Tony Comes of Age

Broadway Producer Alexander Cohen, 46, loves a good bash. Once he staged a carnival in the heart of the theater district and invited half of the Eastern seaboard. "I figure," he says, "why take your wife to dinner when you can just as easily have 40 guests?"

Or why sit through Broadway's annual Tony awards, which, since their inception in 1947, have been staged with all the glitter and glamour of a church supper. "Broadway deserves better," Cohen decided, and seven months ago he bought the rights to produce this year's awards show, then wooed American Airlines into sponsoring the event on network TV. Last week the new Tony--poised, polished, brimming with talent--arrived at Manhattan's Shubert Theater and, in one swinging sweep, made Emmy and Oscar look merely like tired vaudevillians.

Belt-'em-Out. Super Showman Cohen did not miss a schtick. Searchlights raked the sky; a 25-piece band blared Give My Regards to Broadway. Limousines glided up to the theater on 800 sq. yds. of red carpeting. Unlike the Emmy and Oscar awards, which grind on endlessly, honoring the best stunt man to fall off a burning building in a foreign independently produced black-andwhite wide-screen musical comedy, the $450,000 Tony spectacular restricted the on-camera awards to just twelve categories, devoted the rest of the time to full-dress performances from the four best-musical nominees.

High-stepping Joel Grey led a line of go-go garter girls in a production number from Cabaret which, by TV standards, deserved the top Nielsen rating for naughtiness. Barbara Harris, star of The Apple Tree, sparkled as the scullery maid-turned-balloon-breasted vamp. Co-Hosts Mary Martin and Robert Preston harmonized about marital disharmony in a scene from I Do! I Do!; pint-sized Norman Wisdom sang the razzmatazz title song from Walking Happy. It was Broadway at its belt-'em-out best, a show with pace, style, wit, suspense, and the kind of well-practiced polish that makes all the slapdash TV spectaculars look tawdry by comparison.

Sweepstakes Winner. Top honors for the evening went to Cabaret, which corraled eight Tonys. Among the winners:

Best Musical: Cabaret Best Dramatic Play: The Homecoming Best Actress in a Broadway Musical: Barbara Harris Best Actor in a Musical: Robert Preston Best Actress in a Dramatic Play: Beryl Reid in The Killing of Sister George Best Actor in a Dramatic Play: Paul Rogers in The Homecoming

The show itself, aired on ABC-TV, won the ratings sweepstakes over NBC's Bonanza and CBS's The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. More important, as Cohen happily pointed out, "virtually every play in town reported a healthy spurt at the box office." Daily ticket sales for The Homecoming, produced by Cohen, which averaged $3,500 since the play opened three months ago, reached $10,000 the day after the Tony awards.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.