Tony Charmoli

Tony Charmoli (June 11, 1921 – August 7, 2020) was an American dancer, choreographer, and director born in Mountain Iron, Minnesota, the youngest of nine children whose parents had immigrated from Italy. At sixteen, he traveled alone by bus to Jacob's Pillow in Becket, Massachusetts to spend a summer interning as a dancer. On Valentine's Day the following year, he met Wilford Saunders, who would become both his life partner and business manager. During World War II, Charmoli served as an operations officer in the 43rd Fighter Squadron of the U.S. Air Force in Panama, where he also organized entertainment shows for the unit. Saunders served separately in Europe, working as a secretary to General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Charmoli made his Broadway debut in 1947 in Dear Judas, and the following year appeared in Make Mine Manhattan and Love Life. During the national tour of Make Mine Manhattan, he gave his part to Bob Fosse and subsequently helped Fosse find work as a dancer on television productions. In 1955, Charmoli returned to Broadway as a choreographer with Ankles Aweigh, and in 1981 he choreographed Woman of the Year, which starred Lauren Bacall. He also choreographed a Broadway engagement featuring Eddie Fisher at the Winter Garden in 1962 and Shirley MacLaine's Broadway revue in 1976.

His transition into television began in 1949 when he choreographed ABC's Stop the Music. He then joined NBC's Your Hit Parade in 1950, earning his first Emmy Award in 1956 for his work on that program. He subsequently relocated to Los Angeles to work on Dinah Shore's television variety program. Over the course of his career, Charmoli directed and choreographed for performers including Dinah Shore, Lily Tomlin, Danny Kaye, Julie Andrews, Cyd Charisse, Shirley MacLaine, Mitzi Gaynor, Lucille Ball, Beyoncé, LeAnn Rimes, and Justin Timberlake.

Charmoli directed and choreographed nearly all of Mitzi Gaynor's television specials during the 1970s as well as two of Shirley MacLaine's. His second Emmy came in 1974 for Mitzi... A Tribute to the American Housewife, and his third was awarded for MacLaine's 1976 special Gypsy in My Soul, for which he also received the Directors Guild of America Award. He directed the 1977 television production of The Nutcracker starring Mikhail Baryshnikov, which received two Emmy nominations, and won the Directors Guild Award for John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together in 1979. His work with Sid and Marty Krofft included directing all seventeen episodes each of Lidsville and The Bugaloos, as well as their television special Fol-de-Rol. He directed the first two seasons of Star Search in 1984 and 1985, multiple editions of Circus of the Stars, numerous Bob Hope specials, more than twenty televised beauty pageants, and the short-lived summer series The Keane Brothers Show in 1977. Across his career, Charmoli received fifteen Emmy nominations and won three.

In 2016, he collaborated with Paul Manchester on a biography titled Stars in My Eyes. Saunders died in 1999, and Charmoli died in August 2020 at his home in the Hollywood Hills at the age of 99.