 Mr. Ray Charles, Ms. Jessica Tandy, Mr. Yehendi Menouin, Mr. Anthony Tudor, ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and Mrs. Yehendi. Please be seated and good evening and welcome to the White House. Tonight we gather in this grand old house to pay tribute to six men and women to whom we Americans and indeed millions around the world find ourselves deeply in debt. Others in the life of our nation have seen to our material needs, built our roads, constructed our cities, given us our daily bread. Still others have seen to the life of the mind, founding our universities and expanding knowledge in every field. But these six, these six are artists and as such they've performed a different and singular task to cedar the deepest needs of the heart. As a young man, Anthony Tudor began a London career as a clerk in a real estate firm. Then in 1928, at the age of 19, Mr. Tudor attended ballet staged by the great Russian impresario, Diaghilev, and saw Annapavlova perform. Within weeks, Mr. Tudor had presented himself to Marie Rambeir, a noted instructor to begin his life in dance. That life in dance has now amounted to nearly six decades, six decades that ranked Mr. Tudor with George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton as one of those who brought ballet forward, made it modern, a part of our own idiom and time. In dealing with themes once thought unsuitable for dance, in extending the classical ballet vocabulary into new modes, Mr. Tudor has expanded the possibilities of ballet itself, giving this magnificent medium new relevance, new vibrancy, and new life. Anthony Tudor, on behalf of those who love ballet the world over, I give you our thanks. 59 years have passed since an 11-year-old boy holding a violin, walked a center stage, and electrified a New York audience with his performance. The Times wrote of Yehudi Menuhin the next morning, it seems ridiculous to say that he showed a mature conception of Beethoven's concerto, but that is the fact. And believe me, Mr. Menuhin, I know from experience that good notices don't come that easily from the New York Times. Beginning in the late 1930s, Yehudi Menuhin appeared a soloist with conductors whose names today resound with greatness, Toscanini, Stokowski, Kosovitsky, Beecham. During World War II, Mr. Menuhin gave more than 500 concerts, including performances on ships and hospitals and camps. In more recent years, he has founded and directed musical festivals in Switzerland and England. And throughout his career, Mr. Menuhin has expanded the violin repertoire by reviving neglected scores and introducing works by composers such as Bartok, Block, and William Walton. Intensely interested in literature, architecture, and a host of other fields, Mr. Menuhin has written, May we become better violinists, scientists, artists, writers, and above all, better human beings by enlarging and enriching our personal needs to include each other. Yehudi Menuhin, for all that you've given to the world as a musician and a man, I thank you. When you mention Hume Cronin and Jessica Tandy, director Mike Nichols has written, you are not talking about limousines, black-tie dinners, or star-studded openings. You're talking about sweating under lights, drilling words long into the night, turning up for every performance, every rehearsal, anywhere, always. In honoring Mr. Cronin and Ms. Tandy, we celebrate two separate lifetimes of achievement. We think of Mr. Cronin in plays like High Tor and films like Hitchcock's classic Shadow of a Doubt. We remember Ms. Tandy's countless performances, including her Ophelia, opposite Gilgood in his historic Hamlet, and, of course, her magnificent, heart-stopping Blanche Dubois opposite Marlon Brando in a streetcar named Desire. But we celebrate as well a theatrical partnership from their 1951 performances together in the four-poster to the gin game in the late 1970s to the new Steven Spielberg film that the Cronins began filming this autumn, asked how they could keep it up, how they could both live and work together, Ms. Tandy answered, we're safe. I can't play him and he can't play me. And through it all, the Cronins have shown such utter dedication to the theater, such total absorbing professionalism, again in the words of one who knows them well, they never stop working, they never leave anything to chance. Hume Cronin, Jessica Tandy for these many decades, during which you've worked so hard to give the gifts of enlightenment and pleasure, we thank you. Ray Charles Robinson was born into a south scarred by segregation. By age eight, Ray Charles was blind. By his mid-teens, he was an orphan. By age 50, he would be forced to free himself from an addiction to drugs. But there has always been something in him that could not be held down, something that finds life-giving beauty and rhythm and melody and tone. Today, Ray Charles is known the world over for his infusion of gospel fervor into rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and for the quality, the sheer, lilting, rolling musical quality of his singing. One hit alone, Georgia on my mind, has sold over three million copies. And Ray, I don't mind telling you that your version of America the Beautiful has brought a tear or two to my eyes. The important thing in jazz, Mr. Charles has said, is to feel your music, but really feel it and believe it. Ray Charles, in giving of yourself so completely to your music, you've given of yourself to us, and we thank you. When the first can of film arrived from California, it was taken by messenger from the airport to the offices of an advertising agency in Manhattan. An advertising executive, his friend, lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, and the chairman of Philip Morris entered the screening room together. And then the lights went down and the pilot film began. When it was over, Oscar Hammerstein gave his advice. By the show, it's a winner and that actress is terrific. And the name of that program was, I Love Lucy. In childhood, Lucille Ball loved going to vaudeville shows and movies, then re-enacting the performances she had just seen. At 15, she left upstate New York to enroll in a drama school in New York City. But compared to the star pupil, Miss Ball felt, in her own words, terrified and useless, so she went back home to high school. By the way, that star pupil happened to be named Betty Davis. In time, Miss Ball returned to Broadway, worked as a soda jerk, got bit parts, then landed a job as the Chesterfield cigarette girl that led to her selection for a bit part of the 1933 Eddie Cantor film, Roman Scandals. For the next decade and a half, Miss Ball learned her craft, appearing in more than 30 films. And then came, I Love Lucy. When it went on the air in 1951, I Love Lucy became the number one show within six months. It says something about the show's hold on the country, that on the occasion of little Ricky's birth, more people turned on I Love Lucy than watched the inauguration of Dwight Eisenhower. And I know that Miss Ball would want us to pay tribute tonight to the man who produced I Love Lucy and starred in it with her. One man who meant so much to Lucy and all of us, the late Desi Arnaz. I Love Lucy was followed by more movies, including the 1974 production of Mame, and by three more television shows, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy, and This Year's Life with Lucy. It's no secret that Lucy is a friend of Nancy's in mind, and as far as I'm concerned, this red-headed bundle of energy is perhaps the finest comedian of our time. If I seem to get carried away, you'll have to excuse me. You see, after all these years, just like every American and millions more around the world, I still love Lucy. Perhaps it's the preeminent work of the artist to speak to us about reality. For true art is never created out of nothing. It's already there, just unseen and unappreciated, waiting for the craft of the artist to show it to us. We walk from place to place unthinkingly, then we see the beauty of a dancer upon a stage, and we never look at the human form in quite the same way again. Even the everyday routine of family life contains immense drama and humor, and in watching a program like the one we've been talking about, I Love Lucy, for a moment we can all enjoy it together. Lucille Ball, Ray Charles, Hume Cronin and Jessica Tandy, Yehudi Menuhin and Anthony Tudor, to all of you, we give this evening, this night of honor. It's the least we can do after all that each of you has given to each of us. God bless you.