Andrea McArdle's 1977 Tony loss...

Thank you.

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The reality is that Andrea's lucky they didn't put HER in the featured category, since she was a child. That was the trend back then. Just look at Tatum O'Neal, who practically never left the screen in Paper Moon, but won Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars.

Initially child actors were given "special" awards. They weren't even competing in the major categories (see Judy Garland in Wizard of Oz, Shirley Temple, and Margaret O'Brien in Meet Me in St. Louis). Then they stopped giving the special awards, and child actors basically ended up with nothing. Then along came Patty Duke, who at 14 was the youngest Oscar-winner in a competitive category ever in 1962. Patty wasn't even nominated for a Tony Award at 12 for the same role (Helen Keller in Miracle Worker).

When Andrea McArdle got a Best Actress nomination, she was the youngest performer ever nominated in a leading category. I think she still holds the title (as far as leads go). So she was a "first." The typical situation would have been either not to nominate her at all, or push her into the featured category.

The other criteria with Tonys is billing. It still is. If you're given "star billing," you're in the leading category. If not, no matter how big the role, you're in the featured category. That's why people like Yul Brynner in the King & I, Barbara Cook in Music Man, and Isabel Bigley in Guys & Dolls all won "featured" awards for leading roles.

Producers have to petition a committee if they want actors to be considered in a different category, and they may or may not be accepted as such. Both McArdle and Loudon had star billing in Annie (so did Reid Shelton). So they were considered in the leading categories by default.

I also think the role of Miss Hannigan is pretty large for "featured." She has almost as much stage time as Annie. They did the right thing with leaving it all alone. And as a result, McArdle became the youngest ever nominated in a leading category. Still a great honor to this day.

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Miss Hannigan has nowhere near the amount of stage time that Annie does. While she's a big presence in the first act, she hardly appears in act two except for the Easy Street reprise and when she brings the orphans to the mansion at the end.

No one had star billing for Annie. They were all below the title.

And After Eight is correct, there was no official petitioning back then for category placement. Producers just had to encourage voters to put certain actors in certain categories. Which is how Jerry Orbach and Jill O'Hara were in the leading category for Promises Promises while in the same year William Daniels was infamously left in the featured group.

"No one had star billing for Annie. They were all below the title."

Wrong. They were star-billed regardless of their position on various advertising posters. Sometimes it was above, sometimes it was below. But it always said "starring Andrea McArdle, Dorothy Loudon, and Reid Shelton."

That's star billing.

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Updated On: 7/13/11 at 11:48 AM

Another example of strange tony category placement (and, arguably, theft): The great Blair Brown's win as a featured actress in Copenhagen, a highly intense two men/one woman hit play in which all three actors are continually on stage. You do the math. Brown's being in competition with, among others, Helen Stenborg's brief, charming turn in Waiting in the Wings was a joke.

And who can forget Rita Moreno's featured tony acceptance speech where she announced to the crowd, "Thank you but I am the leading lady of The Ritz."

When you say the system changed after 1969, how so? There was still no official system for petitioning by 1976 - Donna Mckechnie discusses in her book Michael Bennett's "political machinations" (her term) to have her put in the lead category.

Updated On: 7/13/11 at 06:24 PM

Ragtime billing. "Starring" roles being billed below the title. A petition was needed for Audra.

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That's from the Toronto run, specifically the picture is from the "concept" recording.

Why is it that this CD is never referred t as the Toronto cast recording? It was recorded a few month ahead of the official opening (so the CD release and opening would happen the same week) but does that make it just a "concept recording?" When I hear that phrase I think of albums like the original CHESS that went through many changes on the way to the stage. The Toronto RAGTIME disc has pretty much the score as heard on opening night. (One song was replaced by opening.)

As for using billing to determine Tony nominations, one more recent glaring example of this inequity was when Daisy Egan was nominated for THE SECRET GARDEN in the supporting role category. Her character is the show's leading role, yet she competed against and won over many fine performers who were truly in supporting roles. That caused quite a bit of comment at the time.

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