NEW YORK — Liz McCann, the pioneering and prolific Broadway producer who won nine Tony Awards for hits including “Amadeus” in 1980 and “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?” by Edward Albee in 2002, has died at age 90.
Her Thursday death at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx followed a bout with cancer, her longtime friend and associate Kristen Luciana confirmed.
“Liz was such a formidable force of nature in so many ways,” Luciana, who started working with McCann as an assistant straight out of college and later became her associate producer, told the Daily News.
“Obviously she pioneered the way for a lot of women. But Liz was so much more than a great female Broadway producer. She was a great Broadway producer, full stop,” Luciana said.
Born Elizabeth Ireland McCann on March 29, 1931, to Scottish immigrant parents living in Manhattan, McCann said her parents’ flair for storytelling sparked what would become her unshakable passion for theater.
Long before she became known up and down the Great White Way by the mononym “Liz,” she graduated from Manhattanville College in 1952, earned a master’s degree in English literature from Columbia University and got her first industry job as an assistant for Proscenium Productions, based at the Cherry Lane Theater.
She later earned a law degree at Fordham, but her interest in theater never waned
Her big Broadway break came in 1967, when she was hired as managing director by influential theater owner James Nederlander.
While working with Nederlander, she met her future professional partner Nelle Nugent. Together, the women founded their own general management and production firm, McCann & Nugent, the launching pad for a dizzying string of Tony-winning shows.
Their first major project, the 1977 staging of “Dracula” starring Frank Langella, won Tonys for best revival and best costume design.
Tonys for “Elephant Man” in 1979, “Morning’s At Seven” in 1980, “Amadeus” in 1980 and “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby” in 1981 soon followed.
McCann and Nugent worked with the best and brightest, staging a production of “Night of Day” starring Maggie Smith and “The Glass Menagerie” starring Jessica Tandy and Amanda Plummer.
In 1993, McCann produced Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Three Tall Women,” a huge success that paved the way for their collaboration on Albee’s 2002 Tony Award-winning drama “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?”
“The Goat,” which starred Bill Pullman and Merceds Ruehl, was Albee’s first best play Tony in 30 years. It later starred Sally Field and Bill Irwin.
McCann and Albee also worked together on the 2005 revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, starring Irwin and Kathleen Turner.
McCann’s survivors include cousins in Ohio and the partners, friends and fans she collected throughout her decadeslong career.
“I stopped working for her in 2016, but we developed a close friendship. She was essentially like an adoptive grandmother to me,” Luciana told The News.
Funeral arrangements organized by Crestwood Funeral Home in Manhattan are due to include a mass at St. Paul the Apostle.
———
