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Russell Albion "Russ" Meyer (March 21, 1922 – September 18, 2004) was an American motion picture director and photographer.

History

Meyer was born in San Leandro, California. He made a number of amateur films at the age of 15, and worked during World War II as a U.S. Army combat cameraman. Upon returning to civilian life, he became a glamour photographer, and found himself working for Hugh Hefner's newly launched Playboy magazine.

From here, he became a director of nudie films. His films are more ribaldry than erotica or pornography, and generally star women with large breasts. His later films are almost entirely devoted to this vision; his discoveries include Kitten Natividad and Uschi Digard. He co-wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls with film critic Roger Ebert. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is usually considered to be his greatest, or at least his most idiosyncratic, picture. Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, his final film proper (1979), is considered his funniest.

Meyer was known for his quick wit. While participating with Roger Ebert in a panel discussion at Yale University, he was confronted by an angry woman who accused him of being "nothing but a breast man." His immediate reply: "That's only the half of it."

Russ Meyer was also adept at mocking moral stereotypes and actively lampooning conservative American values. Many of his films feature a narrator who attempts to give the audience a "moral roadmap" of what they are watching. Those who dismiss it for being didactic or sexist miss the satire. Meyer's art is a polished example of the venerable Menippean satire, a difficult genre to define -- roughly, it combines disparate forms such as prose and verse, theatre and film (think Lavonia and Semper Fidelis making love in heroic couplets or Kitten Natividad as the Greek Chorus in Up!), sacred and profane (biblical references and softcore sex), all of the time maintaining a healthy disregard for all forms of authority: religious/moral, legal, political, and last but not least, the authority of the established aesthetic tradition.

Meyer died at his home in the Hollywood Hills, of complications of pneumonia and dementia, on September 18, 2004. Meyer's grave is located at Stockton Rural Cemetery *, Stockton, San Joaquin County, California.

Meyer was married to:

Contrary to some accounts, Meyer was never married to his frequent star, Kitten Natividad.

Selected filmography

External links

1922 births | 2004 deaths | American film directors | American film producers | Breast fetishism | American World War II veterans | United States Army soldiers | Entertainers who died in their 80s | English-language film directors

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