The Hot Dice

"We all have flaws," gloats the nasty duke in The Thirteen Clocks, "and mine is being wicked." Thurber might have written the line to be spoken by David Merrick, the most consistently successful producer on Broadway. For something over a decade, Merrick. now 49, has thrown himself with glee into the passionate pursuit of two goals--turning out shows and making enemies. There is no reliable head-count of the showman's enemies, but Merrick has had 20 shows on Broadway since 1954, and 15 of them qualify as hits. No other producer, including Mike Todd, Flo Ziegfeld or the Shuberts, ever approached this record in a similar period of time.

This season Merrick has two of his old shows on the road (Destry Rides Again and La Plume de Ma Tante), one Broadway holdover (Gypsy), four new hits (A Taste of Honey, Irma La Douce, Do Re Mi and Becket) and one miss (Vintage )60). In all, his 20 shows have cost $4,000,000 to produce, grossed $40 million and repaid $8,000,000 to their angels, including Merrick. Says the producer, who sometimes talks in sporting terms although he is in no sense a sport: "I'm rolling a hot pair of dice."

Grace, Meet Fanny. The regularity with which Merrick racks up hits goads critics and competitors to talk of "mass production" and "supermarketeering." But his "packages" (Merrick's own ad-speak) invariably contain the best that money can option, and he is an excellent judge of show material. His only criterion for picking a show, he says, is entertainment value; yet he is capable of producing a drama such as Becket, whose expense is as high as its quality and whose entertainment is largely cerebral. Such sleaziness as Suzie Wong and such vulgar overproductions as Gypsy are balanced, surprisingly often, by a worthy and hopelessly unsalable show such as Menotti's opera, Maria Golovin. He can haggle with a star over $15, more or less, to be paid a dresser, yet he is often liberal with authors' advances. He is widely celebrated as Broadway's biggest s.o.b. since the heyday of Jed Harris, but he has the respect of many professionals from Josh Logan to Garson Kanin, and his steady, money-making backers think he is a major prophet.

Apart from his talent for picking good material and good talent, he knows how to keep alive shows that are too sickly (or, occasionally, too good) to attract audiences by themselves. His own best flack, Merrick uses up pressagents like paper towels. For Clutterbuck, his first show, he had "Mr. Clutterbuck" paged in Manhattan's busiest hotels. For the benefit of the 1,600 newsmen boring themselves to death at Princess Grace's wedding, Merrick skywrote above Monaco, WHEN IN NEW YORK, SEE "FANNY." Some of his schemes are ordinary (he scattered sawdust and cowboys under the Destry marquee), and some are bizarre; this week he plans to send half a dozen men about Manhattan wearing berets and carrying green pissoirs plastered with red signs for Irma La Douce. His most publicized feat occurred when Look Back in Anger seemed tottery and Merrick paid a dizzy young woman $250 to climb up over the footlights and slap Actor Kenneth Haigh's face because, she screamed, he was such a mean man. (Merrick tells the story well, and undoubtedly it actually happened. But a listener finds himself mentally handicapping everything the producer says. The feeling arises that there may be, say, a 15% chance that the girl whacked Haigh in utter sincerity, and that Merrick merely uses the incident to embellish his reputation for villainous craftiness.)

Bring Back Brooks. A lot of people on Broadway or in the press would gladly slap Merrick's face without fee. Sad-eyed, baby-complexioned, with a well-trimmed mustache and an equally well-trimmed smile, Merrick dotes on the acrimony that has earned him the nickname, The Abominable Showman (he says he hates the tag, but wears it like a five-carat stickpin). He keeps the feuds alive by spraying insults like flu germs. Of competing Producer Roger Stevens, he says: "I deliberately bid on bad plays, hoping he'll buy them. He'll hear I'm interested in some British turkey and he'll grab it. I think that's fun."

He invariably tries to browbeat the press, claims he once persuaded the New York World-Telegram to delete an unfavorable section from a review. Critics, with the rarest of exceptions, he denounces as uncreative "hacks." Merrick particularly professes to despise Walter Kerr of the New York Herald Tribune (Kerr reacts, says Merrick, only when his wife Jean nudges him), John McCarten of The New Yorker (whom he banned from his last opening), Louis Kronenberger of TIME, and the New York Times's Howard Taubman--who, says Merrick grinning at his own maliciousness, "needs vocational guidance." Two weeks ago, he tried to persuade the Times to print an ad pleading, "Bring back Brooks Atkinson." He also pipe-schemes to send critics only one ticket each, forcing them to leave their wives home, and to fill the seats next to them with well-proportioned starlets. But, he says, he will sit next to Taubman himself, helpfully holding a flashlight for note taking.

Long Way from St. Louis. His publicized hates may amuse him, and they certainly fill seats, but they also carry a sour note of genuineness; he is an authentic loner. Merrick grew up in St. Louis, where he was born David Margulois, the son of a haberdasher. His early life scarcely shows the mark of fate, except on the occasion when he played hooky from Central High School to see a movie and the school was wrecked by a tornado in the meantime (five of his classmates were killed). At various times during his schooling, he caddied and sold millinery; after college he practiced law unenthusiastically for seven years. Then, with the help of money inherited by his wife (they are now separated), he headed for Broadway. Merrick travels constantly (tourist class) in search of shows and maintains a Manhattan apartment, but seems to feel really at home only in the theaters that house his shows. On April 13 it will be Broadway's Imperial Theater, where Carnival, his new musical, will open and he will happily play the ungracious host. Later, if Jean has nudged Walter often enough and Howard has enjoyed himself, Merrick may leave to celebrate. Quite possibly he will order a plate of knackwurst, as he sometimes does in a gesture of crocodile sentiment toward the city he despises, and reflect that it is, indeed, a long way from St. Louis.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.