“I drew this house when I was about forty,” the singer Gloria Gaynor said the other day. “This was my dream house.” She was giving a tour of her new place in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. She gestured toward a marble foyer and a glittering chandelier, and mentioned her “party basement,” which has a bar and a screening room. “When I drew it, it was for a couple. Because I expected to be married forever,” she went on. “I’m all about family and whatever marriage is supposed to be—which I didn’t have. But I can tell people how not to have one.” She gave a throaty laugh.
Gaynor, who is about to turn eighty, was recovering from shoulder surgery, and had on slippers, a cozy turquoise loungewear set, and diamond bracelets. A bio-pic about her life, called “Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive,” after her Grammy-winning 1978 megahit, is premièring at the Tribeca Film Festival this month.
She enjoys telling her story, which begins in Newark, where she was raised by a single mother who inspired her to sing. Clive Davis signed her and pointed her toward disco. In 1978, while performing at the Beacon Theatre, Gaynor fell backward over a monitor; the accident left her paralyzed from the waist down. Six months later, while still in recovery, she married Linwood Simon, who proved to be a subpar manager and an even worse husband. (He wouldn’t let her into their apartment when she got locked out.) He kept her career focussed on Europe, rather than trying to build on her success in the U.S., which led her to drift into near-irrelevance.
She divorced Simon in 2005, and in 2019, after years of fantasizing, she released a gospel album, “Testimony,” which won a Grammy and kicked off a comeback. “I love cooking and having people for dinner,” she said, entering her shiny, bright kitchen. “I love that I have two trash cans.” A sign over the sink read “Don’t make me come down there. —God.” As Gaynor plopped down in a seat at the kitchen island, she explained that she invents her own recipes, including a dish called Chicken à la Gaynor, inspired by a meal she threw together one night in 1985, when Simon surprised her by bringing home some business associates for dinner. Ingredients: chicken parts, cream-of-mushroom soup, cream-of-chicken soup, sour cream, heavy cream, and Better Than Bouillon. “Serve that with saffron rice and colorful vegetables and dinner rolls,” she said. “And voilà.”
The counter was full of get-well cards and flower arrangements, including one from her personal trainer. (She does CrossFit three times a week and can hold a plank for two minutes.) In 1978, while hospitalized following spinal surgery, she got a call. Her record company, Polydor, said it was dropping her. After getting discharged, still unable to work, she lost her apartment and was basically broke. Then she got another call, about what she calls “the song.” The executives at Polydor had changed their minds. Could she come to L.A. to record a new song called “Substitute”? She hated the song, but she went for it, and did the recording while wearing a back brace. When she read the lyrics of the song the producers had in mind for the B-side, she said, “Are you stupid? You’re going to bury this on the B-side?” It was “I Will Survive.” She told them, “This is a hit song.”
Polydor gave the recording to the d.j. at Studio 54. “The audience jammed the dance floor immediately,” Gaynor said. “I thought, A jaded New York audience falling for a song the first time they hear it? ” Polydor flipped the songs and made “I Will Survive” the A-side.
The song has become an anthem for female empowerment, gay rights, survivors of domestic abuse, and oppressed people everywhere. Gaynor is expected to sing it constantly. After a performance in Italy, a young woman approached her. “She told me, ‘I’ve been having a lot of pain and anguish, and where I’m living I don’t have a lot of privacy, so I was going to go home so I could commit suicide,’ ” Gaynor recalled. Going to the show changed her mind. “I’ll never forget it. We were both crying and hugging.”
She went on, “Everybody wants to know they’re useful. I don’t know anybody who’s been more blessed in that area than I have. That song has added so much meaning and purpose to my life. So, do I get tired of singing it? Never!” ♦
