David Merrick

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David Merrick (November 27, 1911 – April 25, 2000) was an American theatrical producer and director, associated with both musicals and dramas, brilliant successes and embarrassing flops. Although he was nicknamed "The Indomitable Showman", an unauthorized biography by Howard Kissel was less flatteringly titled David Merrick: The Abominable Showman (ISBN 1557833613).

Born David Lee Margulois (or Margulies) in St. Louis, Missouri, he graduated from Washington University then studied law at the Jesuit-run University of St. Louis Law School. In 1940 he left his legal career behind to become a theatrical producer.

Merrick was known for his love of publicity stunts; one of his most famous promoted the 1961 musical Subways Are For Sleeping. Merrick found seven New Yorkers who had the same names as the city's seven leading theater critics: Howard Taubman, Walter Kerr, John Chapman, John McClain, Richard Watts, Norman Nadel, and Robert Coleman. Merrick invited the seven namesakes to the musical and secured their permission to use their names and pictures in an advertisement alongside quotes such as "One of the few great musical comedies of the last thirty years" and "A fabulous musical. I love it." Merrick then prepared a newspaper ad featuring the namesakes' rave reviews under the heading "7 Out of 7 Are Ecstatically Unanimous About Subways Are for Sleeping". Only one newspaper (the New York Herald Tribune) published the ad, and only in one edition; however, the publicity that the ad garnered helped the musical remain open for 205 performances (almost six months). Merrick later said that he had conceived the ad several years before, but had not been able to execute it until after Brooks Atkinson retired as the New York Times theater critic in 1960; he could not find anyone else named Brooks Atkinson (see [1]).

Merrick married six times, as follows:

Lenore Beck
Jeanne Gibson in 1963
Etan Aronson in 1969
Karen Prunczik in 1982
(remarried) Etan Aronson in 1983
Natalie Lloyd in 1999

Merrick was married to Lloyd at the time of his death; all of his previous marriages had ended in divorce. It is not clear if he had sired any children by any of his marriages.

In 1980, director Gower Champion had died of a rare blood cancer the day of the opening (August 25, 1980) of 42nd Street, and Merrick kept his death secret so he could announce it himself at the final opening-night curtain.

He suffered a stroke in 1983, which confined him to a wheelchair. He established the David Merrick Arts Foundation in 1998 to support the development of American musicals. He died in London, England on April 25, 2000, at the age of 88 from natural causes, apparently estranged from his most recent wife, Natalie Lloyd Merrick.

In 2001 David Merrick was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

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