Nine-time Tony-winning producer Elizabeth McCann died Thursday in the Bronx. McCann, who presented more than 60 New York productions, was born March 29, 1931, in Manhattan. At 14, she saw her first Broadway show, Cyrano de Bergerac, and was hooked on theater. She earned a bachelor’s from Manhattanville College (1952) and master’s from Columbia (1954), but was frustrated with her lack of advancement after a decade in theater administration, so she earned a law degree from Fordham (1966).
She briefly worked for a Manhattan firm, but soon returned to theater production as managing director of the Nederlander Organization, where she met Nelle Nugent. The two women co-founded a general management firm in 1976. The following year, they began producing. Their first show, Dracula (1977), brought them a Tony. They repeated that feat each of the next four years with the plays The Elephant Man (1979), Morning’s at Seven (1980), Amadeus (1981), and Nicholas Nickleby (1982).
Their first musical was the 1984 Off-Broadway revival of Pacific Overtures. Their second was the original Broadway production of Leader of the Pack (1985), which earned them a Tony nomination. Below are Patrick Cassidy, Dinah Manoff, and company at the 1985 Tonys. The show’s investors sued after the show failed to recoup its investment, but a federal jury found McCann and Nugent not guilty of fraud. Later that year, though, the partnership ended, shortly after they opened the musical revue Tango Argento.
During the following decade, McCann met disappointment with the short-lived Broadway revue Flamenco Puro (1986) and musical Nick & Nora (1991) but saw success Off-Broadway with the Pulitzer-winning play Three Tall Women (1994). She rebounded on Broadway with Tony-winning productions of the plays A View from the Bridge (1998), Copenhagen (2000), and The Goat (2002). In the early 2000s, McCann also produced six Tony Awards telecasts, three of which won Emmys.
In the late 2000s, she produced her last two Broadway musicals: the original Passing Strange (2008), which brought her a Tony nomination, and a revival of Hair (2009), which earned McCann her final Tony Award. Below are Stew, Daniel Breaker, de’Adre Aziza, and Passing Strange company at the 2008 Tonys, and Gavin Creel and the Hair company at the 2009 Tonys.
McCann’s last producing credit was the play Hangmen, which had been scheduled to open March 19, 2020, on Broadway but closed because of the pandemic. Below is Linda Winer’s 2002 interview with McCann for the League of Professional Theatre Women’s “Women in Theatre” series.