Olivia Newton-John Was the Only One We’d Want to Play Sandy in Grease

It’s oddly fitting that Olivia Newton-John passed away in the summer. For many, the four-time Grammy winner, actress, and activist—who died peacefully Monday, August 8, at the age of 73—is inextricably linked with the season due to her breakthrough role in the classic movie musical Grease, where she played archetypal good girl turned bad Sandy opposite John Travolta’s crooning greaser Danny Zuko.

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It’s a little baffling that the 1978 film became a mega-hit sensation. Based on the musical of the same name, Grease follows two cliques of 1950s era adolescents—the T-Birds (the boys) and the Pink Ladies (the girls)—over the course of their senior year at Rydell High School. Several members of the cast—like Stockard Channing’s self-possessed queen bee Rizzo and Jeff Conaway’s sidekick Kenickie—were, let’s say, mature-looking performers who seemed more likely to be late to filing their taxes then late to 5th period. (Newton-John was apparently worried that she was too old—then 29—to play Sandy, despite her ultimately looking the most age appropriate of the entire cast. Go figure.) 

With lyrics like, “We go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong,” Grease certainly wasn’t on the shortlist for any Pulitzer prizes. And the musical’s ultimate message—that if you want to keep your man, you’d better throw on some leather pants and change just about everything about yourself to fit his fantasy—certainly seems a little out of step with our current cultural landscape. Yet somehow, Grease works. The music, the choreography, the hair (the hair!), the costumes, the teenage rebellion, and respectful horniness all coalesced to create a perfect fantasy of the 1950s, a slice of wholesome nostalgia that’s frothy and fun and absolutely not tethered in reality. (I’d bet any amount of money that the tune to “We Go Together” is still bouncing around in your head, right now.)

Grease’s iconography owes a lot to Newton-John, who had the almost impossible task of playing Sandy. As written, Sandy is a host of contradictions. She begins as an almost impossibly good girlish Aussie transfer student, so disgustingly moral that Rizzo sings an entire song about how annoying she is. Within a few hours, we’re supposed to believe that Sandy has done away with her good girl ways to become the ultimate Pink Lady, just to win Danny’s heart back. Gone are her pastel dresses, ponytails, and sweater vests. Out come bare shoulders, a leather jacket, and teased hair. Her transformation is, frankly, as absurd as a teen angel dropping down from the heavens to tell Frenchie to quit beauty school or a convertible driving off into the sky.  

Newton-John not only pulled it off, but she also made Sandy’s evolution look natural—necessary even. The first time she sings of those “Summer Nights,” lithely skipping to and fro with her impossibly blonde hair, you felt the kinetic and girlish energy of teenage love. Pining over Danny in her white nightgown and teal headband singing “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” Newton-John and her crystal belt with a slight country twang tug the heart strings. And in “You’re the One That I Want,” when the newly self-possessed Sandy warns Danny that he’d better shape up “’cause I need a man who can keep me satisfied,” licking her lips and doing the hand jive, we’ve watched Newton-John transform into a woman before our very eyes. Somehow, in her hands, Sandy’s journey was inspiring: She grows from a naive girl to an empowered woman who’s in control and knows what she needs. Oh yes, indeed.