Russell Morash, a public tv producer and director who helped flip a cookbook writer, Julia Baby, into America’s chef and reworked rest room tile alternative and roof restore into addictive TV with “This Outdated Home,” died on June 19 in Harmony, Mass. He was 88.
His demise, in a hospital, was confirmed by his spouse, Marian Morash, who stated the trigger was a mind hemorrhage.
Hailed because the “father of how-to tv” by the Nationwide Academy of Tv Arts & Sciences, which gave him a lifetime achievement Emmy Award in 2014, Mr. Morash helped usher within the D.I.Y. period with the enduring educational exhibits that he helped create for the Boston PBS station WGBH.
“The French Chef,” which debuted in 1963, with Mr. Morash as director and producer, and which grew to become Ms. Baby’s car to mass-market fame, modified the best way American’s thought of meals together with her distinctly American strategy to French cooking. And “This Outdated Home” proved an instantaneous hit in 1979, and stays a scores powerhouse after 45 years. As of final yr, the present and a sister present, “Ask This Outdated Home,” collectively had acquired 20 Emmy Awards and 119 Emmy nominations.
Lengthy earlier than the Meals Community, HGTV and different retailers created a how-to revolution on cable, Mr. Morash seized on the concept craftspeople with no tv expertise might change into stars of the small display screen by sharing their insider ideas and insights.
“This Outdated Home,” for instance, made family names of Bob Vila, who beforehand ran a house renovation enterprise, and Norm Abram, a carpenter whom Mr. Morash had initially employed to construct a workshop in his yard in Lexington, Mass.
“Crockett’s Victory Backyard” debuted in 1975 with James Underwood Crockett, an writer of gardening books, because the host. The present additionally featured Mr. Morash’s spouse, a self-taught prepare dinner, whipping up veggie delights from the backyard. The present was refashioned as “The Victory Backyard” after Mr. Crockett’s demise in 1979.
“He was very expert in getting the perfect out of peculiar individuals,” Henry Becton, a former president of WGBH, stated of Mr. Morash in an interview.
By way of sheer affect, no discovery might rival that of Ms. Baby, a geyser of persona with a fluttering soprano seemingly made for Lincoln Middle. Certainly, she later grew to become the topic of a 1989 opera, “Bon Appétit!,” and of memorable parodies.
However there was no indication that she would change into an establishment of the airwaves when she was invited in 1962 to look as a visitor on a WGBH guide present known as “I’ve Been Studying,” to debate her new cookbook, “Mastering the Artwork of French Cooking,” which might go on to have a seismic affect on the meals panorama.
As Mr. Morash recalled within the WGBH interview, “The telephone rang one afternoon, and this lady I’d describe as having the voice someplace between Eleanor Roosevelt and Tallulah Bankhead, plus a few packs of Marlboros a day, stated — demanded, actually — that she have a scorching plate on the studying program.”
On air, Ms. Baby started beating eggs in a large copper bowl. “I assumed to myself: Who is that this madwoman cooking an omelet on a book-review program?” Mr. Morash recalled.
The station employed her for 26 segments at $50 apiece, and “The French Chef” ended up working for a decade.
That present, nevertheless, was solely the beginning for Mr. Morash.
Russell Frederick Morash Jr. was born on Feb. 11, 1936, in Boston, one among three youngsters of Russell Sr., who was a part of a protracted line of carpenters and builders, and Naomi (Lingley) Morash, a secretary.
In his youth, Russ discovered carpentry expertise whereas helping his father, however grew to become fascinated about theater whereas engaged on productions at Lexington Excessive Faculty.
After graduating from Boston College in 1957 with a level in theater, he set his sights on a profession as a stage director. However he turned down a job as an assistant stage supervisor in New York to stay within the Boston space to be with Marian Fichtner, whom he married in 1958. He quickly took a job as a digital camera operator at WGBH, and inside a yr was directing and producing.
His personal appreciable handyman expertise helped encourage “This Outdated Home,” an idea that grew out of the restoration that he and his spouse have been doing on their 1851 farmhouse in Lexington.
“We have been met with a whole lot of disbelief amongst my pals and acquaintances — ‘What’s a tv producer doing fixing up his personal home and doing the work on his personal?’” he stated in a 2016 interview with Yankee Journal. “It triggered in my thoughts the notion that if perhaps sufficient individuals could be fascinated about that concept, we’d make a sequence about it.”
The unique idea was to buy a house, repair it up and promote it for a revenue. For the primary season, Mr. Morash scraped up sufficient cash for a mortgage on a Victorian home within the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester that required in depth renovation work.
A Boston Globe reporter was tapped to be the host of the pilot, which by no means aired, though station executives didn’t suppose she had the proper digital camera presence. “However the man who was doing the work,” Mr. Morash stated, referring to Mr. Vila, “he might actually come by means of the digital camera. The connection between him and the viewers actually got here alive.”
The station barely broke even on the sale, nevertheless it scarcely mattered: “This Outdated Home” set native scores information for WGBH and have become a bonanza nationally.
One purpose for its preliminary reputation was the general shortage of how-to data. “Nobody was going to show you tips on how to sq. a board or tips on how to lower drywall, not to mention tips on how to solder a pipe or wire a fuse,” Mr. Morash, who retired from WGBH in 2004, stated in a 2021 video interview. “There was no web in these days, no YouTube.”
After the pilot, the present modified its format, sending out its crew to experience to the rescue of anxious owners dealing with daunting repairs. “This Outdated Home” thus created a successful method later adopted by many cable exhibits, together with HGTV’s “Love It or Record It” and Bravo’s “Shopping for It Blind.”
Mr. Vila left the present in 1989 and have become a one-man house enchancment franchise, with celeb device endorsement offers and a number of renovation exhibits of his personal.
“This Outdated Home,” too, grew right into a franchise, with Mr. Morash producing and directing spinoff exhibits like “Ask This Outdated Home” and “The New Yankee Workshop,” which starred Mr. Abram.
Along with his spouse, he’s survived by his daughters, Victoria Evarts and Kate Cohen; 5 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Whereas “This Outdated Home” grew to become a tv establishment, Mr. Morash later recalled his father’s preliminary skepticism that viewers would have any curiosity in tradespeople beavering away with claw hammers and round saws.
“I stated, ‘Dad, I’m not asking them to cite Shakespeare,” he stated in a 2009 interview with Boston journal. “I need them to inform me, in their very own method, tips on how to lay an oak ground.”
