Russell Albion Meyer March 21, β September 18, was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer , and editor. He is known primarily for writing and directing a series of successful sexploitation films that featured campy humor, sly satire and large-breasted women, such as Faster, Pussycat! When he was 14 years old, his mother pawned her wedding ring in order to buy him an 8 mm film camera. Army combat cameraman for the th Signal Photo Company, ultimately attaining the rank of technician third grade equivalent to staff sergeant.
In the Army Meyer forged his strongest friendships, and he would later ask many of his fellow combat cameramen to work on his films. On his return to civilian life, he was unable to secure cinematography work in Hollywood due to a lack of industry connections. He made industrial films , freelanced as a still photographer for mainstream films including Giant , and became a well-known glamour photographer whose work included some of the initial shoots for Hugh Hefner 's Playboy magazine.
Meyer would go on to shoot three Playboy centerfolds during the magazine's early years, including one of his then-wife Eve Meyer in He also shot a pictorial of then-wife Edy Williams in March Meyer was the cinematographer for the Pete DeCenzie film French Peep Show , and the Samuel Newman production, The Desperate Women , among the few Hollywood films to depict a woman dying from an illegal abortion in preβ Roe v.
Wade America, [ 7 ] the original version of which is believed lost. His first feature, the naughty comedy The Immoral Mr.
Russ Meyer was an auteur who wrote, directed, edited, photographed and distributed all his own films. He was able to finance each new film from the proceeds of the earlier ones, and became very wealthy in the process. This starred Meyer's wife Eve and Anthony-James Ryan, both of whom would be crucial to the production of Meyer's films.
