| re: 1959 Tony Nominations | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 08:26 pm EDT 05/10/18 | |
| In reply to: re: 1959 Tony Nominations - BroadwayTonyJ 04:46 pm EDT 05/06/18 | |
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| I'm just not sure that Morrow's book is correct on this. I'm also not sure it's not correct. I don't know. But, FWIW, the Tonys site does not list nominations for the La Plume de ma Tante cast. In any case, we have two theoretically trustworthy sources giving us conflicting info. I don't especially trust either. I can't remember specifics, but I have a vague memory of posts here in the fairly distant past complaining of errors in Morrow, which I don't own. It seems to me quite possible that the Tonys would remove the nominations once they decided to instead give the whole cast a special award. The Tonys in 1959 were very different than they are now, which is one of the difficulties in researching this. There was much less media coverage, and shows didn't even advertise their nominations in the papers, at least not that I can find. Re Merrick: This was relatively early in his career. And if, as you say (and I agree), it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that the La Plume cast was not going to win in competition with performers from other shows, wouldn't Merrick have welcomed the special award in place of the nominations? And since shows didn't advertise nominations much, he wasn't going to advertise that nomination anyway. I can't find any ads for La Plume, Redhead or Flower Drum Song that mentioned their nominations. I haven't searched every day in the Times but I searched every day for a week after the nominations were announced. Nothing. And, sadly, the 1959 telecast is one that hasn't turned up, or at least the Paley Center doesn't have it. And after reading a review of it in Variety. I'm not even positive it would answer the question. The telecast was scheduled for only 45 minutes, and it ran a bit overtime, even though they rushed to get it done. In addition, CBS, telecasting it locally, screwed up in having the local newscaster — some guy named Walter Cronkite — announce four of the winners. The ceremony followed the 11 p.m. news. Anyway, I wonder if perhaps they didn't bother to announce the nominees, only the winners, because they were so pressed for time. But there may be no way to know at this point unless somebody somewhere has that year's Tonys preserved in some format. Re Douglas Turner Ward: Although he requested that his nomination be removed, as with George Rose the following year, his nomination remained in place. The Tonys people said that they had received both of those requests after the ballots were sent out, and there was nothing to be done. You can watch Cloris Leachman give that year's award starting at around at 1:11:30 in the linked video of the 1973-74 Tonys. She announced Ward as a nominee. Does Morrow say that Ward's nomination was removed? |
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| Link | 1974 Tonys |
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