Gaynor followed the standard celebrity recipe for career breakdown, mixing instant success with hard drugs and bad friends. Her moment of clarity came in late 1978, when she fell from the stage at New York's Beacon Theater and awoke the next morning nearly paralyzed. She found God, gave up the night life and found gigs in those European countries where the mirrored disco ball never stopped twinkling. These projects come with the release of Gaynor's new anthology album and her autobiography. Of course, they're also called I Will Survive .
Many people claim to be a disco queen.
But Gaynor was officially crowned, in 1976, by the International Association of Discotheque Disc Jockeys. Just like some of the biggest acts in show business, Jesus now has His own star on the sidewalks of Hollywood. But Los Angeles is a tough town, and Jesus didn't get His star without a few toes being stepped on. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce complained that it owns the Walk of Fame trademark, and that the church should have asked permission before breaking pavement. But we have to protect our trademark.