The Antoinette Perry Award was founded in 1947 by a committee of the
American Theatre Wing headed by Brock Pemberton. The award is named
after Antoinette Perry, nicknamed Tony, an actress, director, producer
and co-founder of the American Theatre Wing, who died in 1946. As her
official biography at the Tony Awards website states, "At [Warner Bros.
story editor] Jacob Wilk's suggestion, [Pemberton] proposed an award in
her honor for distinguished stage acting and technical achievement. At
the initial event in 1947, as he handed out an award, he called it a
Tony. The name stuck."
The first awards ceremony was
held on April 6, 1947, at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City.
The first prizes were "a scroll, cigarette lighter and articles of
jewelry such as 14-carat gold compacts and bracelets for the women, and
money clips for the men." It was not until the third awards ceremony in
1949 that the first Tony medallion was given to award winners.
Awarded
by a panel of approximately 868 voters (as of 2014) from various areas
of the entertainment industry and press, the Tony Award is generally
regarded as the theatre's equivalent to the Academy Award, for
excellence in film; the Grammy Award, for the music industry; and
theEmmy Award, for excellence in television. It also forms the fourth
spoke in the "EGOT", that is, someone who has won all four awards. In
British theatre, the equivalent of the Tony Award is the Laurence
Olivier Award. A number of the world's longest-running and most
successful shows, as well as some actors, directors, choreographers and
designers, have received both Tony Awards and Olivier Awards.