26th Tony Awards - The Ceremony

The Ceremony

Presenters were Richard Benjamin, Ingrid Bergman, Claire Bloom, Arlene Dahl, Sandy Duncan, Peter Falk, Lee Grant, Joel Grey, Arthur Hill, Hal Holbrook, Jean Stapleton, and Gwen Verdon.

Performers were Desi Arnaz, Janet Blair, Larry Blyden, Alfred Drake, Helen Gallagher, Lisa Kirk, Hal Linden, Barbara McNair, Ethel Merman, and Constance Towers.

Musicals represented:

  • Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death ("Put a Curse on You" - Company)
  • Jesus Christ Superstar (Medley - Jeff Fenholt, Yvonne Elliman and Company)
  • No, No, Nanette ("You Can Dance With Any Girl" - Helen Gallagher and Bobby Van / "I Want to Be Happy" - Ruby Keeler and Company)

Special Tony Awards were presented to Ethel Merman and Richard Rodgers. For Rodgers, there was a medley from his works, from Garrick Gaieties to Do I Hear A Waltz, with the composer accepting his award to the tune of "The Sound of Music." With the assistance of Hal Linden and Larry Blyden, Merman herself sang selections from her performances, including "I Got Rhythm" and "Everything's Comin' Up Roses."

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Famous quotes containing the word ceremony:

    That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body.
    Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)