Leslie Uggams

She made her national television debut at age six on the TV series "Beulah" (1950), portraying the niece of Ethel Waters.

Was in the audience when Buddy Holly and The Crickets made their debut at the Apollo Theater in 1957.

Won Broadway's 1968 Tony Award as Best Actress (Musical) for "Hallelujah, Baby!" in a tie with Patricia Routledge for "Darling of the Day." She was also nominated in 2001 as Best Actress (Play) for August Wilson's "King Hedley II."

Her 1968 Tony-winning lead in "Hallelujah Baby" was originally meant and was expressly written for Lena Horne, who withdrew from the project. Leslie later played Lena in the 2009 musical "Stormy Weather".

Although John Amos and Madge Sinclair were only three and five years her senior in real life, they played her parents in "Roots" (1977). Similarly, she is only three years older than her on screen son Ben Vereen and four months older than her on screen grandson Georg Stanford Brown in the same production.

In 1987, she toured with Peter Nero and Mel Tormé in "The Great Gershwin Concert", for which she received rave reviews, and, in 1988, starred as Reno Sweaney, in the National Company of the Lincoln Center Production of "Anything Goes".

Reprised her role in 1989/90 at the Lincoln Center's Vivien Beaumont Theatre on Broadway. 1991 saw Leslie touring in "Stringbean", a new play with music based on Ethel Waters' rise to fame in the twenties and thirties.