Tony Walton (1934-2022) won an Oscar, an Emmy, and numerous Tony Awards. He was a brilliant designer of scenery and costumes, on and off Broadway, and for film and television, a magical illustrator of many books and posters, and quite the sweetest person you might ever hope to meet.
I met Tony in 1959, when I was was 26 years old. I was lighting Pieces Of Eight, a new review in the West End. Two years later came its sequel, One Over The Eight, for which I introduced Tony to the then rather new technology of scenic projection. It proved a hit, and Tony, living in New York, invited me to cross the Atlantic to meet Hal Prince. Tony was to design A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum and had persuaded Hal that projection would enrich this one-set musical comedy with lighting by the legendary Jean Rosenthal.
This too was a big success and Hal invited Tony and I to become his London producing partners. This we did and a series of fabulous productions followed, from Fiddler On The Roof to Cabaret and Company, which set new standards for musicals on the London stage.
Tony continued as a top Broadway designer with a stunning series of shows, including Sammy Davis in Golden Boy (1964, with me as projection consultant) and Tharon Musser lighting, about which the NY Daily News wrote: “The best use of projections I have ever seen.”
For the next 24 years I was Tony, and his wife Gen’s, lodger in their apartment in the Apthorp Building, on 79th and Broadway, for my frequent adventures to America as a projection, lighting designer, and transatlantic producer… all thanks to Tony. That apartment was legendary, always crazily busy with bevies of great young assistants working around the clock, a cauldron of energy and fun. My bed was always available and only sometime occupied by other guests, like friend and actress Julie Christie.
That Tony was a brilliant artist was self-evident. Quite simply magic flowed from his pen. He was also really picky! Always demanding perfection from those around him. The challenge was that his unerring theatrical instincts were always right. Those demands for perfection was always (if sometimes infuriatingly!) correct, but everyone was only too happy to deliver.
Because, of course, he was one of the most generous of men. Inevitably modest, his growing fame in film and theatre as one of the greatest designers of our time altered him not one bit.
His imagination was stunning and his sense of story uncanny. From a massive motion picture like The Wiz to a miniature musical such as Transport, on the minute stage of the Irish Rep that included a storm at sea in the South Atlantic, his work evoked the absolute essence of the drama.
My work as a theatre consultant that had begun with Sir Laurence Olivier and Britain’s National Theatre, has sent me traveling around the world. In the late 1970’s I began to practice as a consultant in the States. I had come to love the vibrancy of Broadway and its brilliant crews, and I’d even married my American assistant Molly Friedel on the musical, The Rothchilds. In 1988, we emigrated, substituting our frequent home at the Apthorp for a house of our own in Connecticut. Sadly, it meant less time with Tony and Gen, but he still, with unfailing generosity, invited me to light many shows on and off Broadway, and even a Sleeping Beauty for ABT at the Metropolitan Opera House.
Tony was the best friend a person could ever have. His work always made such an indelible impact. In his later years he became a truly fine director whose creative skill, imagination and simple love of the actor’s art, was inspiration indeed. He will be long remembered.