Leslie Uggams

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Leslie Marian Uggams (born May 25, 1943) is an American actress and singer.

Uggams was recognized for her role as Kizzy Reynolds in the television miniseries Roots (1977), receiving Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations for her appearance, beginning as a child.

She had been praised for the Broadway musical Hallelujah, Baby!, and was nominated for the Best Actress in a Musical in 1967 and the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

With appearances alongside Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool (2016) and in a recurring role on Empire, Uggams received renewed attention late in her career.

Personal life

Since 1965, Uggams have been married to longtime boss Grahame Pratt, who was then in charge of the country's first high-profile interracial marriage. According to Uggams, "it was not as difficult as I had expected it to be." Grahame was not an American white man, so I think that was the explanation. Well, we did get mail,” Uggams told her husband at the Professional Children's School of New York, where they were both students. When she was in Sydney for one of Uggams' celebrity tours in Australia, they bumped into each other, and she became her manager afterward. The couple married in New York, which was then more tolerant of interracial relationships. The couple are parents of daughter Danielle, who was born in 1970, and Justice Justice, who was born in 1975.

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Life and career

Uggams was born in Harlem, the daughter of Juanita Ernestine (Smith), a Cotton Club chorus girl/dancer, and Harold Coyden Uggams, an elevator operator and maintenance man who was a member of the Hall Johnson Choir. She attended the Professional Children's School of New York and Juilliard. Eloise C. Uggams, her aunt, encouraged her to pursue her musical training. Coyden H. Uggams, twice pastor of Zion Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina, from 1902 to 1913, was one of her grandmothers.

In 1951, Uggams began showing business as a child, playing the niece of Ethel Waters on Beulah. Ella Fitzgerald appeared as a featured performer at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater in the same year. On Jack Barry's NBC show "Stars And Stardust," she made her professional debut at the age of six. She appeared on "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" after that. Uggams got her biggest break on The Lawrence Welk Show, and she appeared on Sing Along with Mitch, starring record producer-conductor Mitch Miller. In 1954, ten-year-old Uggams set a new MGM debut for the song "Uncle Santa Baby" as a reworking of the song Santa Baby, with new words suitable for a child. In the film In 1960, she sang, off-screen, "Give Me That Old Time Religion." On the musical quiz show series Name That Tune, Uggams were first recognized by television viewers as a promising teen talent in 1958. A recording executive was in the studio audience and had agreed to a deal. "One More Sunrise" (an English-language translation of Ivo Robic's "Morgen") and "House Built on Sand" were among Billboard magazine's most popular items.

In 1969, she appeared in her own television variety show, The Leslie Uggams Show. This was the first network variety show to be hosted by a black person since the Nat King Cole Show of the mid-1950s. As Kizzy, she appeared in the 1977 miniseries Roots, for which she received an Emmy Award. In 1979, she appeared in Lillian Rogers Parks, the Emmy-winning miniseries Backstairs at the White House. She also appeared on television shows as Family Guy (as herself), I Spy, Hollywood Squares, The Muppet Show, The Love Boat, and Magnum, P.I. Rose Keefer appeared on All My Children in 1996. She received a 1983 Daytime Emmy Award as a host of the NBC game show Fantasy.

She appeared in Skyjacked (1972), Black Girl (1972), and Poor Pretty Eddie (1975), in which she played a well-known singer who was trapped in the deep South and humiliated by the perverse denizens of a backwoods town. She appeared in Sugar Hill (1994) opposite Wesley Snipes, as well as playing Blind Al in Deadpool (2016). Leah Walker, Lucious Lyon's bipolar mother, appeared in the hit Fox series Empire in April 2016. In the 2017 television film The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Uggams appeared as Sadie, and in 2018, she returned as Blind Al in Deadpool 2.

She is a Democrat who chaired a 1984 Democratic Telethon. She appeared in two episodes of Family Guy in 1999 and 2021. In addition, she is also scheduled to reprise her role as Blind Al in Deadpool 3.

In Hallelujah, Baby, Uggams was chosen to appear. After Lena Horne's departure from Georgina, the role of Georgina was reversed. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1967 and "created a new star" in Uggams. She was named Best Actress in a Musical by the Tony Award (in a tie with Patricia Routledge). In 1982 and 1985, she appeared in the revue Blues in the Night and in Jerry Herman's Girls' musical revue. Patti LuPone was resurgent in Reno Sweeney's musical Anything Goes on Broadway in March 1989. Reno had appeared in a US tour from 1988-1989. Muzzy in Thoroughly Modern Millie (2003–2004) and Ethel Thayer in On Golden Pond at the Kennedy Center in 2004 and 2005 at the Cort Theatre in Broadway. She appeared in King Hedley II in August Wilson's best Actress in a Play in 2001. In January 2009, Uggams appeared Lena Horne in a play of the stage musical Stormy Weather at the Pasadena Playhouse in California, directed by Michael Bush and choreographed by Randy Skinner. In June 2012, Uggams appeared in a St. Louis production of Thoroughly Modern Millie. She appeared in The Nutmeg Summer Series production of Gypsy in Connecticut in 2014.

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