Tracy Morgan’s character in “30 Rock” spent much of the fourth season coveting the top four awards in the entertainment industry: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. But in the real world, only 16 people have reached the so-called “EGOT” state.
Prolific songwriter and songwriter Alan Menken joined that exclusive club on Sunday.
Best known for composing the music for the Broadway hit “Little Shop of Horrors” and a series of animated Disney classics such as “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin,” Menken achieved EGOT with a Daytime Emmy victory. Awards.
He was honored for a song he composed for the Disney Channel series “Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure”. He shared the Daytime Emmy for the song “Waiting in the Wings” with lyricist Glenn Slater.
Menken, 71, began his journey to EGOT in 1990 with a pair of Academy Awards for his work on “The Little Mermaid.” Then he won six more Oscars for “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), “Aladdin” (1992) and “Pocahontas” (1995).
He garnered 11 Grammy Awards wins for various Disney soundtrack albums, as well as a 2012 Tony Award for “Newsies,” a Broadway adaptation of a 1992 Disney musical film of the same name.
Menken’s victory at the Daytime Emmys was not his first honor in the television industry. He previously won a Primetime Emmy Honorary Award for his work on the 1990 anti-drug special “Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue,” with Winnie the Pooh and Kermit the Frog warning about the dangers of marijuana abuse.
EGOT’s winners list includes Rita Moreno, Audrey Hepburn, Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, Whoopi Goldberg, John Legend and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The term was apparently coined by “Miami Vice” star Philip Michael Thomas, who in a 1984 interview with the Associated Press spoke about his desire to win the industry’s four grand prizes in the next five years.
Later, Thomas seemed to backtrack on his great professional ambition, explaining to People magazine in 1985 that his “signature gold medallion” engraved with the letters EGOT actually meant “Energy, Growth, Opportunity, and Talent”.
The acronym gained more attention during the fourth season of “30 Rock” after Tracy Morgan’s character, the vainglorious actor Tracy Jordan, bought a diamond-encrusted “EGOT” necklace in a jewelry store and set out to catch the quadfecta of entertainment.
