Who was the first British EGOT winner?
Supposedly, any performer’s most prestigious honour is the Triple Crown of Acting hat trick, being the Oscar, Emmy, and Tony awards.
Achieving the most premier gong in the respective film, television, and theatre fields, stage stalwart Helen Hayes ticked off such a distinguished feat as early as 1953. Yet, soon enough, the Triple Crown became old hat. To flex serious stripes and test one’s showmanship mettle, the entertainment industry’s holy grail would stand as the coveted EGOT.
An EGOT is the Triple Crown with a Grammy thrown in for good measure, the equally supreme award in the arena of music. Coined by Ricardo Tubbs actor Philip Michael Thomas during Miami Vice’s peak, the acronym soon became the standard title for the coveted four-goal haul. Internal politics and gripey snipes would abound however, many trying to assert that only Primetime Emmy Awards should count over common gutter Daytime honours. Still, the glowing EGOT beckons the most ambitious, or blessed by dumb luck.
The coveted four-pointer was first nabbed twenty years prior to Thomas’ titling. Achieved in 1962, American composer Richard Rodgers spent 16 years accruing the necessary EGOT try, rounding off his trophy cabinet with the final Emmy for his Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years score. Hayes again would strike EGOT gold in 1977, followed by Puerto Rican actress and dancer the same year. The fourth to be bestowed with the EGOT honour would be one of the UK film’s most esteemed and eldest performers of the stage and screen.
So who was the first British EGOT winner?
Hailing from the Terry acting dynasty, John Gielgud spanned a gobsmacking eight decades as a performer and theatre director. Standing aside Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier as the nation’s pre-eminent Shakespeare thespians, Gielgud would forge a titanic presence on the global stage, knighted for his services in 1953, and boasting a filmography born in the silent era to his memorable turn as Pope Pius V in 1998’s Elizabeth.
With such an illustrious acting pedigree, his vocal talents and gift of Shakespearean verse were also sought for a myriad of radio plays and audio recordings of his stage performances, making Gielgud eligible for the chief EGOT prize.
Taking 29 years to accomplish, Gielgud was the first British actor to enter the EGOT record books in 1991 when presented with the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Special in the BBC drama series Summer’s Lease at the age of 87. Nine years earlier, he’d ticked off the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for romantic comedy Arthur, accepted a Best Spoken Word, Documentary or Drama Recording Grammy with Ages of Man’s Shakespearean speech collection the previous year, and first struck a Tony in 1948 in the Outstanding Foreign Company category for his role as John Worthing in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
27 people have won an EGOT in its history, the next Brits to enter its celebrated hall of fame being Audrey Hepburn, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice, and Elton John. For the extra ambitious, why not gun for a REGOT, the extra venerable decoration of adding a Razzie to the gong cupboard?
