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Screen Actors Guild National President Kathleen Nolan (left) presents the Life Achievement Award to Pearl Bailey on Sunday, Nov. 21, 1976, at the Hollywood Palladium. SAG FOUNDATION/GENE LESTER COLLECTION Snapshot by Valerie Yaros Screen Actors Guild Honors A RARE PEARL S he was taken by complete surprise: Pearl Bailey was a guest at the Screen Actors Guild annual meeting in 1976 when National President Kathleen Nolan began to describe the secret recipient of the Life Achievement Award — a woman of extraordinary accomplishments: "Our recipient has given freely of her time and talent all around the world. She has received the March of Dimes award of 1968 and the USO Woman of the Year award for 1969. During her visit to the Mideast in 1973-74, she received additional honors from the governments of Iran; King Hussein of Jordan gave her the Hussein Ben-Ali Freedom Medal. She was the first woman to have this medal bestowed on her; First Order of Arts and Science of Egypt, 1974, and Doctor of Arts from the Academy of Egypt, 1976. In September 1975, she went to London to help Vice President Nelson Rockefeller dedicate the U.S. Bicentennial Exhibit. On Nov. 24, 1975, she was appointed by President Gerald R. Ford as special advisor to the U.S. mission to the United Nations, a role which she feels will fulfill her desires to help all humanity. Her most recent trip abroad … was to the Middle East and Africa, including Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, Liberia, Senegal and the United Arab Emirates. Her purposes were to visit every hospital, orphanage, mentally retarded and handicapped institution … President Senghor of 92 SAG-AFTRA 92-93_Snapshot_v3.indd 92 Senegal presented her with a book of poetry inscribed 'I watch you with deep respect.'" President Nolan reviewed the recipient's acting career, beginning as a singer in the 1930s, to Broadway, feature films, television, starring in her own television series and noted that she had "entertained at the White House more often than any other performer except Bob Hope," another Life Achievement recipient. Bailey had no prepared notes, and spoke from her heart: "It's a funny thing in this world. We always have a question in our life, 'Why? Why?' And those you visit say very softly 'Why not? Why not?' And if you want to know why, why did I do what I've done … mine is the greatest profession. Each man takes his dreams as the greatest, but I would say to any man who ever lived, I think the theater has got to be, if not the greatest profession in the world, one of the greatest. But to me it is the greatest. Leave the theater? How can you leave the theater without leaving the earth? Shakespeare said 'All the world's a stage.' So I never left the theater to go into the U.N. I'm still on the stage. It's a larger arena. If wherever I walk I have made the footprints good, I have left my mark. It doesn't matter what a man decides I have to do, if God decides that there's another move for me, great, I'll move on. If not, I'll stay here to do my best." | Fall 2013 | SAGAFTRA.org 11/13/13 12:36 PM