Gordon Merrick

William Gordon Merrick was born on 3 August 1916 in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. His father, Rodney King Merrick, began his career managing a truck company before transitioning to bank management. His mother, Mary Cartwright Gordon, was born on 26 July 1893 in Natchez, Mississippi. Merrick had one sibling, an older brother named Samuel, and both brothers were great-grandsons of the Philadelphia philanthropist Samuel Vaughn Merrick (1801–1870).

Merrick entered Princeton University in 1936, where he studied French literature and participated in campus theater productions. He left Princeton during his junior year and relocated to New York City to pursue acting. His Broadway career spanned from 1927 to 1939 and included appearances in the musicals Funny Face and Follow Thru, as well as the productions The American Way and The Man Who Came to Dinner, in which he played the role of Richard Stanley. The latter production was written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. During this period, Merrick became romantically involved with Hart for a time before growing disenchanted with the repetitive demands of stage performance.

In 1941, Merrick left Broadway to work as a journalist. Disqualified from military service due to hearing problems, he took a position with the Washington Star in Washington, D.C., subsequently worked for the Baltimore Sun, and later wrote for the New York Post. His years in journalism shaped both his affinity for writing and his prose style. Despite his draft exemption, Merrick sought a way to contribute to the war effort and secured a position with the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime intelligence agency that preceded the Central Intelligence Agency. He was deployed to Algeria as a counter-intelligence officer, attaining the civilian rank of captain. His fluency in French led the OSS to provide him with papers identifying him as a French citizen, and he was subsequently stationed in Cannes, France, where he served as case officer for a double agent known by the code name "Forest."

After returning to the United States in August 1945, Merrick was unable to find work as a reporter and traveled to Mexico, where he began writing fiction. His first novel, The Strumpet Wind, was published in 1947 and met with success in the United States. The semi-autobiographical work centers on a gay American spy operating in France during World War II and explores themes of individual liberty and freedom, with homosexual content present but not foregrounded. With the proceeds from that book, Merrick moved to France and later to Greece, continuing to write. He published three additional novels during the 1950s, though none matched the commercial success of his debut.

In 1960, Merrick settled on the Greek island of Hydra. A decade later, he published The Lord Won't Mind, which became his best-known work and appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List for sixteen weeks in 1970. The novel follows Charlie Mills and Peter Martin, two young men who fall in love, tracing Charlie's journey from a closeted existence toward self-acceptance against the pressures of a controlling, moralistic grandmother. The book became the first installment of a trilogy, followed by One for the Gods in 1971 and Forth into Light in 1974. A film adaptation of the trilogy has been in development since 2004, with screenplays written and revised by Renatus Töpke and later John Bernstein, and director and producer Sven J. Matten seeking financing as of 2018.

In total, Merrick authored thirteen books and contributed reviews and articles to publications including The New Republic and Ikonos. His work is credited as among the first to address homosexual themes for a mass readership. Critics have both praised and challenged his fiction, with some noting his emphasis on physical beauty and others identifying progressive conceptualizations of gay identity and self-actualization beneath the surface of his narratives.

In 1956, while in Paris, Merrick met Charles Gerard Hulse, an American dancer and actor born on 26 March 1929 in Arkansas, who was then twenty-seven years old. The two began living together the following year. Hulse spent four years in Marin County, California, working as a dance instructor before returning to Paris in 1960 to be with Merrick, and the two remained together for the rest of Merrick's life. Merrick died of lung cancer on 27 March 1988 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, at the age of seventy-one. He was survived by Hulse, his partner of twenty-nine years, as well as his brother and nephews.