After Olivia Newton-John’s death: the story of the hit film ‘Grease’. “I didn’t want to embarrass myself” | Movie

“I really wanted her to play in ‘Grease’. The perfect Sandy, the ultimate Sandy, that’s Olivia Newton-John. And the studio said, ‘Let’s talk about it.’” These are the words of John Travolta, the male lead in the musical film ‘Grease’. It was anything but obvious that Olivia Newton-John would get a part in the film. At the time of the recordings, she was already 29 years old, and therefore a lot older than the 17-year-old Sandy she was supposed to play. In addition, she already had a flourishing career as a singer. “My music career was going so well, I didn’t want to ruin it by committing to a bad movie,” she confessed to Vanity Fair. “Besides, I had no experience and I had an Australian accent.”

“John really wanted me to do it. For me, that was one of the deciding factors,” Olivia said in an interview. Yet she herself asked for a screen test. “I was aware of my limitations and didn’t want to embarrass myself,” she once said in an interview. “I wasn’t as experienced as John and I had such a hard time mastering the American accent that they had to rewrite my character,” Olivia said. “Then they just turned me into a foreign exchange student from Australia.” John, meanwhile, was cheering her on from the sidelines. He even pretended to make a mistake once so that the cameras would stop and Olivia could re-shoot a scene with full courage. “He came up to me and whispered in my ear, ‘I think you can do better’. That was a very generous gesture, it’s very generous for an actor to do that.”

John’s admiration for Olivia only grew when they sang “You’re the One That I Want” together for the first time. “We had that interaction and it was a new song – it wasn’t part of the original story. That was very exciting,” Travolta said. “We created one of the greatest duets in history and there’s beauty in that.” Indeed, the song became wildly popular, going straight to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. After just three months, the song had already achieved platinum status, meaning it sold over 1 million copies.

‘Grease’ tells the story of good girl Sandy and ‘bad boy’ Danny, who fall in love during a summer vacation in the 1950s and then go to the same high school. The chemistry between the two protagonists is so phenomenal that rumors quickly circulate that John and Olivia are also a couple in real life. “So there was nothing to it,” said Olivia. “We had a little crush on each other, but I was with someone else (Lee Kramer, ed.), and John went through a very difficult period on a personal level.” John was indeed mourning the death of his sweetheart, actress Diana Hyland, who had died of cancer two months before the start of filming. Infinite respect, but no amorous escapades between the main characters.

The musical film is a worldwide blockbuster, with an Oscar nomination for the soundtrack ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ and numerous Golden Globe nominations, including Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for Olivia. For Olivia, the film was an unprecedented breakthrough. “It completely changed my life,” she said. “Before ‘Grease’ I sang country songs, after ‘Grease’ I started singing more challenging pop songs, such as ‘Physical’. If I suddenly wanted to behave excessively, I was allowed to.”

And she said she owed it all to good Sandy who turned into spicy Sandy and as a result blew many a man’s socks. “Everything about the movie was fun, but if I had to pick a favorite moment, it would be the transformation from Sandy 1 to Sandy 2. I had to play a different person along the way and wear different clothes. When I wore that tight, black suit while I sang ‘You’re the One That I Want’, the guys on set reacted completely differently.” The recording of that song went less comfortably than expected. “It was sweltering hot and I even had to be sewn into that tight suit,” Olivia recalled.

Then the kissing scenes with John Travolta were just that little bit more fun. “Of course I was nervous,” she said of her first kiss, the one from the beach scene. “But it was such a special day and a nice way to get to know John a little better, because we had never spent so much time together. It was delicious. It was special.”

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