{"id":114556,"date":"2022-08-08T17:00:44","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T21:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=114556"},"modified":"2022-08-08T17:20:24","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T21:20:24","slug":"npr-1980s-pop-goddess-olivia-newton-john-has-died-at-age-73","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=114556","title":{"rendered":"(NPR) 1980s pop goddess Olivia Newton-John has died at age 73"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I wanted this girl bad,&#8221; Travolta told Merv Griffin on TV in 1981. &#8220;The perfect Sandy, the ultimate Sandy, would be Olivia Newton-John.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But the 28-year old Australian singer was skeptical about playing a high school student.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I couldn&#8217;t do an American accent, and I was too old,&#8221; she told the Today show in 2019. &#8220;And I had all these reasons why I couldn&#8217;t do it. We did a screen test. The chemistry was there. It worked and when John came to see me at my house \u2014 how could you say no to John Travolta?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>No one, it seemed, could say no to Grease. The soundtrack was wildly successful. A duet with Travolta ended up as a best-selling single.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2022\/08\/08\/847572210\/1980s-pop-goddess-olivia-newton-john-has-died-at-age-73\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Olivia Newton-John, one of the biggest pop stars in the 1970s and early 1980s, has died at the age of 73.<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/MPlvcC6Lbi\">https:\/\/t.co\/MPlvcC6Lbi<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; NPR (@NPR) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NPR\/status\/1556735781393383437?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 8, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I wanted this girl bad,&#8221; Travolta told Merv Griffin on TV in 1981. &#8220;The perfect Sandy, the ultimate Sandy, would be Olivia Newton-John.&#8221; But the 28-year old Australian singer was skeptical about playing a high school student. &#8220;I couldn&#8217;t do<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=114556\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,204,438,199,133,93,132,126],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americau-s-a","category-australia-nz","category-death-burial-funerals","category-england-uk","category-history","category-movies-television","category-music","category-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=114556"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114558,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114556\/revisions\/114558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=114556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=114556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=114556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}