Having achieved GOT in the year 2012, Menken has waited for eight years to win his Emmy and finally achieve EGOT. He is the 16th person to receive all the awards and achieve EGOT. Before him, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice and John Legend were the 13th, 14th and 15th persons to have completed their EGOT. All three of them completed their EGOT together in the year 2018.
What Is EGOT?
The EGOT consists of the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar and the Tony. Having achieved all four awards in the show business is quite an achievement and is popularly referred to as the “Grand Slam.”
The first person to have collected the EGOT was Richard Rodgers. He achieved his EGOT in the year 1962 when he won his first and only Emmy. He set the stage for the other 15 EGOT winners to sweep. Rodgers was followed by Helen Hayes, who also happens to be the very first woman to have collected all four. Then, in 1975, Rita Moreno became the third person (and the second woman) to make her Grand Slam. After Rita, John Gielgud came on fourth when he was 87 years of age, making him the oldest receiver of the EGOT. Audrey Hepburn, Marvin Hamlisch, Jonathan Tunick, Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, and Whoopi Goldberg round out the list of the first 10 EGOT receivers.
Alan Menken’s Grand Slam
Born in New York in 1949, Menken is a legendary music composer. For 35 years, his musical creations have been stirring the imagination of the audience. He has worked for Walt Disney and composed music for Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. He has also written Broadway musicals.
He has been at the receiving end of countless awards for his compositions and has collected more Oscars than any other living person. His childhood was filled with music and theatre, which has played a significant role in shaping the person that he is today. His mother, Judy Menken was an aspiring actor and his father, and Norman Menken was a dentist with a knack for music.
Menken began his first lessons in piano and the violin at a young age. What’s interesting is that when young Menken was taught a new piece, he would only pay attention to the “essence” of it. Once he was familiar with a piece, instead of playing it back accurately and practice, he would concoct something similar to his own. This tendency of his was observed and encouraged by his teachers. Thus he began to compose music.
Alan’s first composition, called “Bouree” was created for the violin. Since then, Alan has won a total of eleven Grammy Awards, a Tony and eight Oscars for his work. In 1990, he had also been the recipient of an honorary Primetime Emmy, but that didn’t add to his EGOT as it was non-competitive.
Finally, Alan Menken was awarded a Daytime Emmy for his “Waiting in the Wings” composition in Disney’s Tangled. The song has been written by Glenn Slater and composed by Alan Menken.
With a few great artists who have made it to the EGOT list, Alan can now be added as the 16th artist to have collected all the prestigious awards.
Alan is known to have brought many of his animated film classics to the stage like Newsies, Aladdin, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Little Mermaid. He is also famous for his compositions in the stage adaptations of Leap of Faith and Sister Act. Alan had also worked with Glenn Slater before in composing for his lyrics in The Little Mermaid on Broadway.
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