Showtune Sunday: From Liza, LuPone & Lansbury to Chita & Bacall, celebrating multi-Tony winners for lead actress in a musical!

Tonight is the 2023 Tony Awards and a new Leading Actress in a Musical winner will be announced.

This is a perfect time to look back.

You tend to think of Ethel Merman as the ultimate queen of the Broadway musical with all those big hits spanning from the 1930s to 1970 when she did the final year of the original Broadway run of Hello, Dolly! But, surprisingly, Merman was not queen of Tony Awards and won the Leading Actress in a Musical prize only once. (Merman also received a special Tony in 1972)

So today, I’m shining a light on some of the ladies who won in the category at least twice (Angela Lansbury won four times and Mary Martin and Gwen Verdon three). The two-time winners are Lauren Bacall, Christine Ebersole, Sutton Foster, Patti LuPone, Liza Minnelli, Donna Murphy, Bernadette Peters, and Chita Rivera.

We celebrate some of them below – enloy!