At the recent 68th Annual Tony Awards, one of the recipients set a new Tonys Record. Here’s what she did, along with some other award-show record holders.
Broadway star Audra McDonald won her sixth Tony Award this year. That’s the most Tony Awards ever for a performer, and McDonald broke a three-way tie she’d held with five-time winners Angela Lansbury and Julie Harris (not counting a lifetime achievement award). More than that, McDonald is the first Broadway star to complete a Tonys acting “sweep”—she’s the only actor or actress to ever win a Tony in all four acting categories:
Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill; Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play for A Raising in the Sun and Master Class; Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for Ragtime and Carousel; and Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for Porgy and Bess.
A record 31 Grammy Awards have been claimed by…Sir George Solti. Who? Well, he’s a European conductor that ran the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from the ’60s to the ’90s and in doing so rang up a lot of wins in the classical categories. (More familiar record holders: producer Quincy Jones has won 27 Grammys, and bluegrass star Alison Krauss also has 27.)
Katharine Hepburn was awarded four Oscars for acting (all four in the leading actress category), but the all time top Oscar winner: Walt Disney. He took home 22, primarily for directing and producing short cartoons and live-action films that once aired before feature films. (He probably would have won a few for Best Animated Feature…except that that award wasn’t created until 2001, three decades after Disney died.) In 1954, Disney picked up four Oscars in one night, for Best Documentary Feature, Best Documentary Short Subject, Best Short Cartoon, and Best Short Subject.