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As Gloria Gaynor's enduring hit 'I Will Survive' turns 45, the disco
legend celebrates her triumphs while looking forward to the future.

By Rachel DeSantis in People

here are come-to-Jesus moments -- and then there are, well, moments when Jesus comes to you. Disco queen Gloria Gaynor says divine intervention saved her at a party she attended in the early '80s with her then husband in a Los Angeles hotel suite. Worried he might cheat on her if she went to bed, she was tempted to get an energy boost from cocaine. "I was going to try it," Gaynor recalls, "and the Holy Spirit literally grabbed me by my collar and lifted my chin and said, "That's enough. You don't need to do this."

That moment set her on a path toward healing, much as her enduring life-after-love disco anthem "I Will Survive" has done for the millions it has touched in the 45 years since it became a classic. "I have not only survived, I have thrived," says Gaynor, 79, who found renewed confidence and success following her 2005 divorce from former manager Linwood Simon after 26 years of marriage. "I really think a lot of it has to do with the fact that whenever I'm going through something I have used that song."

Both survival and joy have been cornerstones of Gaynor's career. From her glittering 1974 take on the Jackson Five's "Never Can Say Goodbye" to the empowering "I Will Survive," her disco hits have been encouraging shy wallflowers to cut loose on the dance floor for decades. "I Will Survive," in particular, continues to inspire new generations of superstars: Harry Styles brought Lizzo onstage to sing it during his headlining Coachella set in April 2022, and Miley Cyrus interpolated it into "Flowers," her current chart-topper. "People still are being hurt; people are still needing to be uplifted and encouraged and supported, and I love that," says Gaynor.

When "I Will Survive" was released in 1978 as the B side to the single "Substitute," Gaynor had already faced a series of life-changing setbacks. Though she had a happy, music-filled childhood in Newark with her "wise and wonderful" mother, Queenie, and six siblings, she was deeply affected by three instances of sexual abuse that began at age 5. That, along with her father's absence, weighed on her as she got older and started dating. "I wasn't as confident as I could have and should have been with boyfriends," she says. "When you're sexually abused like that, you have very, very low self-esteem."

When Gaynor wed Simon in 1979, she wanted to prove to her mother -- and to herself -- that she had finally found security. "I had a terrible fear of being left alone," she says. But their happiness was short-lived. While her marriage to Simon had "wonderful moments," Gaynor says the union never felt like an equal partnership. She wanted children while Simon did not, and, she says, "I just swallowed whatever he said and did whatever he said and just let him have his way."

Following her religious awakening in the '80s, Gaynor -- who faced further heartbreak when her sister Irma Proctor died in 1995 after being attacked while attempting to intervene in a street fight -- found strength in her faith. In 2004 she finally filed for divorce after a particularly telling incident in which Simon refused to take her to the hospital while she was suffering from an excruciating migraine. "I said, 'Okay, I'm done. I'd have to be freakin' comatose not to get that," Gaynor remembers. "My friend nailed it when she said it was disregard. You don't know how painful that can be until you experience it. [Leaving him] was extremely liberating."

Freed from Simon's grip, Gaynor -- who underwent high-risk surgeries in 2018 to ease chronic back pain stemming from a 1978 onstage fall -- fulfilled a lifelong goal of recording a gospel album in 2019, and the self-funded Testimony earned the star her second Grammy in 2020. "What made it so sweet was that I had been wanting to do this for many, many years, but my ex kept putting it off," she says. "He didn't see any financial benefit in that."

Though she never had another hit as big as "I Will Survive," Gaynor has kept busy in the decades since. She's released more than 20 albums, and she made her latest acting appearance in the fall of 2022 in the movie The Thursday Night Club. There's also an upcoming album, which she's writing and recording in Nashville with collaborators who have worked with Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Maroon 5, and she'll release a new fragrance and her documentary Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive later in 2023. Meanwhile, she hopes to put to use the bachelor's degree in psychology she earned at age 68 -- a "difficult but fun" achievement, she says -- by counseling young fathers. "Because I grew up without a father, I want to open a place to help them understand how important they are to their children," she explains.

As she approaches her 80th birthday in September, Gaynor's plate is full and her life is sweet. "I'm very happy," she says. "I'm very content where I am. If God called me right now, I'd say, 'Okay, here I come.' But if he's got more for me to do her, I'm willing to stay here and do it. I just want to live until I die."  

"I WILL SURVIVE" - From B Side to Disco Classic

Gloria Gaynor was in a back brace after an onstage fall and reeling from her mother's death when she first heard "I Will Survive." She knew it should be more than a B side and recalls telling producers: "What are you, nuts? You're going to put this on the B side? Everybody's going to be able to relate whatever they're going through [to this song]." When DJs started flipping the single, it became a defining disco-era smash.

The former child actor and Emmy winner, famously acquitted
of his second wife's murder in 2005, dies at 89.

By Johnny Dodd in People

ine years before he was arrested for murder in 2002, Robert Blake mused on the thin line that separated him from many of the troubled characters he portrayed in film and on TV. "There's no difference between me and a lot of people on death row," he told People, describing the vicious impulses he'd struggled to control for much of his life, "except that they crossed the line."

Whether Blake -- who died of heart disease at age 89 on March 9 at his Los Angeles home -- actually crossed that line in the execution-style killing of his second wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, 44, is still open to speculation. (His high-profile criminal trial ended in acquittal in 2005; he was found liable for Bakley's wrongful death in a subsequent civil trial.) But the former child actor turned Emmy-winning star of the 1970's TV police-detective series Baretta clearly spent most of his up-and-down career flirting with the same self-destructive urges that consumed many of his onscreen alter egos. That dynamic helped make him a brilliant actor -- but also a difficult person to work and live with. "Complex doesn't even begin to capture his personality," Baretta creator Stephen J. Cannell once said. "If you were in business with him, you just had to strap in really tight, because you were going to get lurched around a lot."

Acting started early for Blake -- born Michael Gubitosi in Nutley, J.J. -- whose father began taking him to local parks at age 2 to perform song-and-dance numbers for money. After moving to Hollywood in 1938, he landed the role of Mickey in the Our Gang/Little Rascals movie shorts, and in 1944, the role of Little Beaver in the western series Red Ryder. In 1967 his career exploded after his critically acclaimed performance as a real-life murder in the film In Cold Blood. Countless movies and TV roles followed, along with his reputation for on-set tantrums. "I realize that many people have had harsh feelings toward him," Alec Baldwin wrote on Instagram. "I want to remember him as the incredibly gifted actor [that] he was."

Blake -- who is survived by children Noah, 58, and Delinah, 56, from his first marriage, to actress Sondra Kerr, and Rose Lenore, 22, his daughter with Bakley -- kept a low profile in the years after his acquittal. In 2019 Rose, then 19, insisted she couldn't bear to know if her father was actually guilty. "What's the point of knowing other than just to trouble myself?" she said at the time. "It's complicated."  

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