Donna Summer's Main TV Roles Show Character(s) VH1 Divas Donna Summer The 1/2 Hour Comedy Hour Donna Summer

Main Movie Roles 1978 - Thank God It's Friday

BIOGRAPHY:

Donna Summer was the Queen of Disco in the 1970s with a pop/dance/rock sound that was a hybrid of American soul and European synthesizer based music. Summer's musical career was launched on stage in Munich, Germany, in productions of Hair and Porgy & Bess. In Germany, she hooked up with producers, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, and delivered the orgasmic "Love to Love You Baby" which brought her worldwide fame. Summer was the first female artist to garner back-to-back multi-platinum double albums and the first female artist to incorporate synthesizers as well as the first artist to create an extended play song. Musically, she diversified into pop and rock, while career-wise, she appeared in the disco dud, Thank God It's Friday (1978), for which the song, "Last Dance" won a Best Song Oscar, as well as numerous American TV music specials. Her career its zenith in 1980 with the release of the critically-acclaimed record, "The Wanderer", a diverse fusion of rock and dance which is still considered to be the forerunner of such range of artists as Billy Idol, Whitney Houston and Alanis Morissette. But soon after 1980, Summer announced that she was a born-again Christian. She was then accused of making anti-gay comments, which were later proved to be false, which brought a worldwide boycott of her music in dance clubs. Summer returned to the Top of the Pop charts in in the late 80s and early 90s with various dance hits. She recently ended her longtime association with Polygram and moved to Nashville to work on country music and to pursue her other passion, painting. In 1998, she won a Grammy for Best Dance Single and has plans to launch a Broadway musical, Ordinary Girl, based on her life.


TRIVIA:

• Her daughters are 'Mimi Sommer' (qv) (born 1974) and Mimi's two half-sisters 'Brooklyn Sudano' (qv) (born 1981) and Amanda Sudano (born 11 August 1982).
• Ranked #80 on VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists.
• Cites her 1978 hit "Last Dance" as her favorite of her past recordings.
• In the summer of 1979, she became the first female artist in music history to have two hits in the Billboard Top 3 at the same time (with Hot Stuff and Bad Girls.) She did it yet again in the fall with a #1 duet with Barbra Streisand and #2 hit Dim All the Lights .
• Has won 5 Grammy awards with a career total of 18 nominations.
• She charted 30 #1 hits (singles and albums) on the Billboard Pop/R&B,Disco/Dance, Album charts combined, over a period of 33 years.
• 'Bruce Springsteen' (qv), a great admirer of Donna Summer, wrote 2 songs for her. The first one, "Cover Me", he decided to use on his "Born in the USA" LP. The second song, "Protection", Donna recorded, and Bruce Springsteen & band supplied the music track. Donna & Bruce actually recorded the song as a duet, but that version has never been released.
• She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 7000 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.