The USC Dornsife (almost) EGOT
The list of performers who, individually, have won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards (collectively an EGOT) includes just 17 people. It’s one of the most exclusive clubs in show business and includes global stars like Mel Brooks, Audrey Hepburn and Jennifer Hudson. Collectively, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences alumni and faculty are close to joining the list, just needing to convert a Tony Award nomination to a win.
Here are some of the award-winning alumni and faculty that make up the USC Dornsife (almost) EGOT.
The Emmy goes to …
Back in the 1950s, USC Dornsife English Literature Professor Frank Baxter was so popular that his annual Christmas readings at Bovard Auditorium were a sold-out event, forcing the overflow crowd to stand in the rain near loud speakers. He was also a pioneer of educational television.
Frank Baxter (Photo: Courtesy of Wesleyan Cinema Archives.)
Baxter’s Shakespeare on TV, which debuted in 1953 on KRCA-TV, was one of the first televised university courses and a smash hit with audiences. He won numerous Emmy Awards for the show, including one for Outstanding Male Personality in 1960.
If there’s an award for biggest career change, Virginia Carter might nab that one. She graduated with her master’s degree in physics in 1963 and worked for McDonnell Douglas and The Aerospace Corporation. Frustrated by the low pay for women in her field, she joined the National Organization of Women where she met the wife of TV producer Norman Lear.
This chance friendship changed everything. She and Norman hit it off so well he offered Carter a job. She became vice-president of creative affairs at CBS Television and executive-produced The Wave, which won an Emmy in 1981
As a freshman, America Ferrera informed her international relations professor that she intended to give up her acting career to focus on activism. David Andrus urged her to continue acting and pointed to her breakout role in Real Women Have Curves as a positive inspiration for young Latina women. So, she stuck with acting and in 2007 she won a Primetime Emmy for her role in Ugly Betty.
The Grammy goes to …
Marvin Young at the 1990 Grammy Awards. (Photo: Alan Young.)
The year is 1987. Ronald Reagan is president, acid-washed jeans are in and Marvin Young is about to receive a very important phone call. The economics major, who had spent the summer recording music demos and shopping them around to labels, was back on the USC campus that fall. Young received a call in his dorm room from the label Delicious Vinyl and, suddenly, Young M.C. the rapper was on his way to stardom. His huge radio hit “Bust a Move” won him a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance in 1990.
Rob Cavallo’s teenage obsession with rock music compelled him to play, record and mix together all the instrumental parts for Beatles’ songs. It makes sense that, while an English student at USC Dornsife, he studied with T.C. Boyle, a rock musician turned novelist and professor.
After graduation, Cavallo went into the music business, signing the band Green Day in 1994. He called Boyle shortly after their first album’s release.
“I told him, ‘This is so much like your class,’” Cavallo said. “We’d talk about issues of the day, and we’d put them in the form of short stories. Now, we’re putting them in the form of rock songs.”
Cavallo won a Grammy for Producer of the Year in 1998 and since then has been nominated for nine more awards, winning two.
In 2010, Taylor Hackford received an Asa V. Call Alumni Achievement Award from USC. (Photo: Steve Cohn.)
The Oscar goes to …
Anthropologist Barbara Meyerhoff, founder of the USC Dornsife Center for Visual Anthropology, first made a splash with her book on the indigenous Huichol people. She was the first non-Huichol to travel with the tribe on an annual pilgrimage to their sacred site in the mountains of Central Mexico.
When she set out to study aging, however, she didn’t venture quite so far afield. She focused her research on a group of Jewish seniors in Venice, California, less than 15 miles from the USC campus where she’d taught since 1968. She and filmmaker Lynn Littmaker collaborated on a documentary, Number Our Days, a ground-breaking look at the domestic and religious experiences of this Jewish community. Their film won an Oscar in 1977.
After graduating from USC Dornsife with a degree in international relations, Taylor Hackford ’68 served a stint with the Peace Corps in Bolivia. While there, he learned about the power of film after making short instructional videos with a Super 8 camera.
Returning to L.A., he used his USC network to land a job in the mail room at a local PBS station. He worked his way up to creating documentaries. His short, Teenage Father, won an Academy Award in 1979. He’s since directed the acclaimed films An Officer and a Gentleman and Ray.
The Tony Award (nomination) goes to …
On May 5, 2009, Kristin Hanggi ’00 sat journaling in her apartment, listening to the Tony Award nominations roll in. When her musical Rock of Ages received a nomination for Best Musical, she could hardly contain her excitement.
“They said my name and suddenly, you see in my journal where my hand starts shaking,” said Hanggi.
Kristin Hanggi in 2009. (Photo: Pamela J. Johnson.)
After graduating from USC Dornsife’s Master of Professional Writing program with an emphasis in playwriting, Hanggi helped develop the burlesque troupe The Pussycat Dolls into a hugely successful production at the Roxy Theatre on the Sunset Strip.
There, surrounded by the rich musical history of Hollywood, Hanggi was inspired. She pitched the idea of a musical about ’80s rocker life on the Sunset Strip to producers, and they bit. Rock of Ages was nominated for five Tony Awards and ran for more than 2,300 performances on Broadway.