What was the most shocking Tony Win/loss ever? — Page 4

Understood.

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How about Hinton Battle in Sophisticated Ladies?

What about The Scottsboro Boys not winning a single award?

I think it was suprising that The Scottsboro boys landed as many nominations as it did. They were worthy of them, no doubt, but it had closed in December. It hardly had a chance at all to actually win, since many voters didn't get the chance to see the show. (For the record, I was rooting for it!)

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Yero -- I hadn't heard that before (about the screening).

I highly suggest that even if many of them did attend a screening, it wouldn't have made any difference. A recording of live theater is not the same.

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I'm still surprised that AIDA wasn't even nominated in 2000.

But yes, WILL ROGERS FOLLIES besting MISS SAIGON, SECRET GARDEN, and ONCE ON THIS ISLAND is still surprising.

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"But yes, WILL ROGERS FOLLIES besting MISS SAIGON, SECRET GARDEN, and ONCE ON THIS ISLAND is still surprising."

Once On This Island is in my Top 20 of favorite musicals. But it was a sleeper hit and wasn't expected to win. It was a beautiful show but had no commercial appeal.

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Good thing Twyla is a mature artist.

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Will Rogers Follies was highly celebrated and praised at the time utilizing some major creative pedigrees, so that wasn't much of a surprise to me.

I'm still surprised that AIDA wasn't even nominated in 2000.

I saw the show and wasn't surprised in the least. The surprise was that its score won the Tony. The backlash over Contact seems to be that it was placed the Musical category, but it was the only choice the committee felt made sense at the time other than awarding it a special award or creating another category with no other potential nominees. I thought it was a brilliant piece and loved every second of it.

Contact's win was merely to encourage Susan Stroman's career. I see no other reason for it to have won Best Musical.

Except that the critical and popular response to the show was HUGE and is still the longest-running hit for the Beaumont.

Avenue Q winning was not a shock. It was the most highly praised musical of the season. The "campaign" at the time seemed more like a savvy marketing tool than anything influential with respect to the voters. And the touring argument is moot because it did tour. It went to Vegas first, and then it toured. I think the biggest shock (within the community, at least) that season was Menzel winning over Pinkins.

I think the one win that I still have never really understood was Ebersole winning for 42nd Street.

Bill T. Jones winning best choreography for Fela over Twyla Tharp for Come Fly Away. If I was Twyla I would have just walked out.

Really? Jones's choreography was quite brilliant, both stylistically and in its storytelling. Tharp created some lovely scenes, but it was mostly technical, lacking in emotion and narrative. To me, it was like watching a professional recital. I enjoyed it, but to me, it was all style and no substance.

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"It appears that I'm the only one on here old enough to recall the shock when FOLLIES lost Best Musical to Two Gentlemen of Verona in 1972 . . . after FOLLIES had won nearly every other Tony that evening. "

Nearly every other Tony that evening did not include best book for a musical. That's an important one. It was won by Two Gentlemen.

I also recall teh 1972 Tony Awards. It was my first time seeing the Tonys. I had only heard a little bit of FOLLIES on radio just the last part of "Live Laugh Love" with Ben's breakdown and it struck me as a the 12-year old musical theatre fan, as a powerful way to end a show - even though at that point I had no clue what had preceded it.

I was more interested in seeing segments of NO NO NANETTE (we had the record and I loved it); a tribute to Richard Rodgers (I had recently gotten David Ewen's biography of Rodgers from the library, and was coming out of a two year obsession with CAROUSEL), and especially seeing Ethel Merman recreating a dozen of her standards. I had made an audio tape of the telecast (long gone now) and from that time forwards I never missed a Tony broadcast.

I remember my Dad being surprised that after the multiple wins for FOLLIES it did not take Best Musical, but later when we got the full recordings of both FOLLIES and VERONA, i found much to enjoy in the former and very little that I liked in the latter. (I still rarely play TWO GENTLEMEN, even though I often use the exit music as a play-out on my weekly radio program. Mainly because it was written by Galt MacDermot and qualifies as "Canadian Content" and the Canadian Broadcast industry is committed to 40% Canadian content on all radio programs.)

I don't remember the news reports saying it was any kind of upset victory, but one writer did say that both shows were struggling at the box office and would likely close soon. FOLLIES lasted about another 4 months, but VERONA lasted slightly over a year after winning the Tony.

In retrospect, If FOLLIES had won Best musical I really doubt it would have extended its run substantially. The negative edge to that show distances audiences, and the parade of faded former stars didn't help since so many of them were reduced to mere cameos.

I think the following year when the battle was between PIPPIN and A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC more people were surprised at NIGHT MUSIC's win. For the next few years the winners were pretty much expected, often the only real contender in a given season: RAISIN, THE WIZ, CHORUS LINE, ANNIE, SWEENEY TODD, EVITA, 42ND STREET. Then came 1982 season with DREAMGIRLS and NINE. Predictions were split between the two shows but when NINE won for the its score, with DREAMGIRLS taking the award for its book it made the final award for Best Musical a nail-biter. In the end NINE won for Best Musical, and ran 729 performances, but DREAMGIRLS ran nearly twice as long: 1,521 p.

Broadway hit rock bottom in the mid 1990s... In 1994 there were only two (serious) contenders for best musical: PASSION and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. (The other two nominated musicals had long since closed.) PASSION's win upset Disney fans and there was talk of the Broadway community rejecting Disney's presence. Conspiracy theories are always fun, but to me it seemed the voters were rewarding a show that was trying to do something different with the the form over the flashy spectacle that merely re-created the animated film on stage. (The voters went in the opposite direction 4 years later giving Best musical to LION KING over RAGTIME.) In the end Disney won by not winning and BEAUTY was sell-out smash hit for many years. PASSION's dark take of obsessive love faded to black in 9 months.

The following year was an embarrassment. SUNSET BLVD wan by acclamation... there was no other new book musical to compete. The only other nominee for Best musical was the revue SMOKEY JOE'S CAFE. Even worse was 2000 when the award for "best Musical" was given to CONTACT - which as others have mentioned no only lacked an original score but also did not use live musicians/singers. There was not any heavy duty competition... JAMES JOYCE's THE DEAD was long gone and AIDA was not nominated and had received a very mixed reaction. (There was some controversy when Elton John won for Best Score but refused to attend the Tony Awards to claim it. HE was reportedly miffed that the show had been overlooked as a nominee for Best Musical.)

I am rarely shocked by the winners, but sometimes surprised. That's one reason I continue to watch.

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One I haven't seen mentioned was Marissa Jaret Winokur from Hairspray winning over Bernadette Peters from Gypsy. I don't want this to devolve into another argument of Peters devotees vs Hairspray fans. We all know the history. We all know that when some people attended Gypsy they saw that same ferocious performance we got on Tony night and some people did not. I'm just wondering if Bernadette's loss was read as "shocking" by those at Radio City and in the theatre community or if Winokur was always the frontrunner.

I recall watching it at home being absolutely floored that Peters didn't win. It seems the producers thought Peters would win. Otherwise, it was a cruel (or thoughtless?) joke on their part to have Peters perform one of the greatest musical theatre numbers of all time right before the award was announced. That must have been a bit awkward for Winokur.

Was this one a shocker?