David Merrick is the most astonishing showman of our time, and perhaps of all time. No other producer, not even Florenz Ziegfeld nor the combined lights of the Shubert brothers, has equalled his percentage of hits or his demonic flair for publicity. In this first-ever biography, Howard Kissel from his decade-long investigation reveals the man, the mask, and the myth of David Merrick. The charismatic and reclusive mogul emerges as a Broadway version of Howard Hughes, with his own panoply of eccentricities, genius and neuroses. Merrick's much publicized and oftentimes staged battles and feuds are re-ignited here full force with such major personalities as Barbra Streisand, Jackie Gleason, Ethel Merman, Lena Horne, Woody Allen, Peter Ustinov, Andy Griffith, Anthony Newley, Peter Brook, and Carol Channing. Over a hundred interviews with the major players in Merrick's drama - from his pre-Merrick St. Louis childhood as David Margoulies to his latest divorce - has yielded the first serious interrogation of a life that until now has been the sole creation of Merrick's own invention and press wizardry.
Publishers Weekly,The chief theater critic for the New York Daily News has written a frank portrait of Broadway's most famous producer, a man as renowned for his outrageous behavior and sharp business practices as for the string of hits that began in 1954 with Fanny , continued through the '60s and '70s with Gypsy , Hello, Dolly! and prestigious British imports like Marat/Sade and climaxed in 1980 with the lavish stage version of 42nd Street , which ran for nine years. As documented in his source notes, Kissel has talked to most of Merrick's associates, whose comments scathingly depict him as cruel to subordinates, contemptuous of the artists who created his shows and awful to his many wives. The book is not gratuitously mean, however; Kissel admires Merrick's taste and promotional skills and argues convincingly that his difficult personality stemmed from his extremely unhappy Midwestern childhood. His story is also a social history in miniature of the changing American theater, showing the decline of the middle-class, middlebrow audience that supported Merrick's productions and the rise of nonprofit theaters in which, as one playwright remarks, ``No one can make a living except the administrators.'' Virtually inactive since a debilitating stroke in 1983, Merrick remains the standard against which all commercial producers measure themselves. No theater buff will want to miss this strong--and by no means entirely unsympathetic--biography. Photos not seen by PW . (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
