David Merrick Biography Quotes 2 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
David Merrick, born David Lee Margulois in St. Louis, Missouri in 1911, emerged from the Midwest with a sharp mind for business and a fascination with the theater. He trained as a lawyer at Washington University in St. Louis and practiced law before gravitating toward show business. The combination of legal discipline and a taste for spectacle would become his hallmark. After relocating to New York, he shifted from legal work to producing, changing his surname to Merrick in the late 1940s as he repositioned himself for a career on Broadway.

Entry into Broadway
Merrick's earliest Broadway efforts in the 1950s showed both his appetite for risk and his knack for showmanship. He found success producing the romantic musical Fanny and the stage drama The World of Suzie Wong, each of which proved he could spot material with broad appeal and guide it through demanding pre-Broadway tryouts. By the decade's end he was producing Destry Rides Again, signaling a determination to compete at the top level of New York theater.

Breakthrough and Major Productions
The late 1950s and 1960s cemented Merrick as one of the most prolific and consequential producers in Broadway history. Gypsy (1959), which he co-produced with Leland Hayward, brought together Ethel Merman with director-choreographer Jerome Robbins, composer Jule Styne, lyricist Stephen Sondheim, and book writer Arthur Laurents. It remains a benchmark of the American musical, and its assembly reflected Merrick's ability to convene formidable creative teams and negotiate the towering personalities that came with them.

With Carnival! (1961), Merrick backed a tender, visually inventive musical that helped introduce Jerry Orbach to Broadway audiences. He also brought Lionel Bart's Oliver! from London to New York, recognizing that a compelling story well told could cross the Atlantic and flourish with American audiences. His most famous juggernaut, Hello, Dolly! (1964), starred Carol Channing and was staged by director-choreographer Gower Champion, with a score by Jerry Herman. The show became a cultural phenomenon and won a then-record number of Tony Awards, its long run fueled by high-profile replacement stars, including Ethel Merman and an all-Black company headed by Pearl Bailey with Cab Calloway.

Merrick did not limit himself to musicals. He produced Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967), bringing a distinctly British, existential wit to Broadway and demonstrating that he could also shepherd intellectually adventurous plays into popular success. His career encompassed both boisterous crowd-pleasers and works that challenged conventional theatergoers.

Methods, Publicity, and the Merrick Persona
Merrick cultivated a reputation for audacity and a willingness to do what others would not. He understood publicity as a creative instrument. For Subways Are for Sleeping (1961), he famously ran an advertisement quoting rave reviews attributed to ordinary New Yorkers who happened to share names with prominent critics, transforming a struggling show into a talking point across the city. He used surprise, humor, and sometimes controversy to command attention, and he became known by the nickname The Abominable Showman, a phrase later used by writer Howard Kissel for a widely read biography.

He was a determined negotiator with unions, stars, and creative collaborators, insisting on high standards and often pushing companies to keep refining in out-of-town tryouts. He could be exacting to the point of ferocious, yet performers and directors frequently returned to his office because he delivered shows that filled houses. Even his misfires were headline-grabbing. The musical adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's, retitled Holly Golightly (1966) and featuring Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Chamberlain, closed in previews after difficult tryouts, but the episode only deepened Broadway's fascination with Merrick's relentless pursuit of a hit.

Working Relationships and Creative Collaborations
Merrick's circle included many of the era's defining artists. He worked repeatedly with Gower Champion, whose elegance as a director-choreographer shaped Carnival! and later returned spectacularly with Hello, Dolly! He produced the Robbins-Styne-Sondheim-Laurents team on Gypsy, whose exacting standards matched his own. He navigated the particular expectations of headliners such as Carol Channing and Ethel Merman, and he drew upon the songwriting of Jerry Herman and the dramatic intelligence of Tom Stoppard. Leland Hayward, a polished impresario in his own right, joined Merrick on Gypsy, exemplifying how even powerful producers could find mutual advantage in collaboration when the project demanded it.

42nd Street and a Late-Career Crescendo
Merrick's most dramatic late-career moment came with 42nd Street (1980), staged by Gower Champion. The backstage musical, with its tap-driven exuberance, captured old Broadway glamour for a new generation and became a colossal hit. The opening night gained a somber, indelible coda when Merrick stepped before the curtain and announced that Champion had died earlier that day. The revelation cast the triumph in a tragic light and also epitomized Merrick's singular command of theater as public event. The production went on to win the Tony Award for Best Musical and reaffirmed his commercial and cultural sway on Broadway well into his late sixties.

Personal Challenges and Later Years
In the early 1980s, Merrick suffered a severe stroke that curtailed his day-to-day involvement in productions. Though his health imposed limits, his name and legacy continued to loom over Broadway producing, and he remained an emblem of what a determined impresario could accomplish. He died in 2000, leaving behind a body of work that spanned midcentury classics and late-century revivals, plays and musicals, flops and smashes alike.

Legacy and Influence
David Merrick altered the template for the Broadway producer. He compounded financial risk-taking with a visceral sense of public appetite, and he treated marketing as an extension of storytelling. By managing star replacements to keep long-runners like Hello, Dolly! fresh, by importing distinctive London successes such as Oliver!, and by pairing powerful artistic teams on shows like Gypsy, he built durable commercial properties while sustaining artistic standards. His instincts were imperfect but fearless; when he failed, he did so conspicuously, and when he succeeded, the results often redefined scale and ambition on Broadway.

Artists who worked with him, from Carol Channing and Ethel Merman to Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, and Gower Champion, testify to the breadth of his reach. Successors in producing learned both from his triumphs and his excesses: the value of shrewd casting, the importance of relentless pre-Broadway development, and the potency of a narrative that extends from the stage to the street. The phrase showman clung to him for good reason. He made Broadway larger than life and, in doing so, helped shape how the American musical and play would be made, sold, and remembered in the second half of the twentieth century.

Our collection contains 2 quotes who is written by David, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Savage.

Other people realated to David: Carol Channing (Actress), Tommy Tune (Dancer)