Dionne Warwick presented her longtime friend Leslie Uggams with The Oscar Hammerstein Award for her six decades of work on stage and screen. Uggams’s husband Grahame Pratt, BroadwayHD’s Bonnie Comley and Stewart F. Lane joined the celebration which included a concert with special guest appearances by the Shoshana Bean, Lilli Cooper, Jared Grimes, Christine Pedi, Klea Blackhurst, Gregg Edelman, Michael James Leslie, Ron Raines, Stephanie Umoh, Jeffrey Wright, Broadway Inspirational Voices, La Chanze, André De Shields, and Lee Roy Reams. Leslie Uggams’s leading man from Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds, made a special video tribute appearance. The event was hosted by the York Theatre’s Gerry McIntrye.
Leslie Uggams is a Tony and Emmy Award-winning actress and singer whose career has brought her from Harlem’s Apollo Theater to Broadway, then to the big screen (Deadpool, Skyjacked) to television (Empire, The Leslie Uggams Show). Perhaps best known for her stirring portrayal of Kizzy in the landmark TV mini-series Alex Haley’s Roots (Critics Choice Award, Emmy and Golden Globe nominations), Leslie has performed to critical and popular acclaim ever since her first professional appearances at the age of nine at the famed Apollo Theater in New York City. There she opened for such musical legends as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington.
Dionne Warwick, has won six Grammy Awards including the 2019 Grammy Lifetime Award. Warwick has been inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Grammy Hall of Fame, the R&B Music Hall of Fame and the Apollo Theater Walk of Fame. She has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. Warwick has recently embarked on her 50th Anniversary World Concert Tour which will take her to all continents and countries that she has performed and visited throughout her illustrious and celebrated 50 year career.
Ted Chapin was also honored with The York Theatre Company Founders’ Award, presented by his daughters Anika Chapin and Zoë Chapin. Founded in 1969, The York Theatre is dedicated to the production of new musicals and concert productions of forgotten musicals from the past. Joining the festivities were York Theatre’s W. David McCoy, James Morgan, Joan Ross Sorkin, Riki Kane Larimer, and theater industry VIPs Marilyn Maye, Richard Maltby, Jr., Jamie DeRoy, Richard Ridge, Sharleen Cooper Cohen, Ted Snowden, Randie Levine-Miller,among others.
For more information on the York Theatre see: www.YorkTheatre.org
*Photo credit: Genevieve Rafter Keddy
