EGOT Winners

The four major entertainment awards in the American show business, the awards for which several actors, actresses, singers, directors and others, including the movies fans, wait for eagerly, are the Academy (Oscar) award, the Tony awards, the Grammy Awards, and the Emmy awards. These awards are given to people with outstanding achievements in the field of television, music and theater, and all those who win these prestigious awards, have worked day and night, and this is the best prize for all their hard work. You must have heard about the Grand Slam in tennis, but have you heard about the same in the field of showbiz? Well, there is a Showbiz Award Grand Slam, which takes place when someone wins all the above four awards. There are two acronyms for that; GATE (Grammy, Academy, Tony, Emmy) and EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). Winning all the four awards is a major achievement and there are some people who have won the EGOT already and some who are still missing it by just one or two awards. Interested in knowing who the EGOT winners are? A list of winners is given below, but before we see that, let us learn a bit about the history of each of these prestigious awards in brief.

The EGOT

You already know which are the awards that makes up the EGOT. This acronym was used for the first time by an actor (whose name I am sure you must have heard) Philip Michael Thomas. He had played the role of the famous detective, 'Detective Ricardo Tubbs', in the hit 1980s TV series, Miami Vice. After that he had acted in several TV series and had also gave his voice in the video game called Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. Let us now learn a bit more about the four awards.

Emmy Awards
The Emmy Awards is a TV production award and it is awarded to people from various sectors in the television industry, such as sports programming, news, entertainment, documentary shows, etc. The first Emmy Award ceremony took place in the year 1949, and Shirley Dinsdale was the first one to receive this award for the Most Outstanding Television Personality.

Grammy Awards
The Grammy Awards was previously called the Gramophone Awards, and as the name suggests, it was presented to those people for their outstanding performance in the field of music. This award is presented annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (USA). The first Grammy was awarded in the year 1959. The 53rd Grammy will take place pretty soon in February 2011.

Oscars (Academy Awards)
The Academy Awards is informally known as the Oscars, and (I am sure you know this), is presented to those people (actors, directors or writers) for their outstanding performance in the film industry. This award was given out for the first time in the year 1929, and Emil Jannings was the first person to win an award. The year 2011 will see the 83rd Academy Awards. Don't miss it.

Tony Awards
The Tony Awards is also known as the Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theater, and this is an award meant for those people for their achievement in the field of theater. The award is presented by the American Theater Wing and The Broadway League, and they are usually given for the Broadway productions, and an award is also reserved for a regional theater. This award was founded for the first time in the year 1947.

Now that we know about each of the EGOT in brief, let us take a look at the winners' list and get to know those actors, singers, directors, and other people from the entertainment field, who have deservedly won these four prestigious awards.

Name of Artist	Emmy Award	Grammy Award	Oscar Award	Tony Award
Richard Rodgers	1962	1960	1945	1950
Helen Hayes	1953	1976	1945	1947
Rita Moreno	1977	1972	1961	1975
John Gielgud	1991	1979	1981	1961
Audrey Hepburn	1993	1994	1953	1954
Marvin Hamlisch	1995	1974	1973	1976
Jonathan Tunick	1982	1988	1977	1997
Mel Brooks	1967	1998	1968	2001
Mike Nichols	2001	1961	1967	1964
Whoopi Goldberg	2002	1985	1990	2002
Barbra Streisand	1965	1963	1968	1970
Liza Minnelli	1973	1990	1972	1965

Thus, these were the past winners, and they are winners who have toiled hard to get all these four prestigious awards for themselves. There are of course more artists who are just an award or two short from having their names in the list; Gwyenth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Nicole Kidman, and Renee Zellweger to name a few. Here's hoping that the next time we see the list, these artists will have their names added into it.