NEW YORK — Leslie Uggams has another award to add to her mantle.
The 79-year-old showbiz star, who already has Emmy and Tony awards to her credit, will be honored with the 2022 Oscar Hammerstein Award from the York Theatre Company.
The East Side-based off-Broadway theater organization, which specializes in revitalizing musicals from the past, will host its 30th Oscar Hammerstein Award Gala on Nov. 14 at The Edison Rooftop.
The event is named after the New York-born lyricist and librettist of landmark musicals “Show Boat,” “South Pacific,” “The King and I” and “The Sound of Music.”
Created in 1988, the award’s purpose is to recognize significant outstanding achievement in musical theater and is presented at a gala evening to benefit The York.
Past recipients of the award — created in 1988 to recognize significant outstanding achievement in musical theater — include Stephen Sondheim, Harold Prince, Carol Channing, Angela Lansbury, Joel Grey and Andre De Shields.
The York’s producing artistic director James Morgan referred to Uggams in Monday’s announcement as a “trailblazer on stages and screens of all sizes … who have had a tremendous impact on musical theater of the last half-century.”
Uggams, an alum of the 1977 award-winning TV miniseries “Roots,” started her career in television at the age of 6 on the ABC TV series “Beulah” — and went on to garner acclaim on Broadway.
With her 1967 Broadway debut, the Harlem native won the Tony Award for best actress in a musical, and later went on to star in “Blues In the Night,” “Anything Goes,” “King Hedley II” and “On Golden Pond.”
In 1983, she won a Daytime Emmy for outstanding host or hostess in a variety series for the short-lived game show “Fantasy.”
Over the past decade, Uggams has experienced a career resurgence with roles in the “Deadpool” movie franchise and the television series “Empire.”
———
