Tony Charmoli

Tony had a decades long, award-winning career as a director, a producer, and as a choreographer for television, film, and theater.

He won three Emmy Awards: in 1956 for Best Choreography for Your Hit Parade, in 1974 for Best Direction for Mitzi Gaynor's Tribute To An American Housewife, and in 1976 for Best Direction for Shirley MacLaine's Gypsy In My Soul. He was also nominated over the course of his long career for ten other Primetime Emmy Awards. Additionally, he won Director's Guild Awards for Mitzi Zings Into Spring in 1978, and John Denver & THE MUPPETS in 1980.

He was born in Mount Iron, Minnesota in 1921 to Italian immigrant parents, as the last of 9 children. They taught Tony a hard work ethic and he applied it to his early love of Dance. He put together shows in his youth, and just after his sixteenth birthday Tony traveled by himself from Minnesota by bus to intern as a dancer for a summer at Jacob's Pillow in Massachusetts. On the following Valentine's Day, he met Wilford Saunders, the man he'd spend the rest of his life with.