The Kennedy Center Honors are annual honors given to those in the performing arts for their lifetime of contributions to American culture. They have been presented annually since 1978, culminating each December in a gala celebrating five honorees in the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D.C. While the awards are primarily given to individuals, they have occasionally been given to couples or musical groups, as well as to one Broadway musical and one television show.
The 2006 honorees at the Kennedy Center on December 6, 2006, with President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush; from left, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Steven Spielberg, Dolly Parton, Zubin Mehta, Smokey Robinson, Vice President Dick Cheney and Second Lady Lynne Cheney.
2005 Kennedy Center Honorees Julie Harris, Robert Redford, Tina Turner, Suzanne Farrell and Tony Bennett with President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush, in the Blue Room at the White House, December 4, 2005.
The surviving members of Led Zeppelin were honored in 2012 and are pictured here with President Barack Obama.
President Joe Biden giving a speech to the 2021 honorees Justino Díaz, Lorne Michaels, Bette Midler, Berry Gordy, and Joni Mitchell.
Jessie Alice Tandy was an English-American actress. Tandy appeared in over 100 stage productions and had more than 60 roles in film and TV, receiving an Academy Award, four Tony Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. She won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for playing Blanche DuBois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, also winning for The Gin Game and Foxfire. Her films included Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, Cocoon, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Nobody's Fool. At 80, she became the oldest actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Driving Miss Daisy.
Tandy (left, with Kim Hunter and Marlon Brando) portrayed Blanche in the original 1947 Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire, a role that earned her the 1948 Tony Award for Best Actress.
Tandy in Alfred Hitchcock Presents "The Glass Eye" (1957)
Tandy and Hume Cronyn, 1988