When the news of Newton-John’s death broke, she was often described as “the Grease and Xanadu star”, and celebrities were quick to pay tribute to the film the actress Gabrielle Union tweeted “Me and my sister watched Xanadu more times than I could count”, and the director Edgar Wright, an aficionado of classic music, noted that the title track remained “a classic pop song”.īut how did a film that was once a byword for excess and misconceived artistry come to be a respected, even adored artefact from its leading star’s career?Īt the time of Xanadu’s release, Newton-John was one of the hottest stars in Hollywood, thanks to the extraordinary success of Grease, which had appeared in cinemas two years earlier. Not only was it the basis of a successful Broadway musical, but the picture itself has seen writers argue – only partially tongue in cheek – that far from being a bizarre failure, it is in fact one of the most daring and adventurous pictures of its era.Ĭertainly, it occupies a surprisingly elevated place in popular culture.

Yet, remarkably, the film has undergone a reassessment since its release. The trade paper Variety described Xanadu as “a stupendously bad film”, and the film writer John JB Wilson was so staggered by its ineptitude that he created the notorious Golden Raspberries Awards, or “ Razzies”, to honour the worst achievements in cinema in any given year.īy rights, Xanadu should have sunk into obscurity, and been regarded as little more than a punchline to a hoary comedian’s jokes about the post-Grease career of Newton-John. When it appeared in cinemas in 1980, it was regarded as one of the most notorious artistic and financial flops in the history of Hollywood a mad, incoherent mishmash of high-blown artistic aspirations with an incongruous selection of music.

When Olivia Newton-John’s death was announced on August 8, it did not take long for people to realise that she had died, as coincidence would have it, on the 42 nd anniversary of the release of her film Xanadu.

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