People win Nobel prizes every year. There’s a world champion in most organized sports, mostly annually. Even Olympic medals, handed out only every four years, are not all that rare, really. But only two people in the history of the world are PEGOT recipients, and only 15 have achieved the nearly-as-difficult EGOT.
The problem, of course, is that when you point to your world championship, or the Nobel Prize framed on your wall, everybody immediately appreciates it. Tell somebody you’ve got the EGOT and — outside of certain circles — you’ll probably be met with a blank stare.
But the blank stare will have to do only with your mention of your award status, because each and every EGOT and PEGOT recipient is famous, at least in the US. EGOT, you see, is just an acronym for Emmy award for excellence in television, Grammy for recording, Oscar for movies, and Tony for stage productions. The P in PEGOT stands for Pulitzer — I think they added that only after Richard Rogers and Marvin Hamlisch actually pulled it off.
“EGOT” was coined in 1984 by Phillip Michael Thomas, primarily a television actor. “‘That stands for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony,’ [Thomas] said. ‘Hopefully in the next five years I will win all those awards.’” His coinage turned out to be more aspirational than descriptive, though; he was never nominated for any of the awards, and after starring in the US hit series Miami Vice in the 1980s, his top achievement has probably been doing voice acting for video games. Since he’s now 73, he’d better get busy if he still wants the prizes.
Most people have never heard of the acronym, or have probably forgotten about it if they heard it back in the 1980s. To be sure, it’s not an actual award as such; it’s just a combination of other awards. If anything, it’s a bit surprising that there are only 15 people who have accumulated the whole lot. For one thing, these awards are given for individual contributions to group endeavors; it takes a great many people to put together a movie or a commercial recording, and there are categories of the awards for lots of kinds of contributions, from the visible ones like acting to behind-the-scenes things like writing or special effects or sound recording. There are also categories for the productions; there are Emmy and Oscar awards for dramas, comedies, documentaries, and Grammy categories for dozens of musical genres. So it seems like it would be perfectly reasonable for someone to achieve EGOT status by being very good at mixing recorded sound or something like that.
The Pulitzer prize in the PEGOT might be the exception; although there are lots of categories (20) there as well, the Pulitzers tend to be focused on achievements in areas that are more individual, such as various categories of writing (there’s also a prize for photography).
By the way, although being nominated for a Grammy or an Oscar (an “Academy Award”) can be treated as something of an accolade (“Grammy-nominated recording artist…”), this is because the judges are the ones who pick the nominees. You hardly ever see “Pulitzer Prize Nominee”, because all you have to do is submit something you published along with a check for $75. Then you’re a nominee. Actually winning is (presumably) more challenging.
But that’s all there is to say about EGOT and PEGOT. Stay tuned for more installments, unless I get too busy preparing my Pulitzer entry for best Word of the Day.
