Olivia Newton-John, Singer-Songwriter and ‘Grease’ Star, Dies at 73

Though canned by critics, Grease grew sales of $9.3 million in its opening weekend, becoming the biggest box-office hit of 1978 and highest grossing film of all time, until the release of Mamma Mia! in 2008. Famously sewn into her black satin pants for the final scene, Newton-John sold them at auction in 2019 to Spanx founder Sara Blakely for $160,000. “I thought it was the bomb,” Travolta told Vanity Fair of Sandy’s transformation from virginal to vixen. “She was like Marilyn Monroe mixed with some motorcycle chick. The mix of that, I knew, was going to be outrageous. In the play it was a laugh. In the movie, it was like, ‘Wow!’”

In 1979, Newton-John received the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) from Queen Elizabeth, while in 1990, was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations Environmental Program. In 1999, she received the Red Cross Humanitarian Award for breast cancer and environmental charity work, and in 2006, became an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “service to the entertainment industry as a singer and actor, and to the community through organizations supporting breast cancer treatment, education, training and research, and the environment”.

Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992, the singer set up the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre in Melbourne in 2008. She relapsed in 2013, and in 2017, was told the cancer had metastasized and spread to her bones. “Yes, I’ve enjoyed making records and films, but the hospital gave me a purpose in life,” Newton-John told The Times in 2019. “My dream is to defeat cancer in my lifetime.”

The youngest of three children, Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England on 26 September 1948. Her Welsh father, Brinley Newton-John, was a former MI5 officer who worked at Bletchley Park on the Enigma project cracking German codes, and then headmaster of Cambridgeshire High School for Boys. Her mother, Irene Helene Born, was the daughter of Nobel Prize-winning Max Born, a Jewish German physicist and mathematician who fled Germany with wife his Hedwig in 1933.

Aged six in 1954, Newton-John emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, with her father taking up the post of professor of German at the University of Melbourne and Dean of Ormond College. She attended Christ Church Grammar School, then University High School. Her parents divorced when she was 11.