Uggams was born in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City,[3] the daughter of Juanita Ernestine (Smith), a Cotton Club chorus girl/dancer, and Harold Coyden Uggams, an elevator operator and maintenance man,[citation needed] who was a singer with the Hall Johnson choir.[4] She attended the Professional Children's School of New York and Juilliard.[4][5] Her aunt, singer Eloise C. Uggams, encouraged her musical training.[6] One of her grandfathers was Coyden H. Uggams, twice pastor of Zion Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina, from 1902 to 1906 and 1913 to 1919.[7]
Career
Early work
Uggams started in show business as a child in 1951, playing the niece of Ethel Waters on Beulah. That same year she appeared as a featured performer at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem, alongside Ella Fitzgerald. She made her professional debut at the age of six on Jack Barry's NBC show "Stars And Stardust." Following that, she performed on "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts". Uggams got her biggest break on The Lawrence Welk Show and was a regular on Sing Along with Mitch, starring record producer-conductor Mitch Miller.[4] In January 1954, ten-year-old Uggams released a double-sided single by MGM Records.[8] In 1960, she sang, off-screen, "Give Me That Old Time Religion" in the film Inherit the Wind. Uggams came to be recognized by TV audiences as an upcoming teen talent in 1958 on the musical quiz show series Name That Tune. A record executive was in the studio audience and signed her to a contract.[9] Her records "One More Sunrise" (an English-language cover of Ivo Robic's "Morgen", 1959) and "House Built on Sand" made Billboard magazine's charts.
In her first film, she was neither seen, nor credited. In Inherit the Wind (1960), she sang the opening, "(Gimme Dat) Old Time Religion", and the closing, "Battle Hymn of the Republic". Her film career includes roles in Skyjacked (1972), Black Girl (1972) and Poor Pretty Eddie (1975), in which she played a popular singer who, upon being stranded in the deep South, is abused and humiliated by the perverse denizens of a backwoods town.[13] She later appeared in Sugar Hill (1994) opposite Wesley Snipes, and played Blind Al in Deadpool (2016) in February 2016.[14] In April 2016, she portrayed Leah Walker, the bipolar mother of Lucious Lyon in the hit Fox series Empire. Uggams appeared as Sadie in the 2017 television film The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and in 2018, she returned as Blind Al in Deadpool 2.[15]
She is an active Democrat and hosted a 1984 Democratic Telethon.[16] In 1999 and 2021, she guest starred in two episodes of Family Guy. Additionally, she reprised her role as Blind Al in Deadpool & Wolverine.
Uggams has been married to her longtime manager Grahame Pratt since 1965, at the time a rare high-profile interracial marriage. “It was not as hard as I expected it to be,” Uggams says. “I think the reason is that Grahame was not an American white man. But of course we did get mail.”[29] Uggams met her husband at the Professional Children's School of New York, where they were both students. The couple met again while she was performing in Sydney, Australia, during one of Uggams's celebrity tours, and he became her manager afterward.[30] After their wedding, they decided to settle in New York City for its relative tolerance of interracial relationships.[5] The couple's daughter Danielle was born in 1970, and their son Justice in 1975.[29][30]
Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host or Hostess in a Variety Series (1983) Nominated — Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host or Hostess in a Variety Series (1984)
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