He worked with the directors Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse and Jerry Zaks, winning three Tony Awards and an Oscar for “All That Jazz.”
Tony Walton, a production designer who brought a broad visual imagination to the creation of distinct onstage looks for Broadway shows over a half-century, earning him three Tony Awards, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87. His daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, whose mother is Julie Andrews, said the cause was complications of a stroke. In more than 50 Broadway productions, Mr. Walton collaborated on designing the sets (and sometimes, the costumes) with directors like Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse and Jerry Zaks, winning Tonys for “Pippin,” “The House of Blue Leaves” and “Guys and Dolls.” He also worked in film, where he shared the Oscar for the art and set decoration of Mr. Fosse’s “All That Jazz” (1979); years earlier, Mr. Walton designed the interior sets and the costumes for “Mary Poppins” (1964), starring Ms. Andrews, to whom he was then married. Mr. Walton’s television work included “Death of Salesman” (1985), which starred Dustin Hoffman, Kate Reid and John Malkovich, for which he won an Emmy. Before the opening of his final Broadway show, “A Tale of Two Cities,” in 2008, Mr. Walton described his process of conceiving a production’s design. “These days, I try to read the script or listen to the score as if it were a radio show and not allow myself to have a rush of imagery,” he told Playbill. “Then, after meeting with the director — and, if I’m lucky, the writer — and whatever input they may want to give, I try to imagine what I see as if it were slowly being revealed by a pool of light.” Donald Albrecht, the curator of an exhibition of Mr. Walton’s theater and film work at the Museum of the Moving Image in 1989, told The New York Times in 1992: “He never puts a Walton style on top of the material. He comes from within the work out.” Mr. Walton worked with Mr. Zaks on many Broadway shows, including “Guys and Dolls,” a revival of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and “Anything Goes.” “I started directing because I liked working with actors,” Mr. Zaks said in a phone interview. “I had no appreciation for what a set could for a production.
