Helen Reddy, singer whose song I Am Woman became a feminist anthem – obituary

Helen Reddy, who has died aged 78, was a singer and songwriter whose song I Am Woman became a rallying cry for the nascent feminist movement; when she picked up her Grammy Award for best female artist in 1973, she famously thanked God – “for She makes everything possible”.

Written with her friend, the guitarist Ray Burton, I Am Woman – “Oh yes, I am wise / But it’s wisdom born of pain / Yes, I’ve paid the price / But look how much I gained” – came out of Helen Reddy’s alignment with the burgeoning women’s rights movement, thanks in part to reading the work of the Australian rock critic and feminist writer Lillian Roxon.

Looking for songs that reflected her increasingly positive self-image, she found none, she said. “I realised that the song I was looking for didn’t exist, and I was going to have to write it myself.”

Helen Maxine Reddy was born in Melbourne on October 25 1941, of Irish, Scottish and English ancestry; her mother Stella Campbell (née Lamond) was an actress, singer, and dancer, while her father Max Reddy was a writer, producer, and actor; Helen’s half-sister Toni Lamond also went on to be an actress and singer.

When she was born Max was serving with an entertainment troupe in the Australian Army, and was in New Guinea. Aged four, at the end of the Second World War, she joined her parents on the vaudeville circuit, singing and dancing: “It was instilled in me: you will be a star,” she recalled.

With her parents working so hard – and arguing much of the time – 12-year-old Helen went to live with an aunt, and attended Tintern Grammar School in her home city. But showbiz still claimed her, despite a brief early marriage that left her as a single mother.

With a daughter to support, she returned to treading the boards, singing – but not dancing, thanks to having a kidney removed when she was 17. In 1966 she won a talent contest on the television show Bandstand, the prize for which appeared to be a paid trip to New York to cut a single with Mercury Records. When she arrived, however, the label told her the deal was only for an audition, which they took to be her original performance on Bandstand – an “audition” she had failed, they said.

Undeterred, despite having only $200, Helen Reddy decided to stick around, her three-year-old daughter in tow, and attempt to forge a career in the US. She struggled, however, and in 1968, when she was down to her last few dollars, an Australian friend, a stage hypnotist named Martin St James, threw a $5-a-head party for her.

It was there that she met Jeff Wald, a secretary at the William Morris talent agency, and they were married in short order. But he was soon sacked, and for a while she supported them playing gigs here and there for a few dollars; at one point they had to do a moonlight flit, their few possessions in paper bags. “When we did eat, it was spaghetti, and we spent what little money we had on cockroach spray,” Helen Reddy recalled.

They moved to Chicago, where she made a single for Fontana Records, One Way Ticket, which did not trouble the American charts but did scrape into the Top 100 back home. They moved again, to Los Angeles, where Wald began managing acts as diverse as Tiny Tim and Deep Purple.

As her own progress stalled Helen Reddy enrolled to study parapsychology and philosophy part-time at UCLA. But after 18 months with no sign of a record deal, she gave her husband an ultimatum: put all his efforts behind her, or hit the road; he went for the former option.

He pestered Capitol, whose head Artie Mogull agreed to let her do one single if Wald promised not to call for a month. I Believe in Music was a flop until DJs began playing the B-side, a cover of I Don’t Know How to Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar. In June 1971 it peaked at No 13 in the US charts.

A couple of unsuccessful singles followed; and then, Helen Reddy told an interviewer, “I remember lying in bed one night and the words, ‘I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman’, kept going over and over in my head. That part I consider to be divinely inspired. I had been chosen to get a message across.” Asked by whom she had been chosen, she replied: “The universe”.

I Am Woman was released in May 1972. It made little initial impression on the charts, but legions of women began calling radio stations to request it, and by the end of the year it was at No 1, making her the first Australian to top the US hit parade.

The next five years saw unalloyed success, with more than a dozen Top 40 hits, including two more No 1s, Delta Dawn and Angie Baby (which also went to No 5 in the UK). She was the world’s top-selling female vocalist in 1973 and 1974, and played to packed houses across the US, becoming a regular in Las Vegas, where her support acts included Joan Rivers, David Letterman, Bill Cosby and Barry Manilow.

She was instrumental in supporting her friend and fellow Australian Olivia Newton-John, encouraging her to leave the UK and join her on the West Coast. It was at a dinner party at Helen Reddy’s house that she met the film producer Allan Carr, resulting in her landing the plum role of Sandy in Grease.

Helen Reddy’s own career, musically speaking, declined from the late 1970s onwards, her divorce from Jeff Wald contributing to her slide down the charts. There were many more records – in all she is thought to have sold around 80 million albums worldwide – but huge hits eluded her; she retired from touring in 2002.

She turned to acting – memorably appearing as a singing nun in the disaster blockbuster Airport 1975, serenading a sick child (played by Linda Blair of The Exorcist fame) – and made cameos in shows such as The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. In the 1980s she began establishing herself in the theatre, mainly in musicals; she starred in four productions of Willie Russell’s one-woman show Shirley Valentine, and both the Broadway and West End productions of Russell’s Blood Brothers.

In 2002 she returned to live in Australia, where she took a degree in clinical hypnotherapy and neuro-linguistic programming and went on to practise. She made the occasional live comeback, and in 2017 she sang I Am Woman at the 750,000-strong Women’s March in Los Angeles.

Helen Reddy married, first Kenneth Weate, with whom she had a daughter. They divorced and she married, secondly, Jeff Wald, after converting to his Jewish faith. They had a son but divorced in 1983. That year she married Milton Ruth, a drummer in her band; they divorced in 1995. Her children survive her.

Helen Reddy, born October 25 1941, died September 29 2020