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Okay, this year the board has selected a truly exceptional class of honorees. I mean, really exceptional. First is country music star actor and producer George Strait. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Great, over an extraordinary four decade career, George has sold more than 120 million records worldwide. Amass 60 number one hits, wow. And produced 33 platinum certified albums more than any other living American. That is amazing. He's believed by millions of people to just be as good as you can get. And he's beloved by hundreds of millions of people all over the world. He's really something and they call him the king of country and we know him very well, George Strait. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Thank you, peace. And it looks nice, you're a good looking guy. I hope he still looks like that. >> [LAUGH] >> Second is actor, singer, philanthropist and star of the Broadway stage, one of my favorite talents. I think he's one of the greatest talents I've ever actually seen. I've always said, and just so we don't get in trouble, I'll say among, but among the greatest artists in the world are the Broadway London actors back and forth, that's all they want to do is they want to do Broadway and they want to do London. They want to do eight shows a week, including Matinee on Wednesday. And if you said make a movie, they can't even think about it. If you say go on television, they don't want it at all. They want to do is be on the stage, the live stage, and it's amazing. But I've always said that the most talented people, and this man may be the most of all, Michael Crawford is being honored. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Michael was born in England in 1942. He made his Broadway debut in 1967. I was there. I shouldn't say that, but I was there. Seems like a long time ago. And he became an international sensation in the 1980s for his original portrayal of the Phantom of the Opera, one of the greatest ever, ever, ever, ever. You don't see him like that very often. Winning him the Esteem Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He's won so many awards. Michael is truly a generational talent, had a voice that was unbelievable. It was unbelievable, this never, I don't know, it's Luciano Pavarotti had a very different voice, the power was incredible, magnificent. Michael had a different kind of a voice, these are just unbelievable talents. But Michael is very special and one of the greatest roles in the history of Broadway. And nobody did it like him, Michael Crawford, thank you very much. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Next, we look forward to honoring three-time Oscar nominee Golden Globe Award winner and action movie icon and a friend of mine, very unique man. He's somebody that doesn't do these things. I said, I wonder if he'll accept, because some people don't really wanna be honored. They don't care, but he was very honored to be honored, I will tell you. He was, he's a very special guy. A real talent, never been given the credit for the talent. There was nobody else could have done the roles that he did like he did. I'm not even close and they've tried and they didn't work out too well. His name is Sylvester Stallone. >> [APPLAUSE] >> So it's very few, almost if any. People that could have taken a name and made it so incredible like Rocky, Rambo, Creed, and others. But think of it, Rocky, Rambo, if you did one, you're good, you do two. And I'll never forget, I was a young guy and I went to see a thing called Rambo. And it had just come out, I didn't know anything about it. But I got, I was in a movie theater, like we used to go to movie theaters a lot. And I said, this movie is phenomenal, what the heck? And that turned out to be a monster, Rocky is Rocky. I mean, the way that happened, Sly had no money, nothing. And he went around and everybody wants to do a boxing movie. It's the most, probably more than any other type of character, boxing. Boxing, always boxing, it's so great. And there's rarely been anything like this one. John Voight did a great one, as you know, champ, great. I think that was right there too. John Voight's a phenomenal person, phenomenal actor. But Sly came in and he had no money. He wrote a script along with thousands of other people writing scripts on a boxer. And for some reason, a studio picked up this and liked it. And Sly had, he's in an old car that he came in from Brooklyn or someplace in New York, but I think Brooklyn had barely made it to California. He was sleeping in the car, I mean, he had nothing. And he wanted control over who the actor was gonna be. Because he said he can't be successful if you're gonna pick a movie actor with a bad build, okay, a nice face but a bad body. And he said, I can't have these guys cuz he's a tough cookie and he knew exactly what it took. He knew what a boxer's body was. So they brought him one and I won't tell you who it was, but it was a big name. But the chest wasn't exactly what you need. One shot and your heart would pop out. That wasn't too good. Then he did another one, he was fat, sloppy, but had a good face. Then he did another one and another one and another one. And he turned it down, he wouldn't take $1 million, he wouldn't do it. And it turned out that when they saw him, they said, you know, you'd be actually pretty good for this role. And he had never done this before, anything like it. But think of it, he turned down a million dollars, he had nothing. He refused to let somebody else play, he didn't wanna play it. He wasn't originally, he did it as a writer. But he ended up playing it because he couldn't find anybody else that fit the role. And who knew what would have happened? He's become a legend of the silver screen, a true legend, and he's a great guy. He's a little bit tough, a little bit different, I will tell you. He's a little tough guy, but he's a phenomenal person with a phenomenal wife and family, incredible wife, incredible family. His films grossing more than 7.5 billion, which is either a record or very close to it. I can't imagine anybody doing more. If you add up Rambo and Rocky and these others, I can't imagine anybody doing much more. 7.5 billion worldwide over the course of six decades. And Sly is a pillar of the really American pop culture and a Hollywood superstar, like few others. And one of the biggest names on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In fact, the only one that's a bigger name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, they say is a guy named Donald Trump. I'm on the Hollywood Walk of Fame too, if you can believe that one. But he's amazing, he's really amazing, and he's actually a great actor. Fourth will be together celebrating one of the most revered singers of the American disco era, Gloria Gaynor. Best known for her chart-topping 1978 hit, I Will Survive, Gloria won the 1980 Grammy for best disco recording. And her song was inducted into the National Recording Registry in 2016. Four decades later, Gloria won a second Grammy in 2020 for her gospel album Testimony, which is incredible. Truly a historic achievement, not only in terms of the years that have gone by to be great that long, but to have the two top of anything in that span of time. And with that kind of period between is pretty amazing. But I will say that I Will Survive is an unbelievable song. I've heard it, you know, like everyone else here thousands of times. And it's one of those few that get better every time you hear it.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.