Theatre World and the Theatre World Awards: How it all began

At an annual ceremony and during an afternoon party attended by former winners and invited members of the theatre community, six actresses and six actors are presented with a Theatre World Award for their Debut Performance in a Broadway or Off-Broadway production.

Since 1944, the Theatre World Award remains the oldest one given for a debut theatre performance On or Off-Broadway.

In 1944, three young men who loved theatre, Daniel Blum, Norman McDonald, and John Willis, came up with the idea of a yearly celebration that would acknowledge "Promising Personalities," twelve debut performances by actors appearing On Broadway. It wasn’t until 1969 that the award became known as the Theatre World Award, and later still, as Off-Broadway became a potent force in New York theatre life, that performances there became eligible for recognition as well.

In the beginning, the Awards ceremony was a simple cocktail party among friends in Daniel Blum’s sumptuous apartment with Daniel doing the presenting.

In the first two years alone, a nod was given to performances by Betty Comden, Judy Holliday, and John Raitt, joined the following year by Barbara Bel Geddes, Marlon Brando, and Burt Lancaster.

At the 1948-49 party, Carol Channing won. A couple of years later she said to other Theatre World Award winners attending a cocktail party prior to the one at Daniel’s, “We’d better get over to Daniel’s and support that Award because otherwise no one is gonna know who we are sixty years from now.”

The first awards were a piece of paper. Then a plaque. The beautiful bronze Janus Award (at right), sculpted by internationally recognized sculptor Harry Marinsky, made its debut at the 1972-1973 Theatre World Awards ceremony.

Upon Daniel Blum’s death, John Willis inherited the entire responsibility for the Award and for the next forty-five years, with an occasional assistant, he single-handedly kept TWA alive by extensive archiving and by hosting the annual party often with Carol Channing acting as the sole presenter as late as 1971. Then Robert Morse, Colleen Dewhurst, Julie Harris, and Rosemary Harris followed. At the 1976 ceremony, John invited twelve former winners and each in tern presented to a newcomer. And thus began the ritual of presenters entertaining the audience with anecdotes about how they won or what the Award had come to mean to them.

John also instituted the beloved birthday cards, sending one to every winner every year which meant by 1994 he was sending about 400 cards a year to those still living. Every year presenters mention how amazing the cards were and how cherished. One said, “John even found me when my own mother couldn’t. I was entertaining on a cruise ship in the Sea of Saipan!”

The birthday cards made the TWA a family. Winners return year after year to the annual ceremony to see one another and to celebrate those newly honored.

At the 50th Theatre World Awards, Patricia Elliott (1973, A Little Night Music) was presenting. She and others, including Bernadette Peters (1968), Lonny Price (1980, Class Enemy), and Walter Willison (1971, Two By Two) had been concerned for sometime about preserving John Willis’s legacy as John would soon be 80 and was hoping to retire. Before presenting, Patricia suggested that the winners could give John one big Birthday Card by annual contributions to his legacy.

The standing ovation for John led to the present not-for-profit Theatre World Inc., formed by Patricia on May 17, 1997 with the help of Tom Lynch (Theatre World Publications) and Marianne Tatum (1980, Barnum).

To find someone with John’s gentlemanly demeanor and elegant presence as Host to the Awards was not so easy. On a tip from Walter, Patricia called Peter Filichia, a theatre critic and an accomplished theatre archivist on his own. It was on a Saturday night when critics are not usually home. He was! At the 54th ceremony in 1997, John passed his baton to Peter who, as Host, has continued to match John’s personality, charming presence, wit and love of the theatre.

The contribution the Award has made to the theatre is incalculable. Winners through the years acknowledge that of all the awards, it is the one they most cherish because it is not a competition. It is freely given at a time when any kind of encouragement is welcome in an industry known more for rejection than reception. It’s the award that inspires one to get up and going when the going gets rough.

The Theatre World Awards are now voted on by a committee which includes Peter Filichia and a rotating group of New York theatre critics. John Willis and Ben Hodges, John’s successor as editor of the Theatre World book, both act as advisers and, if necessary, tie-breakers.

At the same time that Blum and Willis invented their award, they also began publishing the Theatre World publication. It evolved into the most comprehensive annual pictorial and statistical record of the American theatre. It includes not only the Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway season, but that of the regional theatres, major theatrical awards, complete coverage of the Theatre World Awards ceremony, and obituaries from that season as well. It lists all productions in the United States including entire production teams.

As reference books they are unparalleled. Through them one can charter the career progress of playwrights, actors, designers, producers, companies, et al. They represent undiscriminating documentation, and a celebration and preservation of precious theatre history.

In his spare time, John Willis also created Screen World and the former Dance World.

Both the Awards and the books also exist, gratefully, through the cooperation and generosity of all of the New York and regional companies’ press agents and publicists who provide the crucial data and photographs on which both so greatly depend.

To learn about the Theatre World book, which includes coverage of the annual Theatre World Awards ceremony, click on the Applause Theatre and Cinema Books link below.
Purchases of Theatre World publications do not benefit the Theatre World Awards, Inc.