[NEW SERIES] HAL BATES WITH LESLIE UGGAMS AND CHEETAH

Of course, it may be a leopard :) Apparently at some art gallery. That handler looks wary. Location unknown, date unknown.

Leslie Uggams (born May 25, 1943 in New York City, New York) is an American actress and singer, known for her work in Hallelujah, Baby! and as Kizzy Reynolds in the 1977 television miniseries Roots.

She appeared in her own television variety show, The Leslie Uggams Show in 1969. This was the "first network variety show to feature an African-American host since the mid-1950s Nat "King" Cole Show." She had a lead role in the 1977 miniseries Roots, for which she received an Emmy nomination, as Kizzy. In 1979, she starred as Lillian Rogers Parks in Backstairs at the White House, a miniseries for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Actress. She also made guest appearances on such television programs as Hollywood Squares, Fantasy, The Muppet Show, and Magnum, P.I.. In 1996, Uggams played the role of Rose Keefer on All My Children. Uggams starred in the 1975 film Poor Pretty Eddie, 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.

Uggams was picked to star in Hallelujah, Baby! after Lena Horne declined the role of Georgina. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1967 and "created a new star" in Uggams. She won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a musical (in a tie with Patricia Routledge). She appeared on Broadway in the revue Blues in the Night in 1982 and in the musical revue of the works of Jerry Herman, Jerry's Girls in 1985. Uggams replaced Patti LuPone as Reno Sweeney in the Lincoln Center revival of Cole Porter's musical Anything Goes on Broadway in March 1989. She had played Reno in a US tour in 1988-1989. Later Broadway roles include Muzzy in Thoroughly Modern Millie (2003 - 2004) and Ethel Thayer in On Golden Pond at the Kennedy Center in 2004 and on Broadway at the Cort Theatre in 2005. In 2001 she appeared in the August Wilson play King Hedley II, receiving a nomination for the Tony Award, Best Actress in a Play. In January 2009, Uggams played Lena Horne in a production of the stage musical Stormy Weather at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. In June 2012, Uggams played Muzzy in a production of "Thorougly Modern Millie" at The Muny in Saint Louis, Missouri.