When Tony Walton was still a boy in London, his parents took him and his sister to the theater for a Christmas pantomime. Told they would be sitting in a box, “we were wondering how on earth we could all squeeze into this little crate,” he told Mervyn Rothstein in a 2008 interview for Playbill. Led into a “grand velvet-festooned, Cupid-decorated ‘box,’ it was love at first sight,” he said. “I knew I was doomed to be part of this world.”
As a teenager, he made and dressed marionettes and with a group of theater students put on puppet shows. For some performances, he created the sets and lighting as well. When John Piper, a stage designer, saw one of the shows, he told Mr. Walton he should take up stage design.
Numerous Tony, Oscar, and Emmy awards and nominations followed. He was elected to the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1991.
Mr. Walton, who worked for more than six decades in theater, film, television, ballet, and opera, died at his apartment in New York City on March 2 of complications of a stroke. He was 87.
He received 16 Tony Award nominations for his Broadway sets and/or costumes, and won three, for “Pippin,” “House of Blue Leaves,” and “Guys and Dolls.” He won an Emmy Award for the 1985 television production of “Death of a Salesman,” which starred Dustin Hoffman, Kate Reid, and John Malkovich.
Among his 20 films, he won an Oscar for Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz” and earned nominations for “Mary Poppins,” “The Boy Friend,” “The Wiz,” and “Murder on the Orient Express.” In addition to Fosse, he worked with the film directors Sidney Lumet, Paul Newman, Mike Nichols, Ken Russell, Volcker Schlondorff, and Francois Truffaut, among others.
Mr. Walton was the production designer for Madison Square Garden’s “A Christmas Carol” for 10 years as well as for Julie Andrews’s 2003 revival of “The Boy Friend” for Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, and a national tour. Mr. Walton and Ms. Andrews first met when they were teenagers and were married from 1959 to 1967.
After his death, Ms. Andrews told People magazine, “Tony was my dearest and oldest friend. He taught me to see the world with fresh eyes and his talent was simply monumental. I will miss him more than I can say.”
Tony Walton was born in Walton-on-Thames, England, on Oct. 24, 1934, to Lancelot Walton, an orthopedic surgeon, and the former Hilda Drew. He attended Radley College, a boarding school in Oxfordshire, where he was expelled from a classics class after reading a poem in a Liverpudlian accent. He then transferred to the City of Oxford School of Technology, Art, and Commerce.
After serving in Ontario, Canada, as a trainee pilot for the Royal Air Force, he studied art and design at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He graduated in 1955 and moved to Manhattan, where, two years later, he was the stage designer for an Off Broadway revival of Noel Coward’s “Conversation Piece.”
While his first Broadway production, “Once There Was a Russian” (1961), closed on opening night, it was followed a year later by “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” which ran for more than two years. Over 50 Broadway productions followed, culminating in 2007 with “A Tale of Two Cities.”
Later in his career, he directed productions of Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Noel Coward, and others for New York’s Irish Rep, San Diego’s Old Globe, Sarasota’s Asolo Rep, and Bay Street Theater.
At Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater, he directed Peter Boyle in Orson Welles’s “Moby Dick Rehearsed,” Alec Baldwin in Peter Shaffer’s “Equus” and “The Gift of the Gorgon,” and Blythe Danner and Simon Jones in Noel Coward’s “Tonight at 8:30.”
As a producer, he co-produced six productions in London, three with Hal Prince. His opera designs have been seen at London’s Covent Garden Theatre and the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company, and throughout Europe and the United States.
His ballet designs have included “St. Louis Woman” for the Dance Theatre of Harlem at Lincoln Center and “Peter and the Wolf” and “Sleeping Beauty” for the American Ballet Theatre at the Met.
Less visible than his theater and film work, his original artwork is no less accomplished. In December, a retrospective of approximately 100 of his hand-drawn sketches, paintings, watercolors, and murals was held at the Mark Borghi Gallery in Sag Harbor.
In addition to Ms. Andrews, his survivors include his wife, Genevieve LeRoy-Walton, whom he married in 1991, a daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton of Sag Harbor, a stepdaughter, Bridget LeRoy of Moriches and Costa Rica, two sisters, Jennifer Gosley and Carol Hall, a brother, Richard Walton, and five grandchildren.
In a post on her Facebook page, Bridget LeRoy recalled Mr. Walton as “the most creative, brilliant, fun, loving, kind man I’ve ever met, a mentor to so many. Added bonus, he gave me one of my favorite-ever people, my stepsister, Emma Walton Hamilton. For all of that, and more, it’s hard to picture a life without his all-encompassing love and support. There’s a little blue corner of my heart today and forever.”
A private service in Sag Harbor and burial at Oakland Cemetery there will take place at a date to be announced. The family has suggested memorial donations to Bay Street Theater at baystreet.org, Guild Hall at guildhall.org, or the Actors Fund at actorsfund.org.
