Legendary theatre impresario David Merrick, the notorious producer of such Broadway hits as Gypsy, Hello, Dolly! and 42nd Street, died on April 25th in London. He was 88.
By nearly four months, he outlived the theatrical century in which he had a strong hand in shaping. He hired, bullied, and then rehired Broadway's best talents, producing classic American musicals as well as championing controversial dramas from abroad.
He produced more than 80 plays and musicals, winning six Tony awards as well as two special Tonys for his contributions to Broadway and beyond.
The lights were dimmed on Broadway at 8 p.m. on April 26th in his honour. The previous night, the lights dimmed in memory of the April 22nd death of a theatrical rival, New York producer Alexander Cohen.
Although hindered by aphasia and confined to a wheelchair since a stroke in 1983, David Merrick's subdued final curtain call ran counter to every argument, advertising stunt and meaner-than-life story associated with his legend.
After receiving poor reviews for his 1961 musical, Subways Are for Sleeping, he invited people with the same names as the New York critics to see the show. He then took out an advertisement featuring their rave notices and managed to avoid charges of illegality by running postage-stamp sized pictures of his "critics" alongside their comments. When the Herald Tribune realised it had been conned, it pulled the ad. The public loved the stunt and it did the show no harm.
Relishing the role of tyrant, he said "It's not enough that I should succeed - others should fail." 42nd Street was his last big hit, closing in 1989 after nearly 3,500 performances. That show's opening became an instant legend. Director Gower Champion died of cancer hours before the curtain rose. David Merrick kept his death a secret from virtually everyone connected with the production. After the triumphant opening-night finale and curtain call, he announced that Champion had died earlier that day.
David Merrick was born David Margulois in 1912 in St Louis, the youngest of six children born to Samuel and Celia Margulois. After his parents' divorce when he was 10, he was raised by one of his sisters. He once said he tried to see "everything live that came to town".
As a Washington University undergraduate, he won second prize in a playwright contest, outranking such fledgling dramatists as Tennessee Williams. He transferred to St Louis University, where he studied law. He soon left the legal profession for the New York theatre.
In 1940, he invested $5,000 in the play The Male Animal, and the investment returned $20,000. In 1946, he went to work for producer Herman Shumlin as general manager. Although his inaugural producing effort (Clutterbuck) failed, he scored a success five years later with the 1954 musical Fanny.
Receiving mixed notices, Fanny was kept alive and finally successful by Merrick's promotional talents. He commissioned a life-size nude statue of the show's belly dancer that was placed in Central Park opposite a bust of William Shakespeare. These and other gimmicks helped Fanny coast to a happy 888-performance run.
He scored again with Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker. In 1965 he turned it into a musical and it became an enormous popular success as Hello, Dolly!
In the same year he supervised the Broadway premiere of Peter Weiss's modern classic Marat/Sade, as well as the sex comedy Cactus Flower. Throughout the 1960s he introduced American audiences to early works by Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) and Brian Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come!
The closing of his last big hit, 42nd Street in 1989, signalled the end of an era. Increasingly during his lifetime, Broadway tastes began to favour the British megamusical. Producing consortiums had become more common and solo acts of his type began to look out of place.
Producer Robert Whitehead, a contemporary of David Merrick's, credits his tenacious and often riotous promotional gifts with "contributing something in the air today - that sense of how many different ways there are to sell tickets."
Whitehead was outmanoeuvered by David Merrick more than once. "He was not a beloved competitor, but he was a skilful one. I don't know if he was ever a very happy person. That sense of competition badgered him. I once went on a radio show with him and I remember he seemed devastated that I was being complimentary."
David Merrick married six times, twice to the same woman. His fourth wife, Karen Prunczik, played Anytime Annie in the original 42nd Street.
In 1989, Natalie Lloyd, his lawyer's receptionist, became his livein companion. They were married in November 1999. David Merrick is survived by two daughters from previous marriages, Cecilia Anne and Marguerite.
David Merrick: born 1912; died April, 2000