NEW YORK -- David Merrick presents.
In the 1950s and '60s and beyond, those three words above the title were enough to make things happen on Broadway. Usually a hit.Today, in an age when many Broadway plays have more producers than actors or else are financed by faceless corporations, the idiosyncratic, individual producer is practically extinct. Merrick, who died Tuesday at 88, was the last of the showman producers.
"He really understood the word 'entertainment' like nobody else I have ever worked with," said Jerry Herman, who wrote the score for one of Merrick's biggest hits, "Hello, Dolly!" "He had an odd combination of gifts -- he was tough and he had taste. He truly was the greatest producer of the old-fashioned musical."
Merrick's genius was in putting people together to create shows and then making sure the public knew about them. He wasn't above bringing the latest London smash such as "Oliver!" or "Becket" to Broadway, but his talent was in hiring the best people available.
"David knew exactly what he wanted -- and then did what he had to to get it," said Gerald Schoenfeld, chairman of the Shubert Organization, Broadway's largest theater owner. "He didn't care if anyone liked him."
For "Dolly," Merrick found Herman, a young kid just coming off the success of "Milk and Honey," to write the score for a musical version of Thorton Wilder's "The Matchmaker," a hit play Merrick also had produced.
Merrick was a great publicist, both for his shows and for himself. What's more, he had a presence.
It was a fact this reporter learned first hand four years ago when meeting Merrick for the first time -- in a dimly lighted second-floor dining room at Sardi's.
Disabled by a stroke and struggling to speak more than a few syllables at a time, Merrick was there to publicize what was to be his last show, "State Fair."
As aides scurried around to interpret what he was trying to say, he was still a presence. A dapper man, with a trim mustache and piercing dark eyes. The man commanded attention by saying nothing at all.
MERRICK'S SHOWS: David Merrick produced some of Broadway's most memorable shows, including the following:
"Fanny," 1954
"The Matchmaker," 1955
"Look Back in Anger," 1957
"Romanoff & Juliet," 1957
"The World of Suzie Wong," 1958
"Destry Rides Again," 1959
"Gypsy," 1959
"Take Me Along," 1959
"Irma La Douce," 1960
"A Taste of Honey," 1960
"Becket," 1960
"Do Re Mi," 1960
"Carnival," 1961
"Sunday in New York," 1961
"I Can Get It For You Wholesale," 1962
"Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off," 1962
"Oliver!" 1962
"Luther," 1962
"110 in the Shade," 1963
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next," 1963
"Hello, Dolly!" 1964
"The Roar of the Greasepaint -- The Smell of the Crowd," 1965
"Cactus Flower," 1965
"Marat Sade," 1965
"Philadelphia, Here I Come," 1966
"Don't Drink the Water," 1966
"I Do! I Do!" 1966
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," 1967
"Promises, Promises," 1968
"Forty Carats," 1968
"Child's Play," 1970
"Sugar," 1972
"Travesties," 1975
"Very Good Eddie," 1975
"42nd Street," 1980
"State Fair," 1996