Background
Walton was born in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England.
Walton was born in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England.
The film"s star, Diana Ross chose Walton to design the stage set for her landmark 1983 Central Park concert, "Foreign One & Foreign All".
He began his career in 1957 with the stage design for Noël Coward"s Broadway production of Conversation Piece. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s he designed for the New York and London stage. He entered motion pictures as costume designer and visual consultant for Mary Poppins in 1964, for which he received an Oscar nomination.
His awards include an Oscar for All That Jazz in 1980 and an Emmy for the acclaimed 1985 television version of Death of a Salesman.
He has received many Oscar, Emmy and other nominations, including British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominations for costume and set design for Murder on the Orient Express in 1975 and Oscar nominations for both costume design and set direction/art direction for the motion picture version of The Wiz in 1979. Broadcast worldwide on the Showtime cable network, the concert special, over the course of two days, featured an on-site audience of over 1,200,000 on the park"s Great Lawn.
In December 2005, for their annual birthday celebration to "The Master", The Noël Coward Society invited Walton as the guest celebrity to lay flowers in front of Coward"s statue at New York"s Gershwin Theatre, thereby commemorating the 106th birthday of Sir Noël. More recently, Walton has diversified into directing, with productions of:
Orson Welles" Moby Dick—Rehearsed, 2005
Oscar Wilde"s The Importance of Being Earnest, 1996
Noël Coward In Two Keys, 1996
George Bernard Shaw"s Major Barbara, 1997
Missing Footage, 1999
Ooops! The Big Apple Circus Stage Show, 1999
Where"s Charley?, 2004
After the Ball, 2004
Busker Alley, 2006
Walton gave the Sherman Brothers the insight and inspiration for the Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree songs as is explained in the Sherman Brothers" joint autobiography, Walt"s Time:.