Tony Walton
Anthony John Walton is an English set and costume designer.
He has received many Tony, Oscar, Emmy and BAFTA nominations for his work as both a costume designer and as a set designer. For his work in the theatre he has won 3 Tony Awards for Pippin, House of Blue Leaves, and Guys and Dolls. He received Academy Award nominations for his work in film for Mary Poppins, Murder on the Orient Express, and The Wiz, winning for All That Jazz. He won an Emmy for his work in television for the acclaimed 1985 TV version of Death of a Salesman.
Early life
Walton was born in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England on 24 October 1934. His father was a surgeon.Walton attended Radley College in Oxford where he studied Greek and Latin before attending the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He spent two years of mandatory military training with the Royal Air Force, as a trainee pilot in Ontario, Canada.
Career
He began his career in 1957 with the stage design for Noël Coward's Broadway production of Conversation Piece. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, he designed for the New York and London stage.In 2019, on The Graham Norton Show, Julie Andrews mentioned how Walton, her first husband, entered the motion pictures business through Walt Disney, after Disney met her back stage after a performance of Camelot. Disney offered to look at his portfolio and later ended up hiring Walton as a costume designer, set designer, and visual consultant for Mary Poppins, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Production Design.
In 1979, Walton won his first and only Academy Award for his work as a Production Designer on Bob Fosse's acclaimed musical film All That Jazz.
In 1983, Diana Ross, the star of the film The Wiz, chose Walton to design the stage set for her landmark 1983 Central Park concert, "For One & For All". Broadcast worldwide on the Showtime cable network, the concert special, over the course of two days, featured an on-site audience of over 1,200,000 on the park's Great Lawn.
In 1989, the American Museum of the Moving Image showcased over 30 years of his work for films, television and theater in an exhibit entitled: Tony Walton: Designing for Stage and Screen, including drawings, models and photographs from his early plays including the Regency-style Conversation Piece from 1957 and "his evocation of a London street" for the 1964 film Mary Poppins.
In December 2005, for their annual birthday celebration to 'The Master', The Noël Coward Society invited Walton as the guest celebrity to lay flowers in front of Coward's statue at New York's Gershwin Theatre, thereby commemorating the 106th birthday of Sir Noël.
Inspiration for Disney's ''Winnie the Pooh''
Walton gave the Sherman Brothers the insight and inspiration for the Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree songs as is explained in the Sherman Brothers' joint autobiography, Walt's Time:Personal life
Walton married his childhood sweetheart Julie Andrews in 1959, and the two had a daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton. Walton has said that he fell in love with Andrews when they were in their early teens and he saw her playing the egg in a theatre production of Humpty Dumpty. They divorced in 1967 but still remain close friends.Walton married Gen LeRoy in 1991. Walton, Andrews and their daughter have worked several times together professionally. He has illustrated several children's books written by Andrews and their daughter.
Broadway productions and others
| Year | Production | Notes |
| 1961 | Once There Was a Russian | |
| 1962 | A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum | |
| 1963 | The Rehearsal | |
| 1964 | Golden Boy | |
| 1967 | The Apple Tree | Nominated, Tony Award for Best Costume Design |
| 1972 | Pippin | Tony Award for Best Scenic Design, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design |
| 1973 | Shelter | Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design |
| 1975 | Chicago | |
| 1980 | A Day in Hollywood / A Night in the Ukraine | |
| 1981 | Sophisticated Ladies | |
| 1984 | The Real Thing | |
| 1984 | Hurlyburly | |
| 1985 | I'm Not Rappaport | |
| 1986 | House of Blue Leaves | Tony Award for Best Scenic Design, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design |
| 1986 | The Front Page | |
| 1986 | Social Security | Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design |
| 1987 | Anything Goes | |
| 1989 | Grand Hotel | |
| 1990 | Six Degrees of Separation | |
| 1991 | The Will Rogers Follies | |
| 1992 | Death and the Maiden | |
| 1992 | Conversations with My Father | |
| 1992 | Four Baboons Adoring the Sun | |
| 1992 | Guys and Dolls | Tony Award for Best Scenic Design, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design |
| 1992 | Tommy Tune Tonight | |
| 1993 | She Loves Me | |
| 1993 | A Grand Night for Singing | |
| 1993 | Laughter on the 23rd Floor | |
| 1994 | Picnic | |
| 1994 | A Christmas Carol | |
| 1995 | Busker Alley | as Designer |
| 1995 | Company | |
| 1995 | Moonlight | |
| 1996 | A Fair Country | |
| 1996 | A Fair Country | |
| 1996 | A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum | |
| 1996 | The Shawl | |
| 1996 | The Shawl | |
| 1997 | Steel Pier | Nominated, Tony Award for Best Scenic Design, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design |
| 1997 | King David | |
| 1997 | 1776 | |
| 1998 | The Cripple of Inishmaan | |
| 1999 | Annie Get Your Gun | |
| 2000 | On Raftery's Hill | |
| 2000 | Uncle Vanya | Nominated, Tony Award for Best Scenic Design, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design |
| 2000 | The Man Who Came to Dinner | |
| 2000 | Taller Than a Dwarf | |
| 2002 | Our Town | |
| 2003 | Nobody Don't Like Yogi | |
| 2003 | The Boy Friend | |
| 2005 | The Boy Friend | National Tour |
| 2006 | Well | |
| 2007 | The Sleeping Beauty | ABT, Metropolitan Opera |
| 2007 | A Tale of Two Cities | Sets directly transferred for Broadway premiere 2008 |
More recently, Walton has diversified into directing, with productions of:
- Orson Welles' Moby Dick—Rehearsed, 2005
- Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, 1996
- Noël Coward In Two Keys, 1996
- George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara, 1997
- Missing Footage, 1999
- Ooops! The Big Apple Circus Stage Show, 1999
- Where's Charley?, 2004
- After the Ball, 2004
- Busker Alley, 2006
Awards and Nominations