“Obviously she pioneered the way for a lot of women,” McCann’s longtime friend and associate Kristen Luciana told the Daily News. “But Liz was so much more than a great female Broadway producer. She was a great Broadway producer—full stop.”

McCann rose to prominence as one half of McCann & Nugent Productions, a company she formed with Nelle Nugent in 1976. Together they produced a string of critically acclaimed hits including Amadeus (1981), Dracula (1977), and The Elephant Man (1979).

“The theater is a male-oriented world,” McCann told The New York Times Magazine in 1981. “And, sure, we’re women. I just don’t think of producing as being a problem for a woman. I think, essentially, the theater is desperate for success and product and ideas. Therefore, I don’t think anybody cares as much where those things come from as they think they care.”

Those ideas and what Playbill called McCann’s “taste for serious dramas” undoubtedly gave rise to her relationship with lauded playwright Edward Albee. She produced three of his works: the Pulitzer Prize-winning Three Tall Women, The Play About the Baby, and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, which won the 2002 Tony Award for best play.

“Every once in a while, a playwright will be lucky enough to run into a producer who is crazy—who is willing to take chances, who feels that a producer’s responsibility is to find work you think really should be seen, to whom financial concern is not the main adventure,” Albee said of McCann in 2004. “The main adventure is trying to get plays on.”

Discovering the ‘Magic’ of Broadway

McCann was born in New York City on March 29, 1931, the only child of Patrick and Rebecca McCann, who had immigrated to New York from Scotland. She grew up in Manhattan’s Garment District, not at all far from what would become her second home: the Theater District. Despite this proximity, McCann did not harbor a childhood love of theater. Her father, who worked as a subway motorman, and her mother, a housewife, weren’t “wildly interested in culture,” McCann told the Times.

In fact, she was forced, all but kicking and screaming, to attend a theater production when she was 14 or 15. The show was Cyrano de Bergerac starring José Ferrer. Her cousin had an extra ticket, and McCann’s mother made her go.

“That was it,” McCann shared in a CUNY-TV interview. “It was just magic. From then on, I wanted to see theater. Now, that took some saving up of allowances to … buy a $3 seat, but that just blew me away, that production.”

McCann attended Manhatanville College and, upon graduating in 1952 considered a few options, none of which included a career in the theater. “I could get married, I could become a nun, or I could become a business rep for the telephone company,” she told the Times. “Since neither God nor man seemed determined to take me for his bride, I settled on the telephone company.”

Ultimately though, a chance meeting with a nun at Manhattanville led her to abandon that plan, according to Madeline Felix, FCLC ’08, who worked with McCann as an undergraduate at Fordham. McCann became her mentor, and the two remained close friends until McCann’s passing.

During a series of unpublished oral history interviews, McCann told Felix that “the telephone companies were loaded with Irish Catholic girls from colleges” back then, so, since she didn’t really know what she wanted to do, that “seemed a good bet.”

“Finally, the day came for my interview with the telephone company, and I was rushing to it when a nun on campus stopped me,” McCann told Felix. “I told her I was going to my interview, and she said, ‘Are you actually thinking of working for the telephone company? … That strikes me as a thoroughly boring thing to do.’ … I never went to the interview.”

Instead, thinking of becoming a drama teacher, McCann pursued a master’s degree in English literature at Columbia University.

Fordham Law: A Surprising Theater Level-Up

When McCann graduated from Columbia two years later, she began working as an unpaid intern at Proscenium Productions, based at Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. Unsatisfied with the theater gigs she’d secured thus far, McCann believed that if she got a law degree, she could practice theatrical law.

She enrolled at Fordham Law, graduated in 1966, and passed the New York bar exam. After practicing law for about a year, James Nederlander hired her to be managing director of his newly acquired Palace Theater. McCann later joked that Nederlander’s own unrealized dream of becoming a lawyer and his respect for strong, no-nonsense women who reminded him of his mother were both ticks in her favor.

It turned out to be a fateful hire. Nugent worked for Nederlander as well, and in 1976, the two women struck out on their own, forming their now-legendary production company in the old Paramount Building on Broadway. From 1978 to 1982, their productions earned five back-to-back Tony Awards: Dracula, The Elephant Man, Morning’s at Seven, Amadeus, and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. And McCann’s partnerships with other producers earned her four more Tony Awards: for The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?; Copenhagen, a play about physicists and the development of the atomic bomb; and revivals of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge and the musical Hair.

Her latest producing effort, Hangmen, never officially opened. Its previews had just wrapped in early 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic forced a Broadway shutdown that’s only recently been lifted.

Offering the Next Generation a Leg Up

McCann was known for her willingness to nurture up-and-coming talent and mentor students interested in theater—including Fordham alumni John Johnson, FCLC ’02, now a multiple Tony Award-winning producer in his own right; and Frank DiLella, FCLC ’06, host of Spectrum News NY1’s On Stage. Her position as managing producer of the Tony Awards show—and her lasting friendship with Larry Sacharow, former director of the Fordham Theatre program who directed two of McCann’s Albee productions: Three Tall Women and Beckett/Albee—afforded her plenty of opportunity to do so.

In a 2014 interview with Fordham Magazine, Johnson, who began working with McCann when he was an undergraduate and collaborated with her on the 2009 revival of Hair, referred to her as a “third grandmother” who gave him “priceless” career advice during the decade or so he worked with her.

“She basically gave me the base of my career in terms of the knowledge that I needed for it, whether it was how to know how to read a box office statement or a wrap report, all the way to how she interacted with artists and creatives … with stagehands and crew members,” Johnson said upon McCann’s passing.

“She essentially shattered the glass ceiling of Broadway,” he added, stressing that McCann and Nugent’s refusal to be “pushed aside” has given every subsequent producer the opportunity “to stand on those shoulders.”

“It’s an incredible, incredible impact,” he said.

A funeral Mass was held for McCann on Monday, September 13, at the Church of Saint Paul the Apostle, across the street from Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. A recording of the Mass is available online.

From Intern to Executive Producer

In recent years, Johnson has emerged as one of Broadway’s most successful producers. He has a five-year winning streak on the line, having won a total of seven Tonys since 2013.

He got his start in the business as an intern for Joey Parnes Productions during his junior year at Fordham, when he helped coordinate the annual Tony Awards show. It was then that he met Fordham alumna and legendary Broadway producer Elizabeth McCann, LAW ’66, who became a mentor to him.

“For the 10 years that I was in an office with her, Liz gave me this really broad perspective about the business,” he told FORDHAM magazine in 2014. “What she taught me, as a theater producer and as a human being, was priceless. She’s like my third grandmother.”

A Return to Roots

If Washington wins next month, it will be his second Tony Award. He won the Tony for Best Leading Actor in 2010 for his role in Fences, a role he reprised in the 2016 film adaptation he directed and co-produced.

In mid-April, he returned to the Lincoln Center campus, where he surprised students and filmed an interview for CBS Sunday Morning.

New York Times critic Ben Brantley has praised Washington’s “center-of-gravity performance” in Eugene O’Neill’s “behemoth barroom tragedy,” The Iceman Cometh. For the Oscar- and Tony-winning star, the role marks a return to his roots. In December 1975, he made his New York stage debut in a Fordham Theatre production of another O’Neill play.

“You know, my first role on stage, when I was a student at Fordham, was in The Emperor Jones,” he recently told the Times. “I’ve always loved O’Neill, and here I am, 40 years later, coming back to him in Iceman.”

Washington and Johnson are not the only ones with Fordham ties among this year’s Tony Award nominees. Christine Jones, who held Fordham’s Denzel Washington Chair in Theatre in 2013, is up for a Tony for Best Scenic Design of a Play for her work on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

The 72nd Annual Tony Awards will be held on June 10 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

On Sunday night, he and his fellow producers took home two Tonys: for Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge (best revival of a play) and for The Humans (best play). Johnson served as an executive producer of both productions.

In recent years, the Fordham Theatre alumnus has emerged as one of Broadway’s most prolific producers. He got his start as an intern for Joey Parnes Productions during his junior year at Fordham, when he helped coordinate the annual Tony Awards show. It was then that he met Fordham alumna and legendary Broadway producer Elizabeth McCann, LAW ’66, who became a mentor to him. McCann has earned 19 nominations and nine Tony awards in her five-decade career, including one for the 1998 revival of A View from the Bridge. Now, just 14 years after graduating from Fordham, Johnson is quickly catching up: He has received a total of 11 nominations and six Tony awards.

This season was especially fruitful for Johnson, who served as a producer of four other Tony-nominated productions: the revivals of The Crucible and Blackbird, and Bright Star and Shuffle Along in the best musical category—won by Broadway sensation Hamilton.

But even after another year of successes, Johnson is not one to rest on his laurels.

“Every year you are doing a new set of shows that present challenges in terms of how to sell tickets, how to establish an audience, how to work with the artists,” he told FORDHAM magazine in 2014. “There’s no getting to that place where we can kick back and have some cocktails and just rake in the money.”

You were still a student when you started working with Broadway producer Elizabeth McCann, LAW ’66. How did that happen?

Larry Sacharow [former director of the Fordham Theatre Program]was my adviser. He said, “If you want to be working in the business of theater, you need to work with Liz McCann.” She is a legend and has blazed so many trails for so many people. For the 10 years that I was in an office with her, Liz gave me this really broad perspective about the business. What she taught me, as a theater producer and as a human being, was priceless. She’s like my third grandmother.

Does success bring its own set of challenges?

Every year you are doing a new set of shows that present challenges in terms of how to sell tickets, how to establish an audience, how to work with the artists. The challenge for A Gentleman’s Guide now is how do we keep the spotlight on us as the sort of reigning champ? There’s no getting to that place where we can kick back and have some cocktails and just rake in the money.

Have theatergoers’ interests changed since you’ve been in the business?

They’ve definitely gotten smarter. The amount of content that we are producing is a lot. People have a big range of options. Normally there would be one or two A-list stars that would come to Broadway in a half-season. Now, this half-season alone, it’s Hugh Jackman, Bradley Cooper, Glenn Close, James Earl Jones. You don’t need to be an industry insider to hear about what’s happening so early on with a show anymore.

Is there a bigger risk with producing an original show versus a revival?

Oh, always. Original shows like A Gentleman’s Guide or Vanya and Sonia come with higher risk, but they also come with a reward, that you get to participate in the life of this show. At the same time, we did A Raisin in the Sun with Denzel Washington (FCLC ’77), and that was a huge success. If you have a known title or a known star, it helps build the machine easier.

What qualities should a successful producer possess?

A certain amount of levelheadedness and confidence. Even with an amazing director, an amazing design team, amazing writers, amazing actors, the producer has to be the one at the end of the day that says, “We’re going to do this show. I know we have to work on this, but we’ve got to do it.” So you have to be a risk taker.

How do you get a show from script to Broadway?

Obviously the goal for a lot of people is Broadway, but there are also many shows that don’t go to Broadway and have a great life in the regional theater circuit or in Chicago or off-Broadway. There’s no exact formula to it, and I think that’s what makes it exciting, because you can’t predict it.

What do you have in the works?

We have This Is Our Youth and A Delicate Balance. We’re working on Larry David’s Fish in the Dark, a play that he wrote and he’s going to star in. Then a production of David Hare’s Skylight with Bill Nighy and Carey Mulligan, the Gentleman’s Guide tour, and hopefully some other things I wish I could tell you about.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Rachel Buttner.

– Rachel Buttner