Barbra Streisand is one of the greatest stars in the history of show business. She’s a superstar, an icon and a legend. But is she an EGOT?
Technically, no. She has won five Emmys, eight Grammys and two Oscars, but she has yet to win a Tony Award in competition. But then, she has appeared in just two Broadway shows, I Can Get It for You Wholesale, in which she played a supporting role and stole the show with the comic lament, “Miss Marmelstein,” and Funny Girl, in which she played the lead role of Fanny Brice and became a household name (a status she has never relinquished). In April 1964, during the run of the show, she appeared on the cover of TIME, back when that was a true marker of stardom. (It was a couple of weeks before she turned 22.)
Streisand received Tony nominations for both shows. At the Tony Awards in April 1962, she lost to Phyllis Newman in Subways Are for Sleeping. (Readers of a certain age will remember Newman as a frequent guest on talk shows and game shows in the 1960s and 1970s.) At the Tonys in May 1964, Streisand lost to Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly!. It’s easy to see why Channing won. The entertainer was a veteran star (she had made the cover of TIME in 1950) who had finally – at age 42 – landed her signature role. Plus, Dolly! was Broadway’s biggest hit of the 1960s. (It’s just a shame that two award-worthy performances had to go up against each other.)
By the time of the Tony Awards in April 1970, Streisand had won four Grammys, a Primetime Emmy and an Oscar, but had not received a shiny bauble from the Tonys. So, the Tonys decided to give Streisand an honorary Tony which they dubbed “Star of the Decade.”
Should that count as a full-fledged Tony? Most awards experts say no; that only awards won in competition should count toward EGOTs.
But it’s not as if the EGOT concept is without pitfalls. For one thing, all EGOT awards are not equally hard to get. There are far fewer categories at the Oscars (24 this year) and the Tonys (26) than there are at the Grammys (95) and the Primetime Emmys (a whopping 123 last year, spread across three nights). And there are also separate annual Emmy competitions covering Daytime, Sports, International, Children’s & Family, News & Documentary and Technology & Engineering. Should they all count for EGOT consideration? That’s a lot of Emmys.
In 2016, the Daytime Emmy Awards introduced a category for outstanding musical performance in a daytime program. Three of the first four winners were Broadway ensembles, which between them included five people who had already won Tony and Grammy awards for the shows they appeared in (and the accompanying cast albums). With their Daytime Emmy wins, they only needed Oscars to achieve EGOT status. This “shortcut” made it absurdly easy to pile up awards. To their credit, the Daytime Emmys dropped the category after the 2019 ceremony.
The Tonys have not yet tightened the rules governing the ridiculously large numbers of people who can win as producers of a winning show. Literally dozens of producers won Tonys for A Strange Loop. They included Jennifer Hudson, who, with that win, became an EGOT; future EGOT Steven Spielberg and “honorary” EGOT Frank Marshall. In all three cases, that is their only Tony win do date.
How is it fair to count those awards and then be strict about not counting honorary awards? That’s a very good question.
For now, we count only awards won in competition toward EGOTs. Twenty-two people have met this test. Legendary composer Richard Rodgers was the first to do so in 1962, when he won an Emmy for Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years.
Spielberg was the most recent EGOT earlier this year, when he won a Grammy for best music film for Music by John Williams, a documentary about his long-time go-to composer.
Here are six artists who could also be considered EGOTs, but only if you count special or honorary awards.
