[2] He often was his own competition for the Tony Award, and he frequently won multiple nominations and/or wins in the same season.

In 1949, his comedy Clutterbuck was running out of steam, but along with discount tickets, he paged hotel bars and restaurants around Manhattan during cocktail hour for a "fictive Mr. Clutterbuck" as a way of generating name recognition for his production, and it helped his show keep alive for another few months.

Merrick then prepared a newspaper ad featuring the namesakes' rave reviews under the heading "7 Out of 7 Are Ecstatically Unanimous About Subways Are For Sleeping".

Merrick later revealed that he had conceived the ad several years previously, but had not been able to execute it until Brooks Atkinson retired as The New York Times theater critic in 1960 since he could not find anyone with the same name.

But on the morning of August 25, 1980, Champion died of a rare blood cancer, and Merrick announced the news himself to both the cast and the audience at the opening night curtain call.

He established the David Merrick Arts Foundation in 1998 to support the development of American musicals.

[11] He married Etan Aronson (February 24, 1944 - July 26, 2023),[12] a Swedish model and former flight attendant, twice.

[25] An unauthorized biography by Howard Kissel is titled David Merrick: The Abominable Showman (ISBN 978-1-55783-361-7).

", a first-season episode of The Odd Couple, the director of the nude off-Broadway play Bathtub (itself based on Oh!

You'd think Broadway producers would be sensitive enough to do more than just stick mimeographed rejection slips in when they send it back.