Singer-songwriter (and creator of the musical 9 to 5) Dolly Parton and two time Tony Award-nominated performer and choreographer Debbie Allen will receive honorary Academy Awards this year. They will receive their statuettes at the Academy鈥檚 16th Governors Awards this November.
Allen will be honored for her "indelible impact on screen," spanning nearly five decades as a choreographer, actor, and producer. Allen has choreographed the Academy Awards ceremony seven times, as well as films including Forget Paris, A Jazzman's Blues, and The Six Triple Eight. Her producing credits include Amistad and A Star for Rose. Allen also performed in Fame, Ragtime, and Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling, and is a Broadway alum of revivals of West Side Story and Sweet Charity. Allen will next direct and choreograph the Broadway-aimed Polly: The Musical, based on the Disney TV movie and Eleanor H. Porter's novel.
Parton will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for all the ways the prolific, history-making and record-breaking music artist has used her platform and power to create and contribute to several charities over the past seven decades. She has founded various organizations, including the Dollywood Foundation, which was created in 1988 to inspire the children of East Tennessee鈥� her home state鈥搕o achieve educational success. Additionally, since its launch in 1995, her literacy program Dolly Parton鈥檚 Imagination Library has provided children with 285 million books, evolving into an international movement. Parton is currently at work on her own bio-musical Dolly: A True Original Musical. The show is readying for an upcoming world premiere at Nashville, Tennessee's Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. The staging will begin performances July 18 ahead of an August 8 opening night, with the extended run to continue through August 31.
Also receiving honors will be actor Tom Cruise and production designer Wynn Thomas. For more information, click .
