Olivia Newton-John Later career
 Newton-John's career soared after starring in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Grease in 1978. She was offered the lead role of Sandy after a chance meeting with producer Allan Carr at a dinner party held by Helen Reddy in her Los Angeles home. Burned by her Toomorrow experience and concerned that she was too old to play a high school senior (she turned 29 during the latter 1977 filming), Newton-John insisted on a screen test with the film's co-star, John Travolta. Their chemistry was obvious and Newton-John happily, but cautiously, signed on. 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 vacations and then moves with her family to the United States.
The film was the biggest box office hit of 1978 and remained popular enough that it was re-released in theaters on its 20th anniversary in 1998. The soundtrack spent 12 non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 and yielded three Top 5 singles for Newton-John: the No. 1 You're The One That I Want (with John Travolta), the No. 3 Hopelessly Devoted to You and the No. 5 Summer Nights (with John Travolta and the film's cast). The former two songs were both written by Newton-John's long-time producer, John Farrar, specifically for the film. Newton-John became the second female (after Linda Ronstadt in 1977) to have two singles, Hopelessly Devoted to You and Summer Nights, in the Billboard Top 5 simultaneously. She was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actress in a Musical and performed the Oscar-nominated Hopelessly Devoted to You at the 1979 Academy Awards. To this day, the soundtrack still sells several thousand copies per week and often appears on Billboard's Soundtracks chart.
Newton-John's transformation in the film from goody-goody Sandy 1 to spandex-clad Sandy 2 emboldened Newton-John to do the same with her music career. In November 1978, she released the pop album, Totally Hot, which became her first solo Top 10 (No. 7) album since Have You Never Been Mellow. Dressed on the cover all in leather, the album's singles A Little More Love (No. 3 Pop, No. 94 Country, No. 4 AC), Deeper Than The Night (No. 11 Pop, No. 87 Country, No. 4 AC) and the title track (No. 52 Pop) all demonstrated a more aggressive and uptempo sound for Newton-John. Although the album clearly de-emphasized country, it still reached No. 4 on the Country Albums chart. Newton-John released the B-side Dancin' 'Round And 'Round, of the Totally Hot single to Country radio where it peaked at No. 29 (as well as No. 82 Pop and No. 25 AC). However, this became Newton-John's last charted Country airplay single to date.
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