Hosted annually by the American Theatre Wing, the Tony Awards were first held in 1947 as a black tie optional dinner in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. The inaugural ceremony featured seven award categories and 11 award presentations. More than 75 years later, the Tony Awards has 26 award categories to recognize excellent productions and the individuals who worked hard to put them together.
Below is a look at some of the records achieved throughout the history of the Tony Awards.
Hamilton: An American Musical – Most Nominations for a Production
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical garnered a record-setting 16 nominations at the 70th Tony Awards in 2016. The musical, which also stars Miranda and uses hip-hop music and lyrics along with a diverse cast to detail the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, won 11 awards, including Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Leading Actor in a Musical (Leslie Odom Jr.), and Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Renée Elise Goldsberry). It was nominated in all musical categories and had multiple performers competing against each other in two acting categories.
Hamilton opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in August 2015 and, as of April 5, 2023, was the 25th-longest running production in Broadway history. In addition to its 11 Tony Awards, it won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, and Miranda received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The Producers – Most Awards for a Production
Despite a record 16 nominations and 11 wins, Hamilton was one award victory shy of equaling the all-time record. That distinction belongs to Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan’s The Producers, which won 12 awards out of 15 nominations. When the nominations were announced, it was believed that The Producers tied the record for most nominations set by Company (1971), but Tony Award Productions later reiterated that Harold Prince’s two awards (Director of a Musical and Producer of a Musical) for Company only counted as one. Company won six Tony Awards.
The Producers, meanwhile, won the Tony for Best Musical, Best Original Score (Brooks), Best Actor in a Musical (Nathan Lane), and Best Direction of a Musical (Susan Stroman), among others. Brooks himself won three Tony Awards for the production, becoming the 16th person to win a Tony, Grammy, Oscar, and Emmy. The Producers’ 12 total wins broke the previous record, set by Hello, Dolly!, which won 10 awards 37 years prior.
Lin-Manuel Miranda – Youngest Best Score Winner
Miranda’s two Tony Awards for Hamilton (Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score) and the success of the musical made him a mainstream star, but it wasn’t the first time he was recognized for his work on Broadway. Miranda was nominated for Best Actor in a Musical and won Best Original Score for In the Heights at the 2008 Tony Awards.
At just 28 years old, Miranda was the youngest-ever winner of the Tony Award for Best Original Score. In the Heights, meanwhile, also won Best Musical, Best Orchestrations, and Best Choreography. In somewhat of a preview to Hamilton eight years later, Miranda rapped his acceptance speech, beginning with, “I used to dream about this moment/Now I’m in it/Tell the conductor to hold the baton a minute.”
Miranda, who also won an Emmy in 2014 for creating music for the 67th Tony Awards, missed out on becoming the youngest-ever EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) award winner in 2017. He was nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar in 2017 for “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana.
Stephen Sondheim – Most Best Score Wins
Miranda has plenty of work to do if he intends on catching up to Stephen Sondheim, who won a record six Tony Awards for Best Original Score. He won awards for Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, and A Little Night Music, the latter of which features arguably his most famous single, “Send in the Clowns.” Sondheim also won a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 2008.
Sondheim died at 91 years old in 2021. Miranda, along with several other performers, gathered in Times Square to perform his song “Sunday” from Sunday in the Park with George in honor of the late composer and lyricist.
Julie Harris and Chita Rivera – Most Nominations for a Performer
Although Audra McDonald is the all-time leader for performers with six Tony Awards, Julie Harris and Chita Rivera share the record for most nominations with 10 each. Harris won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play five times, including for I Am a Camera, The Lark, and The Belle of Amherst. She received her 10th and final nomination in 1997 for The Gin Game. Harris passed away in 2013 at 87 years old.
Rivera, meanwhile, was nominated 10 times in either the Best Actress in a Musical or Best Featured Actress in a Musical categories. She won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for The Rink and Kiss of the Spider Woman. She also received the Lifetime Achievement in 2018.