Russell Morash, a behind-the-scenes presence on public television who made Julia Child a celebrity chef and created the fix-it show “This Old House,” prototypes of an enduringly popular TV genre that has inspired millions of viewers to don an apron or tool belt with a do-it-yourself gusto, died June 19 at a hospital in Concord, Mass. He was 88.
The cause was a brain hemorrhage, said his wife Marian Morash.
Mr. Morash, the son of a carpenter, was widely regarded as the godfather of how-to television. Hired at WGBH in Boston in the late 1950s, he became a producer and director and discovered the talents of future stars, including Child, whom he brought to the air in all her exuberance with “The French Chef” in 1963.
Mr. Morash, a struggling gardener, drew on his own mishaps, including a groundhog in his broccoli field, to create the show that evolved into “The Victory Garden,” which debuted in 1975 starring horticulturist James Underwood Crockett and educated audiences in the art of cultivating vegetables, fruits and flowers.
Four years later, Mr. Morash handyman Bob Vila on the air as the original host of “This Old House,” a ratings giant that according to PBS was “TV’s original do-it-yourself show.”
Today, there are entire cable channels, including Food Network and HGTV, dedicated to satisfying the food cravings in the kitchen and solving the problems many viewers are afraid to solve for themselves.
Mr. Morash “was a pioneer in the whole genre of do-it-yourself lifestyle television,” says Ron Simon, chief curator of the Paley Center for Media in New York City. Mr. Morash, he added, had a special talent for drawing viewers to the screen — and then sending them off to try what they had learned.
Mr. Morash’s shows not only taught viewers how to roast and stew, how to combat root rot and how to install wainscoting, but also tapped into a fundamental human curiosity, one that begins in childhood and never wanes for many people: how things work.
“Most of us live our lives without ever seeing anything beyond our cars, our homes, our buildings and grounds, even our meals,” Mr. Morash told the New York Times in 1999. “We get a gift. We come home at night and write a check.”
He recalled that at one point in his career, his father worked as a carpenter for a company that made optical systems. During lunch breaks, physicists and rocket scientists would gather in his shop for advice on home repairs. “My God,” Mr. Morash recalled his father exclaiming, “these men and women with such educations come to me!”
In his work in television, Mr. Morash rightly felt that viewers would flock to TV pundits, just as his father’s colleagues had turned to him.
Mr. Morash gave Child a regular spot on TV after seeing her promote her opus, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, on a book show. With a voice he described as “somewhere between Eleanor Roosevelt and Tallulah Bankhead plus a couple of packs of Marlboros a day,” he was sure she would be a hit. Over the years, until her death in 2004, Child became perhaps the most celebrated TV chef of her generation.
Before “This Old House” debuted, “the words ‘do it yourself’ hadn’t been coined,” Mr. Morash told Boston Magazine in 2009. “People didn’t have power tools, they didn’t do their own repairs. They hired people.”
For the show’s first season, WGBH restored an old Victorian home in Dorchester, Massachusetts, revealing to viewers the potential of homes that at first glance appear to be in need of demolition. “This Old House” hooked fans who followed the hammering and pounding of a renovation to finally experience the glory.
Mr. Morash, who has received a slew of Emmys as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, told an interviewer that he was “thrilled” that his shows were being imitated in their modern cable broadcasts, which, he noted, are much more intensively produced than his own.
He and his colleagues worked on a limited budget and avoided interruptions and cuts wherever possible. They watched as the show “just came together,” he said.
“I’m not doing the third act of Hamlet,” Mr. Morash joked to the Times. “Just ask these professionals to tell us what they’re doing and what they’re thinking about when they’re doing it.”
Russell Frederick Morash Jr. was born on February 11, 1936, in Boston and grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts. His mother was a housewife and later a secretary. His father was his first instructor in home improvement.
Mr. Morash became involved in the dramatic arts in high school and studied theater at Boston University, graduating in 1957. He turned down an offer to work as an assistant stage manager on a Samuel Beckett play in New York to remain in Boston with his future wife, whom he married in 1958.
According to her story, Mr. Morash walked into WGBH and got a job as a cameraman, pushing around what he described as “one of those refrigerator-sized cameras.” Soon after, he began directing and producing — “which was really his personality,” Marian Morash said — and never stopped.
In his first years at the station, despite his limited knowledge of French, he oversaw the foreign language education program “Parlons Francais.” He soon showed his versatility, working on a children’s program, a public affairs program and a series he co-produced with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called “MIT Science Reporter.”
He turned to his signature DIY program, his wife said, because of his annoyance with the state of his yard. She remembered him saying, “You know, what we need is a gardening show – so I can learn, and maybe other people would like to learn too.”
Marian Morash, cookbook author and James Beard Award-winning chef, worked closely in her husband’s career. She worked with Child as her chef and also appeared on ‘The Victory Garden’ in segments that taught viewers how to cook what they had. grown.
In addition to his wife, the former Marian Fichtner of Lexington, survivors include two daughters, Victoria Evarts of Concord and Kate Cohen of Lexington; a twin brother; a sister; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
The later shows of Mr. Morash include “The New Yankee Workshop”, with master carpenter Norm Abram. He never lost the belief, his wife said, that “people like to know things, just like he liked to know things.”
He also hoped, he said, that his programs could help keep peace in households where television helped them in the kitchen, in the garden and at the workbench.
“Men and women look together,” Mr. Morash told the Times, “and compare their homes to the ones we show and resolve their differences over renovation projects. We hope to settle the differences.”
