(2 of 10)
Healing & Dealing. Yet somehow, beset with profit fever, talent anemia, labor pains, galloping costitis and an acute customer deficiency, the Fabulous Invalid staggers into her spurious finery every fall. And somehow she manages to last the winter. If a cure is possible, Merrick has not found it. Yet in a spectacular series of operations that involve both healing and dealing, cutting throats and cauterizing abuses, he has contrived to keep the patient above-ground and to generate a genuine hope that U.S. theater can eventually get back on its-well, anyway, on its two left feet. That hope, David Merrick believes, lies in David Merrick.
With demonic determination, Merrick has established himself as the great master of theatrical mass production. Since 1954, he has presented 37 commercial shows on Broadway. Other producers have been more prolific; Roger Stevens and his associates turned out about 100 shows in 14 years. But to the horror of his rivals-who keep insisting that theater is an art because they don't know how to run it as a business-Merrick has produced 22 moneymakers and eleven smash hits. On an investment of $7,000,000, Merrick has grossed $115 million and shown a net projected profit of $14 million. In recent years he has regularly employed more than 600 people-about 20% of the theater's total employed labor force. Operating on such a scale, he has cut production costs and in general checked the flight of angels, actors, authors and audiences to the mass media. "Let's face it," he smerricks. "I am the greatest theatrical producer who ever lived!"
Not everybody agrees. "Merrick is not the right doctor for this Invalid," says a producer. "He's a quack who's got the patient hooked on drugs." Merrick's critics-a cast of thousands-ad mit that what can be done by industrial methods, he does well: the package is attractive, the contents safe-but unoriginal. "The man's not creative," a director says. "He's a packager and an importer." .All but four (The Matchmaker, Maria Golovin, Milk Train, I Was Dancing) of the 19 Merrick shows that originated in America were musicals or comedies with more Merrick than merit in them; the others were imported from England or France.
Destination Sickness. Merrick's supporters reply that his energy and enterprise have transported to the U.S. many of the most important dramas of England's new Elizabethans. Furthermore, they contend that Merrick's angles and bangles and broad Broadway way have revived the allure of live theater for thousands who had come to think that actors are just people who live in a tube. And finally, they add defiantly, Merrick is far more than a show-off showman. If his vaulting ambitions do not o'erleap, he may even be remembered as a considerable theatrical re former, a man who with one sudden brainstorm built up a new creative tide in the U.S. theater.