Donaldson Awards and Other Tony Precursors

[mshetina]

Posted: 6/17/10 at 5:11am

Recently Christine Johnson, who played Nettie in the original cast of Carousel, died. A couple of obituaries mistakenly noted that she was nominated for a Tony for the role, which is obviously untrue as Carousel predates the Tonys by two seasons. Someone suggested that she might have been cited for a Donaldson Award, an obscure honor that was later eclipsed by the Tonys. I was wondering if anyone knew more about the Donaldson Awards or pre-Tony theatre honors in general. Also, if anyone knows where I can obtain a list of Donaldson honorees, I'd appreciate it.

[fanof many]

Posted: 6/18/10 at 8:25am

I have googled and cannot come up with a specific list of winners- by googling, there are alot of mentions of those who received it- like Patricia Neal, Agnes DeMille, Brandon DeWilde, James Mitchell- but no actual list - I'll continue to try to come with a complete list- just thought of this- does your public library have older copies of "The Best Plays of..."-
seems like they may have them listed by year

[mshetina]

Posted: 6/23/10 at 7:56pm

My public library doesn't have it, but when I go back to school in the fall, I might be able to find some info there. I'll let you know if I find anything.

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 6/26/10 at 3:50pm

I have the Best Plays but I am not at home now. I will check on this when I get home.

I believe they started around the time OKLAHOMA! opened. If memory serves, they were awarded by Billboard Magazine and were more an industry award but in those days it was all Broadway had. When the ATW established the Tony Award in 1947, it quickly became the major Broadway award and the Donaldsons were dropped in the mid 1950s.

[mshetina]

Posted: 6/27/10 at 7:05am

Thanks, frontrowcentre.

[best12bars]

Posted: 6/27/10 at 9:04am

I knew about the Donaldson Awards as a predecessor, but was surprised to learn they only preceded the Tonys by a few years.

Were there no theatre/Broadway awards prior to the 1940s?

Aside from the Pulizter for writing, that is.

[mshetina]

Posted: 6/27/10 at 10:17am

The New York Drama Critics' Circle and Drama League Awards date back to 1935.

[best12bars]

Posted: 6/27/10 at 11:07am

I was thinking about industry awards (Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Grammy), rather than critics awards, but I guess that's all they had.

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 6/27/10 at 11:43pm

The Critics Circle didn't have a category for musical until 1945 when they gave the award to CAROUSEL.

Over the years they expanded to Best Play, best American Play (only if the Best Play is foreign), Best Musical, and as of 1963 with VIRGINIA WOOLF, a 4th category "Best regardless of category." I don't think a musical has ever won that award.

[WOSQ]

Posted: 6/28/10 at 11:42am

Variety used to poll the NY Drama Critics for their personal best-of the-season. These were done into the early 70s. The results were published in an issue as were the individual ballots of who chose whom.

This poll was done after the NY Drama Critics Circle awarded their Best Play and Musical prizes, but before the Tonys were awarded. Often, but not always, these awards were harbingers of who would win a Tony.

The winners were plurality winners and some were named Best in their categories with as few as 3 votes out of maybe 12-16. Ties were also allowed. On the other hand, some Poll winners were landslides. In 1965 both Zero Mostel and Alice Ghostley were the overwhelming winners with maybe three fourths of the votes in an open field. Voters could also cast half votes if they were of a split mind (which critics often are).

Some enterprising theatre trivia writer could go into the Variety library and seek out the winners and runners-up. While not worthy of a thesis, the data would be interesting to us.

[Paul W. Thompson]

Posted: 11/26/10 at 1:24pm

I think the Donaldson Awards were given from 1944-1955.

It has bothered me for years that there is no complete list of Donaldson Award winners (much less nominees) available. I have never seen one in a reference book, and there is nothing online. I tried to compile a list from isolated mentions once, but it had conflicts and overlaps and I gave up.

About 15 years ago I wrote to Billboard and inquired, and they seemed to have no idea what I was talking about.

I have not tried to use Billboard, Best Plays, the New York Times or other annual reference sources to compile a list, but if some student wants to take this on, verify it and make it formally available, I bet any theater school in the country would give you course credit! That was such a key time in American theater, it's clearly important data and it's a glaring gap in the permanent record!

[Paul W. Thompson]

Posted: 8/20/18 at 1:32pm

This seems very new on Wikipedia. God bless the person who found the complete winners list in a 1955 Billboard article and posted this!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaldson_Awards