Russell Morash Introduced How-To Television
Emmy-winning CFA alum created shows like This Old House, The Victory Garden, and The New Yankee Workshop
Russell Morash (CFA’57) studied theater at BU’s College of Fine Arts. After graduating, he was hired as a camera operator by WGBH and soon after became a producer and director. Photo by Vernon Doucette
Russell Morash Introduced How-To Television
Emmy-winning CFA alum created shows like This Old House, The Victory Garden, and The New Yankee Workshop
Television pioneer Russell Morash, who created iconic public television shows like This Old House, The Victory Garden, and The New Yankee Workshop and won armloads of Emmy Awards along the way, died on June 19, 2024. He was 88.
Morash (CFA’57), born and raised in Massachusetts, studied theater at the College of Fine Arts. After graduating from BU, he was hired as a camera operator by WGBH and soon after became a producer and director.
He began working with Julia Child (Hon.’76) when WGBH created what would become her groundbreaking series, The French Chef, in 1963. He later suggested a gardening program, because he wanted “audiences to learn the pleasures and benefits of filling their kitchen tables with vegetables from their own backyards,” according to a 2011 BU Today profile of Morash and his wife, Marian Morash (CFA’59).
He pressed his wife into service as “resident Victory Garden cooking ace, Chef Marian,” according to the profile: “She later penned accompanying cookbooks, was an executive chef on a number of Julia Child programs, ran a restaurant on Nantucket, and turned down the chance to appear on the first 24-hour food network.”
Next came This Old House, an idea inspired by the couple’s renovation of their 19th-century farmhouse. The show debuted in 1979. “People just loved it because there was no such thing,” Morash told BU Today.
This Old House led to the woodworking program, The New Yankee Workshop, which ran until 2009.
The shows were “the absolute precursors and inspiration of all iterations of reality TV,” said Nina Fialkow, a former This Old House producer, in a June 20 WGBH.org tribute.
In a June 24 statement, WGBH called the programs Morash created visionary: “These award-winning shows helped to change the way Americans interacted with television, giving audiences the confidence that they could succeed in the kitchen, and the knowledge they needed in order to tackle their home renovation projects.”
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