Today, The Grandma has been watching Xanadu, an Americanmusical fantasy interpreted by Olivia Newton-John, MichaelBeck and Gene Kelly.
The Grandma loves OliviaNewton-John and Gene Kelly,and it has been a good opportunity to remember them, a pair of stars in Earth and now in heaven.
Xanadu is a 1980 American musical fantasy film written by Richard Christian Danus and Marc Reid Rubel, and directed by Robert Greenwald. It stars OliviaNewton-John, Michael Beck and Gene Kelly in his final film role. The film features music by Newton-John, Electric Light Orchestra, Cliff Richard, and the Tubes.
The title is a reference to the nightclub in the film, which takes its name from Xanadu, the summer capital of Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty in China. This city appears in Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an 1816 poem that is quoted in the film.
The soundtrack album became a huge commercial success around the world, and was certified double platinum in the United States. The song Magic was a U.S. number one hit for Newton-John, and the title track (by Newton-John and Electric Light Orchestra) reached number one in the United Kingdom and several other countries around the world.
The film has since become a cult classic for the way it mixes the storyline from an old-fashioned 1940s fantasy with modern aesthetics featuring late 1970s and early 1980s rock and pop music on the soundtrack as well as for fans of Newton-John.
Sonny Malone is a struggling artist in Los Angeles attempting to make a living by freelancing. He rips up one of his failed sketches and throws it into the wind. It hits a mural of nine sisters and brings them to life. The sisters fly across Earth, but one of them roller skates through town and collides with Sonny. She kisses him before skating away, leaving him confused.
Having returned to his old job of painting album cover reproductions at AirFlo Records, Sonny is tasked with painting an album cover reproduction for a group called the 9 Sisters. The cover shows the mysterious woman Sonny encountered earlier roller skating in front of an abandoned art deco auditorium. The photographer notes that the woman was not supposed to be on the cover, but suddenly appeared in a few of the shots. Sonny eventually traces her across town to the aforementioned auditorium, where she introduces herself as Kira. The two of them fall in love, though Kira refuses to tell Sonny anything about herself.
Sonny also meets and befriends Danny McGuire, a former big band orchestra leader turned construction mogul. He was once romantically involved with a singer in the 1940s who resembled Kira; her departure resulted in his own loss of creative passion. Kira encourages Sonny and Danny to open a nightclub at the auditorium called Xanadu, and the two begin working on the project as partners. All the while, Sonny and Kira began to develop romantically for each other. The night before the club's opening, however, Kira confesses to Sonny that she is actually Terpsichore, one of the Nine Muses of Olympus. She was sent to inspire the creation of Xanadu, but she cannot stay despite their mutual feelings. Sonny gets upset at the revelation, and Kira departs Earth having fulfilled her duty.
Danny tells Sonny to keep pursuing Kira, encouraging Sonny not to give up on his ambitions like he did after his own muse left him. Sonny manages to enter Kira's home by roller skating into the Muses' mural. Inside the realm of the gods, Kira's father Zeus denies Sonny's plea to let Kira come back to Earth, and despite Kira's mother Mnemosyne interceding for Sonny and Kira, Zeus sends Sonny back to Earth. Kira professes her feelings for Sonny, and Zeus ultimately relents, allowing her to be with Sonny for a moment, or maybe forever. Kira and the Muses perform at the Xanadu grand opening before returning to their realm.
The film was originally conceived as a relatively low-budget roller disco picture. As a number of prominent performers joined the production, it evolved into a much larger project, while retaining rollerskating as a recurring theme, especially in the final scenes of the club's opening night.
Today, The Grandma has received sad news from the United States. Olivia Newton-John the British-Australian singer, actress and activist, idol and icon of a generation has passed away.
The Grandma wants to remember her. It is the best homage it can be done. Remember her and do not forget her music and her activism.
Olivia, we will see us in Xanadu.
Dame Olivia Newton-John AC DBE (26 September 1948-8 August 2022) was aBritish-Australiansinger, actress andactivist.
She was a four-time Grammy Award winner whose music career included five number one hits and another ten Top Ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100, and two Billboard 200 number one albums, If You Love Me, Let Me Know (1974) and Have You Never Been Mellow (1975).
Eleven of her singles (including two Platinum) and 14 of her albums (including two Platinum and four 2× Platinum) have been certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). With global sales of more than 100 million records, Newton-John is one of the best-selling music artists from the second half of the 20th century to the present.
In 1978, Newton-John starred in the musical film Grease, whose soundtrack remains one of the world's best-selling albums of recorded music. It features two major hit duets with co-star John Travolta: You're the One That I Want -which ranks as one of the best-selling singles of all time- and Summer Nights. Her signature solo recordings include the Record of the Year Grammy winner I Honestly Love You (1974) and Physical (1981) -Billboard's Top Hot 100 Single of the 1980s. Her other major hit singles include If Not for You (1971), Let Me Be There (1973), If You Love Me (Let Me Know) (1974), Have You Never Been Mellow (1975), Sam (1977), Hopelessly Devoted to You (also from Grease), A Little More Love (1978) and, from the 1980 film Xanadu, Magic and Xanadu (with the Electric Light Orchestra).
Newton-John was an activist for environmental and animal rights causes, and advocated for breast cancer research.
Newton-John was born on 26 September 1948 in Cambridge, England, to Welshman Brinley "Bryn" Newton-John and Irene Helene. Her Jewish maternal grandfather, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Max Born, fled with his wife and children to Britain from Germany before World War II to escape the Nazi Regime.
Newton-John's maternal grandmother was of paternal Jewish ancestry as well; through her, she was a third cousin of comedian Ben Elton. Her maternal great-grandfather was the jurist Victor Ehrenberg and her matrilineal great-grandmother's father was the jurist Rudolf von Jhering.
Newton-John's father was an MI5 officer on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park who took Rudolf Hess into custody during World War II. After the war, he became the headmaster of the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys and was in this position when Olivia was born.
Newton-John was the youngest of three children, following her brother Hugh (1939-2019), a medical doctor, and her sister Rona (1941-2013), an actress who was married to Olivia's Grease co-star Jeff Conaway (from 1980 until their divorce in 1985).
In 1954, when she was six, Newton-John's family emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, where her father worked as a professor of German and as the master of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne. She attended Christ Church Grammar School in the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra and then the University High School in Parkville.
Newton-John released her first solo album, If Not for You, in 1971. The title track, written by Bob Dylan and previously recorded by former Beatle George Harrison for his 1970 album All Things Must Pass, was her first international hit.
Her follow-up single, Banks of the Ohio, was a top 10 hit in the UK and Australia. She was voted Best British Female Vocalist two years in a row by the magazine Record Mirror. She made frequent appearances on Cliff Richard's weekly show It's Cliff Richard and starred with him in the telefilm The Case.
In 1972, Newton-John's second UK album, Olivia, was released but never formally issued in the United States, where her career floundered after If Not for You. Subsequent singles including Banks of the Ohio and remakes of George Harrison's What Is Life and John Denver's Take Me Home, Country Roads made minimal impact on the Hot 100. However, her fortune changed with the release of Let Me Be There in 1973. The song earned her a Grammy for Best Country Female and an Academy of Country Music award for Most Promising Female Vocalist.
Her second American album, named Let Me Be There after the hit single, was actually her third in Britain, where the LP was known as Music Makes My Day. The record was also called Let Me Be There in Australia; however, the US and Canadian versions featured an alternate track list that mixed new cuts with selections from Olivia and also recycled six songs from If Not for You, which was going out of print.
In 1974, Newton-John represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song Long Live Love. The song was chosen for Newton-John by the British public out of six possible entries. Newton-John finished fourth at the contest, held in Brighton, behind the Swedish winning entry, Waterloo by ABBA. All six Eurovision contest song candidates -Have Love, Will Travel, Lovin' You Ain't Easy, Long Live Love, Someday, Angel Eyes and Hands Across the Sea- were recorded by Newton-John and included on her Long Live Love album, her first for the EMI Records label.
In America, Newton-John's success in country music sparked a debate among purists, who took issue with a foreigner singing country-flavoured pop music being classed with native Nashville artists.
In addition to her Grammy for Let Me Be There, Newton-John was also named the Country Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year in 1974, defeating more established Nashville-based nominees Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and Tanya Tucker, as well as Canadian artist Anne Murray. This protest, in part, led to the formation of the short-lived Association of Country Entertainers (ACE).
Newton-John was eventually supported by the country music community. Stella Parton, Dolly's sister, recorded Ode to Olivia and Newton-John recorded her 1976 album, Don't Stop Believin', in Nashville.
Newton-John's career soared after she starred in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Grease in 1978.
She was offered the lead role of Sandy after meeting producer Allan Carr at a dinner party at Helen Reddy's home. Disillusioned by her Toomorrow experience and concerned that she was too old to play a high school senior (she was 28 during the filming of Grease), Newton-John insisted on a screen test with the film's co-star, John Travolta. The film accommodated Newton-John's Australian accent by recasting her character from the play's original American Sandy Dumbrowski to Sandy Olsson, an Australian who holidays in the US and then moves there with her family. Newton-John previewed some of the film's soundtrack during her second American network television special, Olivia, featuring guests ABBA and Andy Gibb.
Grease became the biggest box-office hit of 1978. The soundtrack album spent 12 non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 and yielded three Top 5 singles for Newton-John: the platinum You're the One That I Want with John Travolta, the gold Hopelessly Devoted to You and the gold Summer Nights with John Travolta and the film's cast.
She was a performer on the 1979 Music for UNICEF Concert for the UN's International Year of the Child televised worldwide. During the concert, artists performed songs for which they donated their royalties, some in perpetuity, to benefit the cause. She was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations Environment Programme.
In 2002, Newton-John was also inducted into Australia's ARIA Hall of Fame.
In 2008, she raised funds to help build the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre in Melbourne, Australia.
On 8 August 2022, Newton-John diedat her Santa Ynez Valley home in California, aged 73.
Newton-John was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1979 New Year Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to charity, cancer research and entertainment.
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