- Wrote several books: A Life in the Theatre (1959), In Various Directions (1965), and Tyrone Guthrie on Acting (1971)
- First cousin of American actor Tyrone Power.
- Guthrie was Artistic Director of Canada's Stratford Festival in its inaugural season (1953)
- Won Broadway's 1956 Tony Award as Best Director for Thornton Wilder's "The Matchmaker," part of a nomination shared with Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author: and Christopher Marlowe's "Tamburlaine the Great." He was also twice nominated as Best Director (Dramatic) of plays written by Paddy Chayefsky: in 1960 for "The Tenth Man" and in 1962 for "Gideon."
- He was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1961 Queen's New Year Honours List for his services to drama.
- The one-man play "Guthrie on Guthrie" chronicles his experiences in starting the Stratford Festival in Canada in 1953
- He directed the original Broadway production of Leonard Bernstein's operetta "Candide", in 1956. This version ran only a month, but an original Broadway cast album was made of it, and the album's popularity among musical theatre enthusiasts eventually led to a successful revision of the show in 1973.
- Made his first professional appearance in repertory at the Playhouse, Oxford, England in 1924
- Intrigued with the idea of starting a Shakespeare theatre in a remote Canadian location, he enlisted Tanya Moiseiwitsch to further develop his thrust stage design, successfully improvised in Edinburgh, and actors Alec Guinness and Irene Worth to star in the inaugural production of Richard III. All performances in the first seasons took place in a large tent on the banks of the Avon River. He remained as Artistic Director for three seasons, and his work at Stratford had a strong influence in the development of Canadian theatre.
- He was an English theatrical director instrumental in the founding of the Stratford Festival of Canada, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at his family's ancestral home, Annaghmakerrig, near Newbliss in County Monaghan, Ireland.
- Guthrie's autobiography, A Life in the Theatre, was adapted into a stage play, Guthrie on Guthrie by Margaret Dale. It was produced at the Stratford Festival in 1989, and again at the Glenn Gould Studio in 1998 for recording as an audiobook. Both productions featured Colin Fox as Guthrie.
- In 1963, he founded the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, designed by Ralph Rapson.
- When he returned to Scotland where, with James Bridie in 1948, he staged the first modern adaptation, by Robert Kemp, of Sir David Lyndsay's grand-scale medieval comedy Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis for the Second Edinburgh International Festival; a landmark event in the modern revival of Scottish theatre. Staged in the city's General Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland on the Mound, specially adapted for the occasion, it was here that Guthrie's hallmark thrust stage first proved its full worth.
- Guthrie produced Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore in 1960 and The Pirates of Penzance in 1961, which were televised in Canada and also brought to the Phoenix Theatre in New York and on tour in the US. In 1962, as soon as the Gilbert and Sullivan copyrights expired, he brought these productions to Britain; they soon played at Her Majesty's Theatre and were broadcast by the BBC. They were among the first Savoy opera productions in Britain not authorized by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
- In 1952, he was invited to help launch the Stratford Festival of Canada.
- While in Montreal, Guthrie produced the Romance of Canada series of radio plays for recalling epic moments in Canadian history. The series was broadcast on the Canadian National Railway radio network.
- During 1933-34, and again from 1936-45, he was director of the Shakespeare Repertory Company.
- He was Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast (1963-70). On 15 September 2010, a blue plaque in his memory was unveiled at the BBC in Belfast by the Ulster History Circle.
- He is famous for his original approach to Shakespearean and modern drama.
- In the 1940s Guthrie began to direct operas, to critical acclaim, including a realistic Carmen at Sadler's Wells and the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
- He published a small invitation in 1959 in the drama page of The New York Times soliciting communities' interest and involvement in a resident theater. From that beginning, the Twin Cities was chosen and the Guthrie Theater was established, with construction being completed in 1963. Guthrie served as Artistic Director until 1966, and continued to direct at the theater he founded until 1969, two years before his death.
- Hubert Butler translated the text for Guthrie's 1934 production of Anton Chekhov's Cherry Orchard, for perhaps its first English-language production.
- In 1924 Guthrie joined the BBC as a broadcaster and began to produce plays for radio. This led to a year directing for the stage with the Scottish National Players, before returning to the BBC to become one of the first writers to create plays designed for radio performance.
- His mother was the daughter of Sir William James Tyrone Power, Commissary-General-in-chief of the British Army from 1863 to 1869 and Martha, daughter of Dr. John Moorhead of Annaghmakerrig House and his Philadelphia-born wife, Susan (née Allibone) Humphreys.
- From 1929-33, he directed at various theatres, including the Cambridge Festival Theatre in 1929 and a production of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author at the Westminster Theatre in 1932.
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