As we look ahead to the 77th Tony Awards—where shows about a 17-year-old girl growing up in 1990s New York and an Anglo-American rock band recording an album in 1970s California lead the field with 13 nominations each—we at Vogue are also taking a moment to look back.
Over its nearly 80-year history, the Tonys have yielded all sorts of wonderful moments, from thrilling performances to moving acceptance speeches. But the magic hasn’t only happened onstage: Since their first presentation in 1947, the Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Broadway Theatre have also had a way of attracting a very exciting crowd. Whether they got their start in the theater or made late-in-life Broadway debuts, the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, Julie Andrews, Maggie Smith, Diana Ross, Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Sarah Jessica Parker have all joined in on the Tonys fun—as nominees, presenters, hosts, or just devoted fans of the Great White Way.
So, in celebration of the recent Broadway season—and the many that came before it—we’ve gathered here 50 delightful old photographs from the first 50-odd years of the Tony Awards. Enjoy!
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Helen Hayes (at center) with members of South Pacific’s cast and creative team—director Joshua Logan, actor Myron McCormick, producer Leland Heyward, composer Richard Rodgers, and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II—at the 4th Tony Awards. (The production won 10 Tonys that year.)
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Tony winners Isabel Bigley (for Guys and Dolls), Tennessee Williams (for The Rose Tattoo), and Uta Hagen (for The Country Girl) at the 1951 ceremony, held at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
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Janet Leigh and her husband Tony Curtis at the 6th Tony Awards.
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Tony winners Audrey Hepburn (for Ondine), Dolores Grey (for Carnival in Flanders), and Jo Van Fleet (for The Trip to Bountiful) at the 1954 ceremony, held at the Plaza hotel. It was a big week for Hepburn: Just three days earlier, she’d won the best-actress Oscar for her turn in Roman Holiday.
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Anne Bancroft and Melvyn Douglas with their Tonys for The Miracle Worker and The Best Man, respectively. (Three years later, a film adaptation of The Miracle Worker would also win Bancroft an Oscar.)
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Show Girl star Carol Channing touching up her hair before the 1961 ceremony, where she was nominated for best leading actress in a musical. (Elizabeth Seal would win for Irma La Douce.)
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At the 1964 ceremony, Richard Burton—seen here with his then wife, Elizabeth Taylor, and Sammy Davis Jr.—was both a presenter and a nominee, for his leading role in Hamlet. (He would lose to Alec Guinness for his performance in Dylan, Sidney Michaels’s play about the final years of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s life.)
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Tony winners Zero Mostel (for Fiddler on the Roof) and Liza Minnelli (for Flora the Red Menace) at the 1965 ceremony, held at the Hotel Astor.
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Joanne Woodward and her husband, Paul Newman, at the 22nd Tony Awards, where they were both presenters
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Groucho Marx, Gregory Peck, and his wife Veronique Peck at a party for the 22nd Tony Awards at Sardi’s. (Both men were presenters that year.)
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Diahann Carroll—who, in 1962, became the first Black woman to win best leading actress in a musical at the Tonys (for No Strings)—was another presenter at the 1968 ceremony.
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James Earl Jones—a Tony winner in 1969 for his leading performance in The Great White Hope—with Lauren Bacall, who presented the award to him.
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Walter Matthau and Patricia Neal at the 24th Tony Awards, where Matthau was a co-host (along with Julie Andrews and Shirley MacLaine) and Neal was a presenter.
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Presenter Michael Caine and his wife Shakira Caine at the 24th Tony Awards.
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Presenters James Stewart and Cary Grant at the 1970 ceremony.
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Co-host Julie Andrews at the same ceremony. A two-time nominee at the time, for her performances in My Fair Lady (1957) and Camelot (1961), Andrews would receive a third nomination, for Victor/Victoria, in 1996—and make headlines when she publicly declined it.
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Ray Walston and Gwen Verdon performing at the 25th Tony Awards, held at the Palace Theatre.
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Ethel Merman performing at the 1972 ceremony, where she and Richard Rodgers also received Special Tony Awards.
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Presenter Joel Grey and co-host Henry Fonda at the 1972 ceremony.
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Neil Simon—whose black comedy The Prisoner of Second Avenue was up for best play in 1972—arriving at the Tonys. (It would lose in that category to David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones.)
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The Prisoner of Second Avenue director Mike Nichols, who won his fourth Tony for best director at the 1972 ceremony.
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Tony winners Julie Harris (for The Last of Mrs. Lincoln), Ben Vereen (for Pippin), and Glynis Johns (for A Little Night Music) at the 1973 ceremony, held at the Imperial Theatre.
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Presenter Elliott Gould and his wife Jennifer Bogart entering the Shubert Theatre for the 28th Tony Awards.
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Bette Midler and her then manager-slash-lover, Aaron Russo, at the 1974 Tonys after-party at Sardi’s.
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Tonys presenters (and The Mary Tyler Moore Show co-stars) Ed Asner and Cloris Leachman at the Sardi’s after-party.
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Maggie Smith at the 29th Tony Awards, where she was nominated for best performance by a leading actress in a play (for Private Lives).
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Ellen Burstyn, who won the 1975 Tony for best performance by a leading actress in a play (for Same Time, Next Year).
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Al Pacino and Diana Ross at the 31st Tony Awards, where Pacino won best performance by a leading actor in a play for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel. At the same ceremony, Ross received a Special Tony Award for her show An Evening with Diana Ross, which had run at the Palace Theatre for three weeks the previous summer.
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Susan Sarandon at the 33rd Tony Awards, held at the Shubert Theatre.
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Presenter Mia Farrow—who was then starring in Bernard Slade’s Romantic Comedy on Broadway, opposite Anthony Perkins—at the 34th Tony Awards.
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Blythe Danner—a Tony nominee in 1980 for Harold Pinter’s Betrayal—with her husband, Bruce Paltrow, and presenter Lynn Redgrave. (Phyllis Frelich would beat Danner that year for her tole in Children of a Lesser God.)
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Presenter Faye Dunaway heading into a Tonys party at the Hilton Hotel.
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Tony winners and Evita co-stars Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin at the 1980 ceremony. (Evita won seven Tonys that year, including one for best musical.)
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Bea Arthur at the 35th Tony Awards, held at the Mark Hellinger Theatre.
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Cher and her then boyfriend Val Kilmer at a Tonys after-party at the Waldorf-Astoria. Earlier in 1982, Cher had made her Broadway debut in Ed Graczyk’s Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, directed by Robert Altman. Altman’s film adaptation of the same play, also starring Cher, would come out that fall.
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Joan Fontaine attending a Tonys party at the Waldorf-Astoria.
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Tony nominees and My One and Only co-stars Twiggy and Tommy Tune at the 37th Tony Awards. While Twiggy was bested by Natalia Makarova (for her leading role in On Your Toes), Tune—a triple nominee in 1983—won both best performance by a leading actor in a musical and best choreography (along with Thommie Walsh).
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Andrew Lloyd Webber, accepting the Tony for best original score for his work on Cats.
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Tony winners and The Real Thing co-stars Christine Baranski, Glenn Close, and Jeremy Irons at the 38th Tony Awards, held at the Gershwin Theatre. (The Real Thing won five Tonys that year, including best play.)
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Tony winners George Rose (for The Mystery of Edwin Drood), Lily Tomlin (for The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe), Bernadette Peters (for Song and Dance), and Judd Hirsch (for I’m Not Rappaport) at the 1986 ceremony, held at the Minskoff Theatre.
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Tony winners and Me and My Girl co-stars Robert Lindsay and Maryann Plunkett at the 1987 ceremony, held at the Mark Hellinger Theatre.
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Former Dreamgirls castmates Terry Burrell, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Loretta Devine attending a Tonys party at the Hilton.
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Presenter Whoopi Goldberg at the 45th Tony Awards, held at the Minskoff Theatre.
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Sarah Jessica Parker with her future husband, Matthew Broderick, at the 47th Tony Awards, where Broderick was a presenter.
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Damn Yankees co-stars Victor Garber and Bebe Neuwirth at a pre-Tonys dinner at Sardi’s. The show was up for four Tonys that year, including best performance by a leading actor in a musical for Garber. (He would lose to Boyd Gaines, for his turn in She Loves Me.)
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Stephen Sondheim, posing with his Tony for best original score for Passion.
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A thoroughly theatrical promotional image for the 49th Tony Awards, starring co-hosts Glenn Close and Gregory Hines. (They would also be joined by Nathan Lane.)
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Audra McDonald, posing with her Tony for best performance by a featured actress in a play for Master Class. (This marked her second win of six—so far—over the course of her career.)
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Natasha Richardson, with her Tony for best performance by a leading actress in a musical for Cabaret.
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Phylicia Rashad and her daughter, Condola, making their way into the 53rd Tony Awards, held at the Gershwin Theatre.
