The Merrick Connection Revisited
In my popular 2017 article “ Israel, Manson, and Vampirism: The Freaky Life of Laurence Merrick ”, I discussed the intriguing figure of IDF veteran, Zionist activist, stage and film director, and actors’ school proprietor Zev (or Zeev or Zehev) Lahav, who switched his name to the less ethnically obtrusive Laurence Merrick at some point after moving to California in an apparent bid to liken himself to a well-known Broadway producer, David Merrick [1]. He was also one of the founders of Independent Screen Producers, Inc., a distribution exchange “covering the 13 Western states and wholly owned by the producers.” [2] Serving as a human dot connecting Sharon Tate and the Manson Family, Merrick is surprisingly little-known – which, in itself, is worthy of note. Five years ago, with a cursory search, I was able to find comparatively little information on the Israeli enigma, but some interesting additional tidbits have come to my attention since then, perhaps justifying a second look. Born ...