Russ Meyer

At 82 years old, Russ Meyer physical status not available right now. We will update Russ Meyer's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Russell Albion Meyer (March 21, 1922 – September 18, 2004) was an American film producer, screenwriter, film producer, film producer, camera photographer, and photographer.

Meyer is best known for writing and directing a line of hit sex films starring campy humor, sly satire, and large-breasted women, such as Faster, Pussycat.

Kill!

Kill!

Early years

Russ Meyer was born in San Leandro, California, the son of Lydia Lucinda (Hauck) and William Arthur Meyer, an Oakland police officer. Both his parents were of German descent. Meyer's parents divorced soon after he was born, and Meyer was to have virtually no contact with his father at any time during his lifetime. His mother pawned her wedding ring in order to buy him an 8-megapixel film camera when he was 14 years old. He made a number of amateur films before starting WWII as a US Army combat cameraman for the 166th Signal Photo Company, eventually earning the rank of staff sergeant.

Meyer created his best friendships in the Army, and he would later request many of his fellow combat cameramen to assist him in his films. In newsreels and the film Patton (1970), Meyer's work during World War II can be seen.

He was unable to find cinematography work in Hollywood on his return to civilian life due to a lack of corporate links. He made commercial films, freelanced as a still photographer for mainstream films (including Giant), and became a well-known glamour photographer whose portfolio included some of the first shoots for Hugh Hefner's Playboy magazine. During the magazine's early years, Meyer would shoot three Playboy centerfolds, including one of his then-wife Eve Meyer in 1955. In March 1973, he shot a pictorial of then-wife Edy Williams.

Personal and family life

Meyer found out that Meyer was a virgin during World War II, and he met Ernest Hemingway, who reportedly gave him the prostitute of his choice. Meyer selected the one with the most breasts.

Despite his fame, Meyer never used the casting couch during his career's peak years, though that did change during his post- 1980 unfinished projects, and no one of his actors had sex with him. He had no children, though there were rumors of miscarriages with Edy Williams and his last serious girlfriend, Melissa Mounds, who was also found guilty of assaulting him in 1999. Among his closest friends and at least one biographer, he had a son in 1964 with a mystery woman who he would only describe as "Miss Mattress" or "Janet Buxton."

Meyer was very upfront about how being too selfish to be a father or even a loving partner or husband. Despite this, he is also said to have been extremely generous with all his relatives and acquaintances, but not ever isolated friends from one another. The bulk of his brutish and eccentric appearance was attributed to his father's abandonment by his father, an Oakland police officer, and coddled by his mother, Lydia, who was married six times. Lucinda, Meyer's half-sister, was diagnosed with neuropathic schizophrenia in her 20s and was transferred to California State mental institutions until her death in 1999. He had a mental disorder in his family, and it was something he feared. Russ Meyer's mother and sister were always treated with the utmost respect throughout his life.

Meyer was married to:

Meyer, on some accounts, was never married to Kitten Natividad, his longtime companion and actor of his last two films.

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Film career

Meyer was the cinematographer for the 1950 Pete DeCenzie film The Desolent Women and the 1954 Samuel Newman film The Desperate Women were among the few Hollywood films to portray a woman dying from an illegal abortion in pre-Roe vs. Wade America, which is believed to have been lost.

Meyer's first film, The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959), cost $24,000 to produce and ultimately brought in more than $1.5 million on the independent/exploitation circuit, enthroning Meyer as "King of the Nudies." It is regarded as one of the first nudie cuties.

Russ Meyer was an auteur who wrote, directed, edited, photographed, and released all of his own films. He was able to finance each new film from the proceeds of the previous ones, and he became extremely wealthy in the process.

Meyer made two nudie cuties, Eve and the Handyman (1960), and teasers from Teas "This Is My Body (1960) and The Naked Camera (1960). Eve and Anthony-James Ryan, both of whom will be integral to Meyer's films' development, were starring Eve and Anthony-James Ryan.

Erotica (1961) and Wild Gals of the Naked West (1962), his next film features were Erotica (1961) and Wild Gals of the Naked West (1962). Meyer decided to change genres at the reception.

He made a documentary called Europe in the Raw (1963) and attempted a comedy called Heavenly Bodies! (1963) - The United States was a republic in the United States.

In Europe, he produced a version of Fanny Hill (1964).

Lorna (1964) marked Meyer's "nudies" and his first foray into serious film making.

He continued this with three other similar films, and I'd say this is his "gothic" period: Mudhoney (1965), Motorpsycho (1965), and Faster Pussycat.

Kill!

Kill!

(1965).Lorna was very profitable, grossing almost a million dollars. Mudhoney was more experimental, based on a book, and it did not do as well as others. Three men terrorizing the countryside, and motorpsycho was a big hit, but Meyer decided to make a film about three bad girls, Faster Pussycat.

Faster, Pussycat!

Kill!

Kill!

Was commercially underwhelming, but it would eventually be recognized as a cult masterpiece. It has a following around the world and has inspired scores of clones, music videos, and tributes.

Meyer made the famous mockumentary Mondo Topless (1966) with the remnants of his company's earnings and launched two modestly successful color melodramas: Common Law Cabin (1967) and Good Morning... and Goodbye! (1967)

Meyer made news once more in 1968 with the scandalous Vixen! Although its lesbian overtones are tame by today's standards, the film, directed by Meyer and longtime producer Jim Ryan as a reaction to provocative European art films, grosses millions on a five-figure budget and captured the zeitgeist just as The Immoral Mr. Teas had a decade ago.

Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers, and others followed it.

(1969), and Cherry, Harry & Raquel!

(1970) as the film's "lost soul" on the California landscape, which featured long montages of the California landscape (replete with anti-marijuana voiceovers) and Uschi Digard dancing in the desert as the film's "lost soul." Since lead actress Linda Ashton left the shooting early, Meyer was compelled to compensate for 20 minutes of unshot footage, these plot elements were deemedered.

Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown of 20th Century Fox were hired by Meyer to produce and direct a planned sequel to Valley of the Dolls in 1969, fulfilling his long-awaited desire to work in a major Hollywood studio amid the unexpected success of Columbia Pictures' low-budget Easy Rider's unexpected success and being impressed by Meyer's frugality and profitability. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), directed by Chicago Sun-Times film critic and longtime Meyer devotee Roger Ebert, was eventually released. For the remainder of Meyer's life, Ebert, who became the first film critic to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1975, will remain a close friend and a key artistic collaborator.

The film has no connection to the novel or film adaptation's continuity, a step that was necessary when Jacqueline Susann sued the studio after several drafts of her script were rejected. Many commentators regard the film as his best representation of his deliberately vain survivorship, with Meyer going so far as to call it his definitive work in several interviews. Others, such as Variety, found it "as funny as a burning orphanage and a reward for the mentally retarded." Contractually bound to produce an R-rated film, the brutally brutal climax (depicting a decapitation) assured an X rating (eventually reclassified to NC-17 in 1990). Despite the director's recutting of the film to include more titillating scenes after the ratings fiasco, it still earned $9 million in the US on a budget of $2.09 million.

The Fox executives were thrilled with Dolls' box office success, and they also agreed to make three more films: Everything in the Garden, by Edward Albee; and The Final Steal, a 1966 novel by Peter George. "We've discovered that he's both incredibly gifted and cost conscious," Zanuck said. "He can put a finger on a film's commercial components and do it admirably." He's got more than he's been doing than undress people," says the author.

Meyer did a faithful recreation of The Seven Minutes (1971), under his new name. The comparatively poor film, which featured loquacious courtroom scenes alongside little nudity, was financially unprofitable, and it would be defunctised by the studio for decades after Zanuck and Brown departed to form an independent production company in 1972.

Meyer, who brought Meyer to Fox, had left Warner Bros, and Meyer was considered that he might make a film at the theater. Meyer, on the other hand, would not make a studio film again. In 1973, he returned to grindhouse-style independent cinema, which was deemed incoherent by critics and audiences alike.

In the aftermath of the Miller v. California decision in June 1973, Foxy, a proposed vehicle for Edy Williams, was canceled in the aftermath of the United States Supreme Court's decision to change obscenity from "fully without socially redeeming value" to one that lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Williams' marriage to him disintegrated later.

Meyer said, "Those years were very confusing to me." "I was able to psychoanalyze myself and decide what was best for me rather than rushing off and throwing myself out the window." I looked myself square in the face and realized that I couldn't do everything."

He launched Supervixens, a return to big bosoms, square jaws, and the Sonoran Desert, which earned $17 million in the United States on a shoestring budget in 1975.

Meyer's theatrical career came to an end with the introduction of the surreal Up! (1976) and 1979's Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, his most sexually graphic films. These last three films have been dubbed "Bustoons" by film historians and enthusiasts because his use of color and mise en scène referenced larger-than-life pop art scenes and cartoonish characters.

Malcolm McLaren hired Meyer to direct a film starring The Sex Pistols in 1977. Meyer gave Ebert, who created a screenplay titled Who Killed Bambi, a scriptwriter who worked with McLaren, over the scriptwriting assignments. According to Ebert, filming came to an end after McLaren was unable to pay them. (McLaren's chief financier and Meyer's erstwhile employer, 20th Century Fox's board of directors, considered the possibility of a Meyer revival to be unsatisfied and incompatible with popular family values.) The initiative developed to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle.'

Despite hardcore pornographic films overtaking Meyer's softcore market share, the late 1970s made him step back from filmmaking in a very wealthy man. In 2001, he made a one-off return to filmmaking in the form of Russ Meyer's Pandora Peaks, which featured the nude glamour model of the same name. He was also involved in Voluptuous Vixens II, a Playboy-made-for-video softcore film.

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