Pearl Bailey became one of America’s most versatile entertainers, moving from vaudeville to Broadway, television, and film. She won a Donaldson Award for her 1946 Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman, voiced Big Mama in Disney’s The Fox and the Hound (1981), and earned honors including a Daytime Emmy and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1985, she became the first Black actor to receive the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.