Word: merricks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Storybook Child. TIME Correspondent Frank Merrick met in Dwight last week with Oughton and one of Diana's sisters, Carol, 26, who now lives in Washington. At first, Jim Oughton was remarkably composed for a father who had just learned that his eldest child had been blown apart. He told of her storybook childhood, of how she became a good horsewoman and swimmer, played a social game of tennis, studied piano and the flute. Her father remembers Diana as "independent in her thinking. She always had her own ideas, and they were sound ideas." About what? "A picture...
Speaking of theater critics, his least favorite people, David Merrick once snapped: "I want people to stop swallowing the pap these mediocrities are churning out." But as a prosecution witness in the obscenity trial of the raunchy off-Broadway sex-and-protest farce Che!, the Broadway tycoon churned out some pretty potent criticism of his own: "Patently offensive, vulgar, lewd and very dull." Playwright Lennox Raphael, in Merrick's view, "had no talent whatsoever and should seek vocational guidance...
...YOUVE wondered, why haven't you heard of Take Me Along before? The answer lies in the facts of the original 1958 production. The show's producer at that time was none other than David Merrick, who then, as now, conceived of musicals as a kind of vaudeville show tailored for big stars. In Take Me Along's case, Merrick's original choice of a star was Anthony Perkins (in the role of Richard). Perkins, however, took another offer (Frank Loesser's Greenwillow), and Jackie Gleason was hired to star instead, in the role...
...nice) rouser that Gleason could handle. A weak director was hired and the libretto's somber tinge was submerged in fireworks. The show ran for a year, but had another producer (such as Hal Prince, whose West Side Story had revolutionized the Broadway musical the year before) besides Merrick done it. Take Me Along's life would surely have been much longer. (It is interesting to note that co-author Stein went on to write two great serious musicals, Fiddler on the Roof and Zorba, for Prince...
...unlike Merrick, George Birnbaum has had the sense-and the guts-to rely on the booze in Take Me Along and not the pizzazz. Isn't it nice to know that there's a director around here with more integrity than Broadway's most successful showman...