BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
Description: Vocalist, Actress, USA
Known For: “THE MITCH MILLER SHOW” during the sixties.
Instruments: Voice
Music Styles: Easy Listening
Location: United States of America
Date Born: 25th May 1943
Location Born: NYC, New York, USA
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BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
Leslie Uggams
Leslie Marian Uggams (born May 25, 1943) is an American actress and singer. She is known for her work in the 1967 broadway musical Hallelujah, Baby! for which she won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical and a Theatre World Award (1967); as Kizzy Reynolds in the 1977 television miniseries Roots.
Uggams was born in New York City, the daughter of Juanita (Smith), a Cotton Club chorus girl, and Harold Uggams, an elevator operator and maintenance man. Her father was a singer with the Hall Johnson choir and her mother was a dancer. She attended the Professional Children’s School of New York and Juilliard. She met her husband, Grahame Pratt while she was performing in Sydney; they married in 1965. After their wedding, the couple decided to reside in New York, in part to avoid Australia’s racial segregation laws of that time.
Early work
Uggams started in show business as a child in 1950, playing the niece of Ethel Waters on Beulah. Uggams made her singing debut on the Lawrence Welk Show and was a regular on Sing Along with Mitch, starring record producer-conductor Mitch Miller. In 1960, she sang, off-screen, “Give Me That Old Time Religion” in the film Inherit the Wind. Uggams came to be recognized by TV audiences as an upcoming teen talent in 1954 on the NBC/CBS hit musical quiz show series Name That Tune (1953–59), along with child hitmaker Eddie Hodges. Her records “One More Sunrise”(an English-language cover of Ivo Robic’s “Morgen”, 1959) and “House Built on Sand” made Billboard magazine’s charts.
She appeared in her own television variety show, The Leslie Uggams Show in 1969. This was the first network variety show to be hosted by an African American since “The Nat ‘King’ Cole Show” of the mid-1950’s. She had a lead role in the 1977 miniseries Roots, for which she received an Emmy nomination, as Kizzy. In 1979, she starred as Lillian Rogers Parks in Backstairs at the White House, a miniseries for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Actress. She also made guest appearances on such television programs as Hollywood Squares, Fantasy, The Muppet Show, The Love Boat and Magnum, P.I.. In 1996, Uggams played the role of Rose Keefer on All My Children. Her film career included roles in Skyjacked (1972), Black Girl (1972) and Poor Pretty Eddie (1975), in which she played a popular singer who, upon being stranded in the deep South, is abused and humiliated by the perverse denizens of a backwoods town. She later appeared in Sugar Hill (1994) opposite Wesley Snipes, and was cast as Blind Al in Deadpool in July 2015.
Discography
The Eyes of God (Columbia CS8174, 1959)
So in Love! (Columbia CS8871, 1963)
A Time to Love (Atlantic 8128, 1966)
What’s An Uggams? (Atlantic SD8196, 1968)
Just to Satisfy You (Atlantic SD8241, 1969)
Leslie (Columbia CS9936, 1970)
Try To See It My Way (Sonday SL8000, 1972)
Leslie Uggams (Motown M6846S1, 1975)
Uggams first started in show business as a child in 1950, playing the niece of Ethel Waters on the television series Beulah.
She was a regular on Sing Along with Mitch, starring record producer-conductor Mitch Miller. In 1960, she sang, off-screen, “Give Me That Old Time Religion” in the film Inherit the Wind.
She auditioned for the lead part in the film Cleopatra, but lost out to Elizabeth Taylor. Dorothy Dandridge was also in the running, when director Rouben Mamoulian was to direct, but her part was lost when the director was taken off the project.
The Leslie Uggams Show, a television variety show, added to her list of credits and a lead role in Roots, as Kizzy.
Uggams also starred in the 1975 film Poor Pretty Eddy (also called Poor Pretty Eddie, Black Vengeance and Redneck County), in which she played a popular singer who, upon being stranded in the deep South, is abused and humiliated by the perverse denizens of a backwoods town.
Uggams appeared several times on The Ed Sullivan Show in the 1960s.
First known to Australian audiences as a regular with Dianna Trask
on the “THE MITCH MILLER SHOW” during the sixties.
One could say she was a very underrated singer as she had the looks, voice, and a very good one at that and seemed to be breaking barriers down between the black and white at the time that things were changing in America.
Early in 2009, Uggams made an appearance as the jazz singer Lena Horne in a production of the stage musical Stormy Weather at the Pasadena Playhouse in California.
Films include:
ROOTS – 1977
TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN – 1962
SUGAR HILL – 1994
SKYJACKED – 1972
She appeared as Rose Keefer in the TV series
ALL MY CHILDREN – 1996