star talking in public about her mastectomy and her chemotherapy moved something that campaigns do not move.

It came back. In 2013, in her shoulder. And in 2017, by then as a metastasis in the lower spine.

She lived with that for thirty years. And in that time she drove and funded a cancer treatment and research centre in Melbourne, opened in June 2012 as a unit of the Austin Hospital, which carries her name. In 2020 she also set up her own foundation.

It is worth saying precisely: she did not found the centre as an institution of her own. She was its driving force and its chief fundraiser, which in practice is what made it exist.

The Australian Englishwoman

One biographical detail that tends to get simplified: she was born in Cambridge, England, on 26 September 1948.

She emigrated to Australia at the age of six. She was British-Australian, and Australia was the country where she grew up and the one she always identified with. Hence the centre being in Melbourne.

She died on 8 August 2022, at her ranch in California, at seventy-three, of metastatic breast cancer.

What to remember

Olivia Newton-John is the proof that sweetness and strength are not different things.

Put on "Hopelessly Devoted to You", "You're the One That I Want" or "Physical" and you will hear somebody who could do all three — tenderness, euphoria and provocation — with the same ease.

And remember that the transformation that made her eternal on screen she repeated afterwards, for real, on a scale that has nothing to do with a film: she took the worst thing that happened to her and turned it into the cause of thirty years of her life.

Remember her like this: not as Sandy, but as the one who proved you can be exactly as soft and exactly as tough, and that sometimes they are the same person.

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Sources

Olivia Newton-John, born in Cambridge, England, on 26 September 1948, and died at her ranch in Santa Ynez, California, on 8 August 2022, at the age of seventy-three, of metastatic breast cancer. She emigrated to Australia at the age of six and held British-Australian nationality. She began in country-pop, with songs such as "If Not for You" and "I Honestly Love You". She starred in "Grease" alongside John Travolta in 1978, with "Hopelessly Devoted to You", "You're the One That I Want" and "Summer Nights"; in the film's final scene she appears in a black leather outfit and stubs out a cigarette with her foot. "Physical" was released in September 1981, spent ten weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and appears in Billboard's ranking as the most successful single of the nineteen-eighties. Her initial breast cancer diagnosis came in 1992, with a partial mastectomy and chemotherapy; there was a recurrence in 2013, in her shoulder, and in 2017 a metastasis in the lower spine. The Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre opened in June 2012 as a unit of the Austin Hospital in Heidelberg, Melbourne; it should be made clear that she was its driving force and chief fundraiser, not its founder in institutional terms. In 2020 she established the Olivia Newton-John Foundation Fund. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of her work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Billboard, the Austin Hospital and other press coverage.