Singer Helen Reddy dies

Helen Reddy, Australianborn performer whose rousing song “I Am Woman” was a galvanizing force in the women’s movement of the early 1970s and made her one of the most popular singing stars of the decade, died Sept. 29 in Los Angeles. She was 78.

The death was announced in a statement from her children, Traci Wald Donat and Jordan Sommers. She had Addison’s disease, an endocrine disorder, and dementia.

Reddy, who wrote the lyrics for “I Am Woman,” unexpectedly became a beacon of the feminist movement with a song that was a clear call for social action.

“I was lying in bed one night and thinking about how strong all the women in my family were — my mother, my grandmother, my aunts,” Reddy told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2000. “This phrase, ‘I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman,’ kept going through my head.”

She enlisted Australian musician Ray Burton to write the music, then recorded the song with little fanfare in 1971. It was included on her album “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” whose title track, from the rock musical “Jesus Christ Superstar,” became her first hit.

In 1972, “I Am Woman” was part of the soundtrack of the film comedy “Stand Up and Be Counted,” which was built around the idea of what was then called “women’s liberation.”

The recurring chorus contained the words Reddy thought of while lying in bed: “I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman!”

The song became a pop hit and a cultural phenomenon, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in December 1972 and selling more than 1 million copies - 80% of which were reportedly bought by women.

Reddy became an instant success and a symbol of the then-burgeoning feminist movement. She performed “I Am Woman” at the 1973 Grammy Awards, where she won the award for best pop vocal performance by a female singer, beating out Barbra Streisand and Aretha Franklin. She was the first Australian to win a Grammy.

She received hate mail after saying in her acceptance speech, “I want to thank God because she makes everything possible.”

She had six more Top 10 hits in the 1970s, including two that reached No. 1 - a version of the country song “Delta Dawn” (1973) and “Angie Baby” (1974), a cryptic song that suggests that a girl may have killed her peeping Tom neighbor. Reddy was the world’s top-selling female singer in 1973 and 1974, had eight gold records and, at the height of her popularity, could demand $50,000 for a single performance.

Helen Maxine Reddy was born Oct. 25, 1941, in Melbourne. Her father was an actor, writer and producer, her mother and an older half sister were actresses.

She began appearing in vaudeville productions at 4 and left school at 15 to pursue show business. By 19, she was living in Sydney and hosting “Helen Reddy Sings,” a weekly show on Australian television.

In her mid-20s, she won a talent contest that brought her — and her young daughter — to New York for what she thought would be a recording contract. That opportunity never materialized, and she was down to her last $12 when she met Jerry Wald, who became her second husband and manager.

They moved to Chicago, then Los Angeles, where Reddy secured a recording contract after an appearance on “The Tonight Show.” From 1973 to 1975, she was a frequent guest host of the late-night music show “The Midnight Special,” and also began acting, first as a singing nun in the 1974 disaster movie “Airport 1975” and a 1977 family film, “Pete’s Dragon.” A song she performed in the second, “Candle on the Water,” was nominated for an Oscar.

Reddy became a U.S. citizen in 1974 and often appeared at political rallies in support of Democratic candidates. California Gov. Jerry Brown appointed her to the state Department of Parks and Recreation commission.

By the early 1980s, Reddy’s songs were barely touching the pop charts, she was let go by her record label, and she went through a bitter divorce and child custody battle that became fodder for the tabloids.

Her marriages to Kenneth Weate, Wald and Milton Ruth ended in divorce. Survivors include a daughter from her first marriage; a son from her second marriage; a half sister; and a granddaughter.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Reddy recorded sporadically and turned increasingly to acting, often in musicals. In 1995, she appeared on Broadway in the musical “Blood Brothers” by British playwright Willy Russell, and she also appeared in several productions of Russell’s one-woman comedy about a Liverpool homemaker, “Shirley Valentine.”

Reddy retired from show business in 2002 and lived for years in Australia, where she became a clinical hypnotherapist.

She briefly returned to performing in 2012 and moved back to Southern California, where she lived in a retirement home for entertainers.