diff --git a/Lib/tarfile.py b/Lib/tarfile.py
index 152b23c252c..af733deb323 100644
--- a/Lib/tarfile.py
+++ b/Lib/tarfile.py
@@ -923,7 +923,8 @@ def gzopen(cls, name, mode="r", fileobj=None, compresslevel=9):
 
         try:
             import gzip
-        except ImportError:
+            gzip.GzipFile
+        except (ImportError, AttributeError):
             raise CompressionError, "gzip module is not available"
 
         pre, ext = os.path.splitext(name)