Russell Merritt

1941 - 2023

Russell Merritt
August 31, 1941 - March 3, 2023
Russell Merritt passed away on March 3, 2023 in Oakland, California, at the age of 81. He was born on August 31, 1941 in Ridgewood, New Jersey to Daniel Merritt and Joyce Bullard Merritt. He is survived by his beloved wife, Karen, and adored sister, Carole Merritt Nichols.
Russell was a life force. An extraordinary teacher and film scholar full of enthusiasm and curiosity, his passion, deep knowledge and eloquence touched family and friends around the world. A superb researcher, writer and speaker, he carried his knowledge with grace and shared it generously.
He grew up with his sister, Carole, in Packanack Lake, New Jersey, then moved with his family to Greenwich, Connecticut. In his teens, he made his first movie. Sometimes he played hooky from Greenwich High School to join film enthusiasts in New York City. His kindred passion for mysteries and Sherlock Holmes led him to the ultimate Holmes society, the Baker Street Irregulars. He became its youngest member in 1958, known to fellow Sherlockians as "the Trepoff Murder."
Russell's induction into academia began as a freshman at Boston University in 1959. From 1960-61, he developed and broadcast a weekly radio show, Books Alive, over WBUR-FM in Boston and wrote and produced mysteries for the station. In 1961, he transferred to Northwestern University. He helped make a Chicago documentary, Good Night, Socrates, for which he was awarded a summer at UCLA with funds for making his own short film, Time of the Horn. He earned his BA in English from Northwestern in 1963. His belief that a strong English literature program would be the best education for a career in film studies led him next to Harvard University. While there, he not only began his long list of film studies publications, he persuaded some fellow graduate students to contribute to and appear in a short movie, The Drones Must Die, a comic-noir take on a graduate student's view of the faculty. He received his Harvard Ph.D. in English in 1970; his dissertation was entitled, The Impact of D.W. Griffith Motion Pictures from 1908 to 1914 on Contemporary American Culture. By 1968, he had begun building his career in the Communication Arts Department at the University of Wisconsin, where he started the program in film studies. He rose from Assistant to Associate to full Professor, while guiding both undergraduate and graduate students and adding to his growing list of lectures and articles on an ever-widening range of film and related topics. In Spring 1973 he was a visiting professor in the Speech Department at the University of Iowa. From 1982-1985, he directed the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research where he attracted a range of film and television collections. In 1984, he produced the first episode of a planned television series, D.W. Griffith Directs the Great War, which aired on WHA-TV in Madison. His interest in the original settings for silent movies led to a 1975 collaboration with the Madison Ballet Company to present the Eric Satie Dada ballet Relache with a Rene Clair movie, Entr'acte, screened between acts one and two. He also made his first foray into recreating the kind of nickelodeon program an American movie-goer might have seen in 1910.
Russell and Karen began their 52-year adventure in married life on October 3, 1970 in Madison.
In 1986, Russell and Karen moved to Oakland, California. Russell taught film courses at UC Berkeley, the University of Southern California, Stanford University, and San Francisco State University, while continuing to add to his research publications. In 2006, he was formally appointed to a visiting professorship in the Rhetoric and Film Studies Department at UC Berkeley, joining a group of vibrant colleagues and valued friends. The Bay Area offered a cornucopia of treasures for the film lover, from festivals to theaters specializing in historical and international film to film-making facilities where he finally finished The Drones Must Die in 1988. He served as a consultant for programs at San Francisco's Goethe Institute and Istituto Italiano di Cultura, was a juror for art film selections at the San Francisco Film Festival, and an expert witness for the Walt Disney Company. In 1992-3, he was a senior consultant on the Emmy-nominated D.W. Griffith: Father of Film, co-written by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, and produced by American Masters and Thames Television. His special and enduring joy arose from his association with dear colleagues at UC Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive. Over the years, he would contribute to their rich programming with lectures and curatorship of film series. His participation in recent years in the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) was a valued outcome of these activities.
The year 1986 saw the beginning of another affiliation that remained close to his heart for the rest of his life. Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Italy, was in the early years of becoming the world's premier silent film festival. It opened a new international network of colleagues with a shared passion, many of whom became dearest friends, including Livio Jacob and Piera Patat. They and their colleagues at the Cineteca di Friuli in Gemona continue to be the engine that powers the Giornate. Of all the treasures arising from those happy years, two are books published by the Giornate and Cineteca. Walt in Wonderland: the Silent Films of Walt Disney (1992) and Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies: a Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series (2006) were both co-authored by Russell Merritt and J.B.Kaufman. Drawn together by their love for early Walt Disney animation and silent movies, Russell and J.B. counted Pordenone as a second home. Walt in Wonderland went on to win the Krazner-Krause Book Award for 1993's "best book on the moving image," while the Society for Animation Studies gave it the Norman McLaren prize for "the best book on animation for 1993-94." In 2018, Russell was honored to receive the Gionate del Cinema Muto's Jean Mitry award "to individuals and institutions who have distinguished themselves in the work of recovering and enhancing film heritage."
In 1996, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's first program thrilled Russell: here was a nearby organization dedicated to showing these films as they were meant to be seen on the big screen, with quality prints and live musical accompaniment. The highlight of a rich relationship came in 2014-15, when Russell joined forces with Festival Board President Rob Byrne to bring back to life the 1916 William Gillette film of his legendary stage play and starring role, Sherlock Holmes. Long thought to be lost, the film was rediscovered in the vaults of the Cinematheque Francaise. Two years later, Russell and Rob co-produced the restoration of another "lost" film, the 1929 German Hund von Baskerville (Hound of the Baskervilles) premiered at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in 2018. Russell took great pride in becoming a member of the Festival Board in 2014.
Drawing on Oakland and San Francisco's deep sources of talent, Russell produced and directed a unique contribution to recreating the original setting for silent movies: The Great Nickelodeon Show. This 90-minute recreation of turn-of-the-century film exhibition featured vaudeville acts, sing-along songs with vintage slides, and an illustrated lecture. A piano accompanied the interspersed silent movies. Premiering in 2000 at UC Berkeley's Wheeler Auditorium, the Nickelodeon went on to appear at the Telluride Film Festival, TCM Classic Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, the Giornate del Cinema Muto, the Pacific Film Archive, Emory University and other venues.
Beginning in 2009, Russell eagerly became a volunteer San Francisco City Guide, leading walks of local folks and tourists through the Castro district and sharing its remarkable history. He also led delighted groups through the historic Castro Theater which so many film festivals called home. In 2017, the Denver Silent Film Festival honored Russell with the David Shepard Lifetime Achievement Award, named for a close colleague and dear friend.
Celebrating his long investiture as a Sherlockian, Russell renewed his Sherlock Holmes adventures, beginning with membership in the Scowrers/Mollie Maguires and later the Knights of the Gnomen. With articles for the Baker Street Journal and talks as far as New York, Minneapolis and Toronto, Russell was invited to become the first American keynote speaker for the London Sherlock Holmes Annual Dinner of 2015, held in the House of Commons dining room. Starting in 2020, the rise of communication via Zoom made possible participation with Baker Street Irregular groups in Hawaii and Austin, Texas. His last presentations were heard, literally, around the world.
A memorial for Russell is planned to be held this spring. In lieu of flowers, if you would like to honor Russell with a donation, please consider the Pacific Film Archive, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival or the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.