Irish Examiner view: Olivia Newton-John sang the summer nights of a generation's lives

Olivia Newton-John was one of our era's best-selling singers as well as a movie star who enchanted us all for decades

'My dearest Olivia, you made all of our lives so much better,' John Travolta wrote in a tribute to his 'Grease' co-star Olivia Newton-John who died on Monday. Picture: Paramount/Getty

Olivia Newton-John, 1948-2022

The death of singer and actor Olivia Newton-John recalls a sunnier and more optimistic era which was captured in one of the great singalong musicals of all time, Grease, which produced two big number one hits: ‘Summer Nights’ and ‘You’re The One That I Want’. Both have been mainstays of parties, wedding routines, and karaoke nights since they first bounced into our ears in 1978. 

Olivia Newton-John, who was 73 and had lived with breast cancer since 1992, spent her early years in Cambridge, England. Her father was an MI5 officer attached to the Enigma codebreaking unit at Bletchley Park. Her grandfather was the physicist and mathematician Max Born, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on quantum mechanics in 1954.

She moved to the Australian city of Melbourne at the age of six and began a career in performing, during which she won a talent show at 16 which included a trip to London. 

Half a dozen years of seeking, and failing, to break through finally paid off when Cliff Richard included a regular slot for her in his TV show, and she established a growing reputation as a country music favourite in the US, despite opposition from some traditionalists who disliked the “Ozzification” of their genre.

Worldwide fame really arrived when Newton-John played the virginal Sandy Olsson opposite John Travolta’s Danny Zuko in the Paramount blockbuster Grease. Travolta was fresh from a triumph in Saturday Night Fever, and her libidinous black leather duet with him stays long in the memory of all who have seen it. 

Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta remained firm friends, and the 'Grease' stars sang together again in 2002 at the DVD release of the movie. Picture: Michael Caulfield/AP/WireImage

During her career, Newton-John sold more than 100m albums, several of them on a “wellness” theme after she was diagnosed with cancer, in the same week her father died from the disease. She founded the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre in Heidelberg, Victoria, in 2008. She was also an advocate for the environment and animal rights.

She discovered that her cancer had returned in 2017 and, in recent years, argued for the use of medicinal cannabis to be introduced in Australia.