Why was no Tony Award given for Best Actor and Actress in a Musical for 1985?

[MTVMANN]

Posted: 6/14/09 at 8:03pm

I was doing some Tony Award research on Wikipedia and I see that there were no award winners for Best Actor or Best Actress in a Musical for 1985.
I NEVER knew this...why was no award given?

My guess would be that there were so few NEW musicals eligible that year that there weren't enough people to be considered or nominate.
I see that Mary Beth Peil was nominated for featured actress for "The King and I" and she was obviously playing a leading role as Anna.
However, I do remember that years later when Glenn Close won for "Sunset Boulevard" the only other actress nominated against her was Rebecca Luker in "Show Boat".

[phantomvegas2]

Posted: 6/14/09 at 8:32pm

Pretty sure Ashton Kutcher was the only one up for it that year . . . .

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 6/14/09 at 8:40pm

There were seven musicals up during the 1984-85 season. Seven.

Two of them were revivals (THE KING AND I and TAKE ME ALONG), and of the five originals, the only one that wasn't a gigantic flop was BIG RIVER.

There were only three nominees for Best Original Score. Three of the four nominees for Best Featured Actor in a Musical were from BIG RIVER. Leilani Jones, an actress from GRIND (part of Hal Prince's slump period), won Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

There was NOTHING. Absolutely NOTHING. Most likely, that's your reason.

Updated On: 6/14/09 at 08:40 PM

[Gothampc]

Posted: 6/14/09 at 8:51pm

My guess is that they didn't have enough actresses to create a Leading Actress category. There were no leading actresses in Big River, Quilters, or Grind. Daniel Jenkins (Huck) and Ron Richardson (Jim) of Big River could have been bumped up to Best Actor category but I don't think there were enough actresses for the category so they scrapped the Leading category and Jenkins and Richardson were bumped to Featured.

[TheatreFreak05]

Posted: 6/14/09 at 8:52pm

Quilters was on Broadway??? I love that show!!

[fgreene1938]

Posted: 6/14/09 at 8:54pm

That is so true. Although there were four nominees for best musical in '85, they were such a lackluster bunch that "Big River" was barely considered worthy at the time (the very good BW revival in 2004 corrected this estimate somewhat). Also, in those days there were so few revivals that plays and musicals fell under one category, and that year ALL of the nominees were plays. There just wasn't much of anything there for best actress / actor in '85.

Check out '89 as well. That year there were no nominees for best original score, a similar situation.

[caitlinette]

Posted: 6/15/09 at 1:36am

Quilters made it all the way to Broadway? I didn't know that.

[uncageg]

Posted: 6/15/09 at 1:43am

Quilters made it to Broadway after its world premiere at the DCTC (Denver Center Theater Company). They brought it back to the DCTC where it is now playing through June and the beginning of July. A wonderful production. I saw it 2 weeks ago.