To say that a Stage Door Canteen was a place where a serviceman–as long as he was in uniform–could drop in for free relaxation and amusement would hardly do justice to these fabled locales. For this is where celebrities mixed with G.I. Joe. Where else would a member of the armed forces find Hume Cronyn checking coats, Dorothy Lamour taking drink orders (non-alcoholic only), or Tallulah Bankhead cleaning tables, or be able to listen to the songs of Al Jolson or Marlene Dietrich.

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The success of the canteens led to a weekly radio show, Stage Door Canteen, in 1942. A year later, a movie of the same name was released, featuring cameo appearances by Paul Muni, Helen Hayes, Katharine Hepburn, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and many others. The money earned from these ventures enabled the Theatre Wing to launch a series of traveling theatrical productions to entertain the troops overseas.

When the end of the war was in sight, the Wing saw the need for a mechanism to help returning veterans get back into the theater. This led to the establishment of the American Theatre Wing Professional Training School in July 1946. Among the students who took advantage of the classes that were offered were Tony Randall, Lee Marvin, Eli Wallach, Gordon MacRae, and Charlton Heston.

Unfortunately, Perry did not live to see the success of the school. She died from a heart attack at her home on Park Avenue, in New York, on June 28, 1946, one day after her fifty-eighth birthday. She had been ailing for some time, and after her death, associates remarked that she literally “gave her life” to the various war projects sponsored by the American Theatre Wing.

Members of the Broadway community concluded that some kind of memorial was essential for this remarkable woman of the theater. Sam Jaffe thought of naming his acting school after her, and there was talk of erecting a statue of Perry in Times Square. But finally, it was agreed that an annual awards ceremony, named in her honor, would be the best way to immortalize her memory. Brock Pemberton became the chairman of the committee charged with the task of its organization.

On April 6, 1947, some 1,200 guests attended a dinner at New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, at which the first Tony Awards were presented. Best dramatic actor awards were shared by José Ferrer for his performance in Cyrano de Bergerac and Fredric March for Years Ago; best dramatic actress honors went to Helen Hayes for Happy Birthday and to Ingrid Bergman for Joan of Lorraine. For the first two years of the Tony Awards, winners received no trophy, taking home only a scroll and a token gift. The medallions now presented, which were first bestowed in 1949, bear the masks of comedy and tragedy on one side, with a likeness of Perry on the reverse.

This annual ceremony, now televised around the world, is familiar to millions, making the award much more famous than the person who inspired it. Consequently, each year a newspaper columnist or television broadcaster feels compelled to remind people that there was a living person behind Broadway’s most cherished prize. In 1962, at the fifteenth birthday celebration of the Tony Awards, the renowned theater critic Brooks Atkinson commented: “There have been a lot of changes [in the Tony Awards ceremony] since 1947. There is nothing informal about the occasion anymore. Although Antoinette Perry would probably be pleased, she would certainly be surprised. She was an imaginative, able, and selfless person. I don’t think there was anything she would not or could not do. Fame was not what she was after. She just loved theater.” *

New York writer Joseph Gustaitis is a frequent contributor to American History.

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