Two popular musicians, an actor, a playwright and a ballerina are the latest recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors.
Tributes to country music's Johnny Cash and classic jazzman Benny Carter dominated Sunday's three-hour gala at the Kennedy Center Opera House, during which the 19th annual awards also went to Jack Lemmon, Edward Albee and Maria Tallchief.Carter's seven decades as a musician and pioneer in racial integration gave him the longest career of the five who were honored for lifetime achievement. Composer, arranger, performer and instrumentalist, he was also the first black to do musical scores in Hollywood and a major force in merging the old black and white musicians' unions.
At a pre-gala White House reception, President Clinton joked that his own performance on the saxophone had been called "amazing," as was Carter's. "But I don't think they meant it in quite the same way," he added.
The president got his own compliment at the gala from actor George Grizzard during a tribute to Albee.
"Edward Albee is the smartest man I know, and I've met four presidents," he said, adding gallantly: "Mr. President, I said that before I met you."
Clinton praised Albee, who has won three Pulitzer Prizes, as a man who inspired a whole generation of American dramatists.
For Cash, his daughter Rosanne came to sing two of his most popular numbers.
"This is for you, Dad," she said before launching into "I Walk The Line," his longtime signature song. She followed that with "I'll Fly Away."
In the tradition of the Kennedy Center Honors, the evening's main guests themselves said and did nothing but smile, bow and applaud from their seats next to the president's box.
For Tallchief, the 71-year-old prima ballerina, two young dancers - Margaret Tracey and Angel Corella - did some of the classical numbers that recalled her prime.
Lemmon, Harvard '47, got the salute of both the Hasty Pudding, the drama club he once headed, and the Harvard Glee Club. The Hasty Pudding crew celebrated his 55 films with a song-and-dance skit.