NEW YORK — David Merrick, Broadway's most successful producer, whose flair for showmanship and publicity helped create such hits as "Gypsy," "Hello, Dolly!" and "42nd Street" has died. He was 88.
Merrick, who suffered a stroke in the early '80s that severely affected his speech and forced him to use a wheelchair, died early Tuesday in London, according to a statement released here Wednesday by the David Merrick Arts Foundation.
Merrick produced more than 80 plays or musicals on Broadway, including such shows as "Oliver!," "Carnival," "Fanny," "Look Back in Anger," "Becket," "Irma La Douce," "Play It Again, Sam," "A Taste of Honey," "Stop the World — I Want to Get Off," "Cactus Flower," "Philadelphia, Here I Come," "Forty Carats," "I Do! I Do!" and "Promises, Promises."
During Merrick's heyday in the late 1950s and 1960s, the producer reportedly grossed $20 million annually, earning some $2 million a year in salary from his hits. His productions have won countless Tony Awards — "Hello, Dolly!" alone picked up 10 Tonys in 1964 — as well as other theater prizes, including the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and London's Olivier Award.
"I'll do anything to sell my plays," Merrick once said — and he did.
The producer knew how to sell tickets to his shows, subscribing to the theory that any publicity was good for the box office.
He once placed a monkey at the wheel of English taxicab with a sign on the side of the vehicle proclaiming, "I am driving my master to see 'The Matchmaker.' " The cab was controlled by a driver hidden in the back seat by a curtain.
In 1954, "Fanny," a musical which starred Ezio Pinza and Walter Slezak, was Merrick's first big success. The reviews were largely negative, but the producer got a two-year run out of the show through heavy advertising — in such faraway places as the French Riviera — and a series of stunts that kept it in the news. Among his gimmicks: He placed a life-size nude statue of the musical's belly dancer in Central Park.
Even Merrick's feuds with actors in his shows helped sell tickets.
The producer battled regularly with Jackie Gleason who starred in the musical "Take Me Along." He also fought with Anna Maria Alberghetti, star of "Carnival," who reportedly hung his photograph in the bathroom of her dressing room.
One of Merrick's most famous stunts involved the musical "Subways Are for Sleeping," which received tepid notices from the critics. Undeterred, Merrick took a newspaper ad with rave quotes from seven men who just happened to have the same names as the critics for New York's seven daily newspapers. The advertisement ran in one edition of the New York Herald-Tribune before it was noticed — and then yanked.
"I never wanted to be an actor," he once said. "I would prefer to be a playwright, but I don't have the talent. So, being stage-struck, I put on the other fellow's plays."