Martin Movie - Top 50 Broadway Stars

A strange feeling led me to try something different this month. Maybe it is the holiday season and its accompanying malaise. Maybe it is because nobody tells me what I can or cannot do with this monthly write up as long as it avoids running afoul of my compliance department. Maybe it is because I just got back from New York visiting with my wife’s family for Christmas. But this month, as a one-off mega list, I am not going to give you a movie review. I am not even going to write about movies at all. Instead, I am going to publish the top 50 of my list of all-time Broadway stars. In my experience a theatre nerd – nobody loves a good argument like theatre nerds. I will be back to films with my Oscar pick next month. Though maybe January becomes an annual outside-the-box month going forward. Who knows?

A few things to get out of the way first – this list only seeks to cover on-stage Broadway work. That means massive contributors like Stephen Sondheim, Hal Prince, Andrew Lloyd Webber, etc. will not be showing up. The lines get a little blurred with people who wore multiple hats (like director and choreographer on top of acting). I chose to let those who made it on to the list because of acting be enhanced by the other disciplines, but primarily non-actors (Bob Fosse and Tommy Tune most notably), did not make it. Again, as contributors, they are all-time greats – just not what this list is trying to do. Likewise – film work, off-Broadway work, touring work, regional work is not overly considered. If you have some tentpole off-Broadway role (like Norbert Leo Butz), that may enhance your position but otherwise does not help you get into the room. Lastly, I am trying to scientifically quantify things to start and then adding some “it just feels right” elements after that. In that light, Tony Awards and nominations matter a LOT. Longevity and number of credits matter, too. Also – and this pains me to say as someone who actively loves both – musicals matter more than plays for the purpose of this list. Simply put, musicals are what bring most people to Broadway, so doing 25 plays is impressive, but doing 15 musicals is more impressive. Got all that? Good – let’s start some fights!

50. John McMartin (24 Broadway credits, 5 Tony nominations, 0 Tony wins)
51. Matthew Broderick (13, 3, 2)
52. Danny Burstein (20, 7, 1)
53. Uta Hagen (22, 2, 2 – plus a lifetime achievement Tony)
54. Joel Grey (15, 5, 1 – plus a lifetime achievement Tony)
55. Robert Preston (16, 3, 2)
56. Fredric March (17, 3, 2)
57. George Hearn (19, 5, 2)
58. Kelli O’Hara (13, 8, 1)
59. Stockard Channing (15, 7, 1)

The list actually goes to 234 names, but nobody would keep reading that long except my sister. This group is a mixture of big names and deep cuts, but the credentials are significant. You can plainly see the methodology at work. Basically, you need at least a dozen credits, multiple Tony noms, and at least one Tony win. McMartin has no win but 24 credits over a 53-year career speaks for itself. Burstein and O’Hara are likely to add to their numbers, too.

40. Brian Bedford (18, 7, 1)
41. Maureen Stapleton (22, 6, 2)
42. George Rose (25, 5, 2)
43. John Lithgow (25, 6, 2)
44. Jason Robards, Jr. (22, 8, 1)
45. Christopher Plummer (16, 7, 2)
46. Cherry Jones (15, 5, 2)
47. Lynn Fontanne (37, 1, 0 – bucks the trend but most of her career pre-dates the Tony’s)
48. Mark Rylance (6, 5, 3)
49. Hinton Battle (7, 3, 3)

Those last two are interesting as they have few nominations compared to the rest of this list, but three wins is three wins. Battle also clearly suffers from coming up at a time with relatively few opportunities for black performers. (You will not find Billy Porter on here at all, for example, even though 50 years from now several people will be on here in part due to performers like Battle and Porter knocking down some walls.) This group is heavy on non-musical performers, which is why some of the later groups will have less impressive numbers.

30. Mary Martin (11, 4, 3)
31. Glenn Close (13, 4, 3)
32. Zero Mostel (13, 4, 3)
33. Sutton Foster (14, 7, 2)
34. Frances Sternhagen (27, 7, 2)
35. James Earl Jones (21, 4, 2 – plus a lifetime achievement Tony)
36. Kevin Kline (19, 4, 3)
37. Colleen Dewhurst (19, 8, 2)
38. Rosemary Harris (27, 9, 1 – plus a lifetime achievement Tony)
39. John Cullum (29, 5, 2)

Now we are getting to the big guns. The qualifications start to get crazy here. You need at least two Tony awards without some other crazy number. You need to be pushing 20 credits (unless you have 3 wins). A wide span of names here with a few big musical names (Martin, Foster, Cullum) and a few legends who mostly did straight plays (Jones, Dewhurst, Harris).

20. Alfred Lunt (36, 4, 3)
21. Katharine Cornell (38, 1, 1)
22. Jessica Tandy (29, 5, 3)
23. Shirley Booth (33, 3, 3)
24. Zoe Caldwell (9, 4, 4)
25. Jose Ferrer (28, 2, 2 – plus many more credits/noms/wins as a director and writer)
26. Alfred Drake (34, 3, 1)

Going to stop here because the next one needs a full paragraph. Lunt, Cornell, Booth, and Drake did most of their work before the Tony’s came around but the sheer number of credits for all four is pretty impressive – with Drake rising above thanks to several star-making turns in the 40s. Caldwell stands out for me with only 9 credits but a perfect 4-for-4 at the Tony awards. I struggled with where to place her as only a handful of performers can match or exceed her win total, but many can claim more on-stage credits. In the end, this felt about right for her.

13. Ethel Merman (15, 3, 2 – plus a special Tony win)

Yeah. Not number 1. It is freaking Ethel Merman, for crying out loud. How is she not number 1? This is why I went to great lengths at the beginning of this piece to clarify my methodology. While most would argue (and I would find difficulty finding a counterargument) that she belongs at the top when you just “feel it,” I was surprised to see how few credits she actually had. The awards are low partly because the first portion of her career pre-dates the Tony’s. She also did some film work throughout, of course, but this is probably the most controversial placement. It is a fair and valid position if you want to say the entire methodology cannot possibly be correct if Merman is this low. If you are compiling a list of “stars” as I am indicating I am doing, she probably belongs higher.

12. Boyd Gaines (13, 5, 4)
13. Bernadette Peters (17, 8, 2)
14. Gwen Verdon (8, 6, 4)
15. Frank Langella (17, 7, 4)
16. Philip Bosco (52, 6, 1)

I will cut it there to give this group some attention. Gaines was probably the second hardest to place for similar reasons as Caldwell. I doubt any but the most ardent Broadway fans could pick him out of a lineup, but he has four wins and is the only actor to have a Tony nomination in all four possible acting categories (lead and featured in both a musical and a play). That deserves top tier, though something feels wrong to have him one spot ahead of Merman. Peters feels low to me, too, but she is held back by only having two wins and relatively few credits when weighed against the all-time greats. Verdon has a tiny credit list but bang for the buck is huge. For her, I am rewarding peak performance as all of those roles were star turns, most of them iconic. Langella is here thanks to four wins, clearly. And Bosco? Only one win, but that is not a misprint. The man has 52 Broadway credits to his name. There are some reasonably well-known shows that did not play 52 performances, and he has 52 separate shows that he appeared in on Broadway. It is a truly staggering number.

7. Nathan Lane (25, 6, 3)
8. Patti LuPone (28, 8, 3)
9. Helen Hayes (49, 3, 3)

As you can see now, you need three wins or you are not considered. Lane (oddly the highest ranked male performer at #7) has everything you could want: iconic roles (Max Bialystock, Pseudolus), strong representation across disciplines (17 plays and 8 musicals in his career), name recognition for non-Broadway types, and plenty of awards. It tells you hard it is to crack the top five. Speaking of that, Patti LuPone at #6 seems insane until you see who comes next. In a career that has spanned over 40 years, you cannot write the history of Broadway in the late 20^th century without an entire chapter dedicated to LuPone. She has her detractors (my sister is not a huge fan, for example), but nobody can deny her place among the elites. Hayes forced me to rethink this entire list as I was putting it together several months ago. I was only going to focus on musical stars – believing that the biggest names of straight plays are either largely unknown outside of Broadway stans or were famous film actors that also did Broadway. But I did not feel a list of Broadway stars was complete without Hayes. She has a low nomination total since most of her work was done before the Tony’s, but she has a theater and an award named after her. She is elite.

4. Chita Rivera (18, 10, 3)
5. Julie Harris (33, 10, 5)
6. Angela Lansbury (14, 7, 5)

Mount Rushmore begins with Chita. She only recently died, but there will absolutely be a theater named after her soon. The original triple threat, Rivera set the standard for professionalism with a dedication not seen today. She toured with many of the shows that made her famous (hurting her Broadway statistics listed above) because she felt people outside of New York deserved to see her performances. Harris picked up the mantle from Hayes as Broadway’s fiercest leading lady of plays. Of her 33 Broadway credits, only one (1965’s Skyscraper) is a musical, which is why she falls just behind Dame Angela Lansbury. Lansbury made her Broadway debut in 1957 and took her final bow in 2012. She bookends that career with plays, but along the way originated the roles of Mame and Mrs. Lovett and anchoring revivals of Gypsy and A Little Night Music. The ageless wonder finally left us in 2022, leaving behind a glorious career on stage, in films, and on television.

Have you guessed who tops the list? If you recognize the methodology heavily rewards Tony wins, it should not be a surprise.

1. Audra McDonald (14, 10, 6)

She is the GOAT in my book. Currently appearing in Gypsy on Broadway, she will almost definitely get her record-breaking 11^th Tony nomination as a performer and be in good shape for her 7^th Tony win. None of them are “cheapies” either. She can match Gaines by winning in all four possible categories – starting out in supporting roles with wins for Carousel, Master Class, and Ragtime. Then it was time to star – leading productions of Marie Christine, A Raisin in the Sun, 110 in the Shade, Porgy and Bess, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, and Ohio State Murders. And what the heck, let’s throw in a run in Shakespeare’s Henry IV. She is the Meryl Streep of the stage – turning any performance into a master class (no pun intended) on acting. Blessed with arguably the purest voice in Broadway history, she can do anything on stage. Never was that clearer to me than in listening to her strip down her world class vocal talent to take on the peculiarly beautiful and instantly recognizable affectations of Billie Holiday (Lady Day…). When someone has that much vocal perfection and chooses to throw it away to do service to the role, that is the stuff of legends.

So there you have it. Clearly the comments section will be fun for me to follow in the coming days (do not disappoint me, theater nerds!). I hope you had as much fun reading as I had compiling the numbers and writing about them all. Thank you for indulging me.