Tony Walton
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| John Walton | |
|---|---|
| Born | Anthony John Walton 24 October 1934 Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Art director, set designer, costume designer |
| Spouse(s) | Julie Andrews (1959–1967, 1 child)[1] |
Tony Walton (born Anthony John Walton, 24 October 1934) is an English set and costume designer.
Walton was born in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England. He began his career in 1957 with the stage design for Noël Coward's Broadway production of Conversation Piece. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s he designed for the New York and London stage. He entered motion pictures as costume designer and visual consultant for Mary Poppins in 1964, for which he received an Oscar nomination.
His awards include an Oscar for All That Jazz in 1980 and an Emmy for the acclaimed 1985 TV version of Death of a Salesman. He has received many Oscar, Emmy and other nominations, including BAFTA nominations for costume and set design for Murder on the Orient Express in 1975 and Oscar nominations for both costume design and set direction/art direction for the motion picture version of The Wiz in 1979. The film's star, Diana Ross chose Walton to design the stage set for her landmark 1983 Central Park concert, "For One & For All". Broadcast worldwide on the Showtime cable network, the concert special, over the course of two days, featured an on-site audience of over 1,200,000 on the park's Great Lawn.
In December 2005, for their annual birthday celebration to 'The Master', The Noël Coward Society invited Walton as the guest celebrity to lay flowers in front of Coward's statue at New York's Gershwin Theatre, thereby commemorating the 106th birthday of Sir Noël.
Contents
Broadway productions and others
More recently, Walton has diversified into directing, with productions of:
- Orson Welles' Moby Dick—Rehearsed, 2005
- Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, 1996
- Noël Coward In Two Keys, 1996
- George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara, 1997
- Missing Footage, 1999
- Ooops! The Big Apple Circus Stage Show, 1999
- Where's Charley?, 2004
- After the Ball, 2004
- Busker Alley, 2006
Inspiration for Disney's Winnie the Pooh
Walton gave the Sherman Brothers the insight and inspiration for the Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree songs as is explained in the Sherman Brothers' joint autobiography, Walt's Time:
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Walt (Disney) said 'Read the Pooh stories and let me know what you think.' We tried, but the stories just weren't coming through to us. At that time designer Tony Walton was working on Poppins. He was English-born, and he was about our age, so we asked him to give us some insight on the Pooh character. His eyes lit up. 'Winnie the Pooh?', he said. 'I love Winnie the Pooh! Of course I'll help you!' Three hours later, he was still talking about Pooh, inspiring us no end. He explained how he had been a chubby little boy, and had felt very insecure. But Winnie the Pooh was his buddy, because Pooh was pudgy and proud of it. Pooh was probably the only character in the world who exercised to gain weight! Pooh was a wonderful, lovable friend who would never let you down or turn his back on you. Soon, we started to fall in love with Pooh ourselves. Our songs for Winnie the Pooh were truly a love affair, thanks to A.A. Milne and to Tony Walton.[2]
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Personal life
Walton married his childhood sweetheart Julie Andrews in 1959, and the two had a daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton. Walton has said that he fell in love with Andrews when they were in their early teens and he saw her playing the egg in a theatre production of Humpty Dumpty. They divorced in 1967 but still remain close friends. Walton married Gen LeRoy in 1991. Walton, Andrews and their daughter have worked several times together professionally. He has illustrated several children's books written by Andrews and their daughter.
References
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- ↑ Sherman, Robert B., Walt's Time: from before to beyond, 1998, p 68.
External links
- Tony Walton at the Internet Movie Database
- Tony Walton at the Internet Broadway DatabaseLua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- Tony Walton at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Yahoo! Movies profile of Tony Walton
- A Tale of Two Cities
- Profile for A Tale of Two Cities
- Tony Walton costume design reproductions for The Wiz, 1978., held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
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- EngvarB from August 2014
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- 1934 births
- Living people
- Best Art Direction Academy Award winners
- English scenic designers
- British costume designers
- Tony Award winners
- People from Walton-on-Thames
