Tony Rosenthal was born August 9, 1914 in Highland Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. After attending sculpture classes at The Art Institute of Chicago in the early 1930s, he attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, graduating with a B.A. in 1936. He also studied with Archipenko in Chicago that year, and in 1939 attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he studied with Carl Milles.