Since the Tony Awards, Broadway’s annual salute to the best of the stage, is not happening this year due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, this week we decided to jump back sixty years, to bring you the Tony Awards from 1960. Had the world not been rocked by Coronavirus, the 2020 ceremony would be taking place tonight. Broadway shut down in the middle of March, and it’s not clear if they will be able to reopen this year, so there are no awards to give out this year.

This video is the 14th ANNUAL TONY AWARDS, from Sunday, April 24, 1960, originating from the Astor Hotel Grand Ballroom, which was Broadcast on WCBS-TV Channel 2 in New York City. It was a while before the show went national. It was a pretty remarkable year, as The Sound of Music won for Best Musical, and The Miracle Worker for best play.

You will not see the elaborate production numbers that marked later Tony Awards ceremonies. At this point the show was just a locally-broadcast ceremony to dole out the awards. As such, this entire show runs just a few minutes over an hour. You will see awards go to Jackie Gleason, Mary Martin, Mervyn Douglas, Tom Bosley, Roddy McDowell, Anne Bancroft and more. The Show is hosted by Eddie Albert, a few years before he starred in Green Acres.

Also paying tribute to Broadway in this year without a Tony Awards show, from 6 PM to Midnight on The AIR Sunday night, during the regular marathon of our Showtunes showcase, since it’s the time that would normally see the Tony Awards Ceremony being broadcast on CBS, The AIR will present encores of all of our previous Tony Nominee episodes of Curtain Call, plus a couple of episodes that featured award winning shows.

You can tune in at the website, or on this embedded radio player…