“He was the guy from the past who was ready to take it into the future,” Ted Chapin, chairman of the American Theater Wing, said of Mr. Somlyo. (The American Theater Wing and the Broadway League are partners in Tony Awards Productions.)  “Roy kept the ceremony theatrical,” Mr. Chapin said, “because the one thing that can differentiate the Tonys from the Emmys or the Oscars is what happens between the presentation of the awards.”  Sometimes Mr. Somlyo trucked in the entire set from a running production, Mr. Chapin said; sometimes he left the stage bare; and other times “he used a panoply of Broadway stars doing the numbers they had made famous over the years.”  In 2007 Mr. Somlyo received the Theater Hall of Fame Founders Award.  Born in Detroit on Sept. 2, 1925, he was the youngest of five children of Ben and Irma Knopfler Somlyo. Besides his daughter, he is survived by his wife of 51 years, the former Nancy Rifici; two sisters, Caroline Miller and Emily Somlyo; a son, David; and four grandchildren.  After graduating from high school, Mr. Somlyo served in the Army in World War II. He returned to Detroit and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Wayne State University. While in college, he and some friends formed their own theater group. He was hooked.  Economics degree notwithstanding, Mr. Somlyo moved to New York to find theater work, then went into summer stock on Cape Cod. It became a full-curriculum theater education.  “In the mornings and afternoons I sold tickets,” he told The New York Sun in 2006. “Then I collected tickets at the door. Then I moved scenery on the stage. At times it was necessary to do walk-on roles. Then at the end of the show I painted scenery for the next show. Early the next morning I distributed posters, fliers and advertisements. Then I helped the theater pay its bills.”  Back in New York that fall, he was hired as a gofer by the legendary producer David Merrick.  An obituary last Friday about Roy A. Somlyo, a theater producer and managing producer of the Tony Awards show, misstated the broadcast history of the Tony ceremonies in the years before the first national telecast, on ABC in 1967. They were broadcast in the New York area by the DuMont network, then by WCBS and later by WOR, not only by DuMont.
Mr. Somlyo produced or managed more than 100 shows on Broadway, in London or on tour and was managing producer of the annual Tony Awards telecast for more than a decade.