The BEST year for the Tony's Ever! What do you think it is?

Well, 1958 gets an honorable mention due to the fact that people still debate over whether WEST SIDE STORY or THE MUSIC MAN deserved Best Musical.

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And INTO THE WOODS clearly should have won over POTO.

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Well, 1958 gets an honorable mention due to the fact that people still debate over whether WEST SIDE STORY or THE MUSIC MAN deserved Best Musical.

OK, I think I just puked a little: how did THE MUSIC MAN, that awful clunker, win over the masterpiece that is WEST SIDE STORY?

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How about 1960, where the nominees for Best Musical were Fiorello!, Gypsy, Once Upon a Mattess, The Sound of Music and Take Me Along. Fiorello! and The Sound of Music tied for Best Musical and Gypsy won ... not a single award.

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This is a hard one. 1960 is up there, but I'll mention a new year. The 1964 awards were quite interesting and exciting. That year the Best Musical category had Hello, Dolly!, Funny Girl, High Spirits, and She Loves Me. The best actess category consisted of Carol Channing, Barbra Streisand, Bea Lille, and Inga Swenson in 110 in the Shade. WOW! And we thought last year was a tough pick. Channing won for her Dolly. Bert Lahr won for his farewell to Broadway performance in Foxy.

"the year HAIRSPRAY won!! that was the bestest year EVER!!!"

Wasn't that when the Composers shared a HUGE kiss on stage? Now THAT was HOT!

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The best opening EVER was the 2004 Tony's. Hugh, the Jackettes, the Rockettes, the ensembles, all singing One Night Only. THE BEST EVER.

The year with the best performances I would say is 2002: Urinetown, Into the Woods, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Oklahoma, Mamma Mia!, and Sweet Smell of Success. Each and every performance was remarkable - no one was singled out as bad.

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As my mother would say, Fair, "What a waste." To which I always respond, "Not for the other guys!"

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The Best Opening that I remember is 1994 when Victor Garber sang "Those Were the Good Old Shows" and they weaved in numbers from SHE LOVES ME, CAROUSEL, GREASE, and DAMN YANKEES. That was fun.

Competitive year at the Tonys? How bout 2001??

Soooo many new musicals: The Producers, The Full Monty, Seussical, Jane Eyre, A Class Act, Tom Sawyer, and what am I forgetting?

Also, that 97-98 season had a LOT: The Lion King, Ragtime, Sideshow, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Capeman, Triumph of Love, Street Corner Symphony, and what am I missing?

2001? How was it a competitive year when The Producers won every single category and all the other shows besides The Full Monty were panned by the critics, ignored by audiences and flopped at the box office losing their entire investments. Half those shows had closed before the Tony Awards were even held that year and the couple that hadn't, closed within a week after the awards were given out? A TERRIBLE year for new shows, by any standard.

And similarly, your list of 1997 - 1998 contains only two shows that didn't flop financially. Only the first two ever turned a profit.

Sorry, if you're talking greatest seasons EVER, I don't see how you can include any season in the last ten or 15 when we only have maybe 20 - 25 new plays and musicals opening in the entire season and typically all but two or three of those flop. Go back a few decades and there were sometimes over a hundred new shows opening in a single year, with dozens of them turning a profit, including several bonafide hits.

Compare recent seasons to, say, the 1959 - 1960 season which included:

Gypsy
The Sound of Music (tied for the Best Musical Tony)
Fiorello! (tied for the Best Musical Tony and won the Pulitzer Prize)
Once Upon A Mattress (a huge hit starring Carol Burnett)
Take Me Along (A huge hit starring Jackie Gleason, Robert Morse and Walter Pidgeon)
Destry Rides Again (a hit starring Andy Griffith and Dolores Gray)
Greenwillow (a hit starring Anthony Perkins)
At The Drop of A Hat (a hit revue)

and those were just the musicals. The same season you had the hit plays

The Miracle Worker
A Raisin In The Sun
The Andersonville Trial
The Best Man
Toys In the Attic
The Tenth Man
Sweet Bird of Youth
Five Finger Exercise (with Jessica Tandy)
Silent Night, Lonely Night (with Henry Fonda)

Not to mention successful concerts by Harry Belafonte and Yves Montand. No season on Broadway in the last 25 years comes close to having had THAT many hit/critically acclaimed new shows open (and if you go back a decade or two before that, there are seasons far more impressive even than that).

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Updated On: 12/2/04 at 02:58 PM

Maybe someone should take away my BWW membership card, but I have NEVER watched the Tonys. I don't know why either, I always intend to, but just have never done it. Next time for sure!

Margo - I was going to mention the diva opening as well. That was my favorite that I have seen. I've never had a chance to see any of the 70s Tony broadcasts. Just for the record, Greenwillow was a flop. It ran 97 performances. It and Take Me Along were classified as flops in Not Since Carrie. Once Upon a Mattress transferred theatres three times and closed in 8 months. I really don't know much about At the Drop of a Hat other than it ran 7 months, but for a three-person review, it probably recouped and it's sequel, At the Drop of Another Hat (which cut the girl from the cast) closed after 4 months.

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