Tony Time and, This Year, Broadway Sings : Stage: The Great White Way’s biggest season results in some exciting horse races Sunday night.

Earlier this year, Broadway actress Faith Prince played a mousy, cocaine-sniffing, drug-dealing lesbian who got dragged and booted all over the stage in the musical “Nick & Nora.” For her pains, she wound up with chiropractic bills and a place on the unemployment line when the show flopped miserably. A few months later, she awoke to find herself the toast of the town as Miss Adelaide, the perpetual fiancee, in the acclaimed revival of “Guys and Dolls,” which has been nominated for best revival and seven other Tony nominations, including one for Prince.

The dizzying spectrum is reflected in the other nominees for Broadway’s highest awards, which will be doled out Sunday night in a telecast hosted by Glenn Close beginning at 9 on CBS (Channels 2 and 8). Consider that the nominees for the key award of best musical include both “Crazy for You,” the cheeriest of shows featuring the music of George Gershwin, and William Finn’s “Falsettos,” which ends in an AIDS death.

Both of those shows are hits, but even such turkeys as “Nick & Nora” and “Metro” managed to cop a place among the nominations in the 19 categories for the 46th annual Tony Awards. In past years, when Broadway seemed down for the count, nominees from flop shows weren’t all that unusual. But the news this time around is that Broadway’s biggest season--34 new productions and a record-breaking box-office take exceeding $292 million--has resulted in some real horse races. The trophy for best musical, for example, is widely considered to be up for grabs as are a number of acting awards. Rounding out the musical nominees are “Five Guys Named Moe,” producer Cameron Mackintosh’s musical revue imported from London’s West End, and “Jelly’s Last Jam,” the Gregory Hines vehicle based on the life of composer Jelly Roll Morton.

All this may mean little to those outside the New York-Los Angeles axis who are not that familiar with Broadway theater. But the presence of so many film stars this year not only among the nominees (including Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin, Glenn Close and Larry Fishburne) but also among the presenters (Sigourney Weaver, Gene Hackman, Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett) might mean a larger audience than usual and an invaluable opportunity for producers to hawk their wares.

The telecast does help sell tickets, display talent and even acknowledge excellence. Some Broadway productions need the boost more than others, but no producer is blase about its clout.

“A whole new wave of ticket buying goes on right after the Tony telecast,” says John Hart, one of the producers of “Guys and Dolls.” “What it does is alert the rest of the country to what’s happened on Broadway and some of those people are making their vacation plans for New York.”

While a win in any category will give producers a promotional hook, it’s generally conceded that only the top awards actually get people to the box office.

A best play award for “Dancing at Lughnasa,” the Brian Friel drama about five spinster sisters in rural Ireland in the ‘30s, could mean its survival. “If we don’t win,” says a person close to the production, “we’ll close up shop.”

While the play is a clear favorite to win over John Guare’s “Four Baboons Adoring the Sun,” Richard Nelson’s “Two Shakespearean Actors” and August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running,” one of its eight nominations--for best choreography--demonstrated the perversity that afflicts almost all nominating procedures. Because there is all of about 15 minutes of dance in the play, the nomination raised quite a few eyebrows. So did some of the other selections by the “independent committee of 12 theater professionals” (the description of nominators offered in a press release from the League of American Theatres and Producers and the American Theatre Wing, which presents the awards).

“I think Jessica Lange was robbed,” says Jim McLaughlin, a CBS News producer and Tony voter, complaining about another glaring omission, in this case a snub to the Oscar-winning actress who made her Broadway debut as Blanche DuBois in the critically panned revival of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

One might argue that Lange was the victim of New York theater’s snobbery. After all, the four nominees for best actress in a play are all stage veterans--Jane Alexander (“The Visit”), Stockard Channing (“Four Baboons”), Judith Ivey (“Park Your Car in Harvard Yard”) and Glenn Close (“Death and the Maiden”).

The nominators were certainly more gracious this year to Alan Alda, a onetime Broadway fledgling who went on to television and film fame and then returned to star in Neil Simon’s “Jake’s Women.” Yet Alda is in a neck-and-neck race against Judd Hirsch (“Conversations With My Father”), Alec Baldwin (“A Streetcar Named Desire”) and, particularly, Brian Bedford (“Two Shakespearean Actors”). It’s a tough call but if the 651 Tony voters give the medallion for best actor in a play to Baldwin, it might well be as a reward for giving up a reported $10 million and the starring film roles in “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger” to play Stanley Kowalski opposite Lange.

The category of best actor in a musical was especially overcrowded. In any other year, Spiro Malas, the lead in the nominated revival of “The Most Happy Fella,” would have deservedly copped a nomination, as would have Peter Gallagher who stars as Sky Masterson in “Guys and Dolls.” As it is, both were edged out by Michael Rupert (“Falsettos”), Harry Groener (“Crazy for You”), Nathan Lane (“Guys and Dolls”) and Gregory Hines (“Jelly’s Last Jam”), who is also competing in the category of choreography. Though Hines is the favorite--he has been nominated three times previously but never won--he faces stiff competition.

But even those considered “shoo-ins” aren’t counting on making acceptance speeches come Sunday night. Faith Prince has won virtually every pre-Tony theater award in New York but she says that’s no cause for overconfidence. Her competition includes her co-star Josie de Guzman, Jodi Benson (“Crazy for You”) and Sophie Hayden (“The Most Happy Fella”). Segueing from the biggest flop to the biggest hit of the season has definitely given her, as she says, “a reality check.”

“This is the way the business goes,” says Prince. “One day you’re on top, the next day, you’re on your back. . . . You wait a long time for this moment and then you can’t wait for it to be over.”