Eulogy

By Jerry Herman

DAVID MERRICK--the Ziegfeld of the '60s, the Abominable Showman (a description he adored), a boss who scared the pants off this young man whom he had just hired to write the songs for Hello, Dolly! (starring Carol Channing, pictured with Merrick), entering his blood-red office for the first time. A jokester who used rave quotes by ordinary people (who had the same names as the seven Broadway critics of the day) to advertise a flop show of his in a full-page New York Times ad, a loving father, a ladies' man--the dictator who forced me to write Before the Parade Passes By overnight on a tinny hotel piano during a blizzard in Detroit and got it into the show, costumes and sets and all, in three days! A man feared and admired, and maybe the most colorful and successful producer of popular Broadway fare of all time.

Of all the people I have ever worked with, David Merrick understood "entertainment" and dished it out in quantity and in style. Just imagine Gypsy; Fanny; 42nd Street; Promises, Promises; Play It Again, Sam; The Entertainer; Look Back in Anger; Marat/Sade all pouring out of the same slightly mad, stagestruck but ultimately brilliant brain. Just as he devised that colorful finale for the first act of Dolly, his death is the finale of a showmanship we will never know again.

--JERRY HERMAN