Word: merricks
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...have flaws," gloats the nasty duke in The Thirteen Clocks, "and mine is being wicked." Thurber might have written the line to be spoken by David Merrick, the most consistently successful producer on Broadway. For something over a decade, Merrick. now 49, has thrown himself with glee into the passionate pursuit of two goals-turning out shows and making enemies. There is no reliable head-count of the showman's enemies, but Merrick has had 20 shows on Broadway since 1954, and 15 of them qualify as hits. No other producer, including Mike Todd, Flo Ziegfeld or the Shuberts...
This season Merrick has two of his old shows on the road (Destry Rides Again and La Plume de Ma Tante), one Broadway holdover (Gypsy), four new hits (A Taste of Honey, Irma La Douce, Do Re Mi and Becket) and one miss (Vintage )60). In all, his 20 shows have cost $4,000,000 to produce, grossed $40 million and repaid $8,000,000 to their angels, including Merrick. Says the producer, who sometimes talks in sporting terms although he is in no sense a sport: "I'm rolling a hot pair of dice...
Grace, Meet Fanny. The regularity with which Merrick racks up hits goads critics and competitors to talk of "mass production" and "supermarketeering." But his "packages" (Merrick's own ad-speak) invariably contain the best that money can option, and he is an excellent judge of show material. His only criterion for picking a show, he says, is entertainment value; yet he is capable of producing a drama such as Becket, whose expense is as high as its quality and whose entertainment is largely cerebral. Such sleaziness as Suzie Wong and such vulgar overproductions as Gypsy are balanced, surprisingly often...
Apart from his talent for picking good material and good talent, he knows how to keep alive shows that are too sickly (or, occasionally, too good) to attract audiences by themselves. His own best flack, Merrick uses up pressagents like paper towels. For Clutterbuck, his first show, he had "Mr. Clutterbuck" paged in Manhattan's busiest hotels. For the benefit of the 1,600 newsmen boring themselves to death at Princess Grace's wedding, Merrick skywrote above Monaco, WHEN IN NEW YORK, SEE "FANNY." Some of his schemes are ordinary (he scattered sawdust and cowboys under the Destry...
Bring Back Brooks. A lot of people on Broadway or in the press would gladly slap Merrick's face without fee. Sad-eyed, baby-complexioned, with a well-trimmed mustache and an equally well-trimmed smile, Merrick dotes on the acrimony that has earned him the nickname, The Abominable Showman (he says he hates the tag, but wears it like a five-carat stickpin). He keeps the feuds alive by spraying insults like flu germs. Of competing Producer Roger Stevens, he says: "I deliberately bid on bad plays, hoping he'll buy them. He'll hear...