Russ Banham

Banham early on had hoped to become a Playwright or theatre Director. Instead, he fell into acting after college, making his Broadway debut in The Merchant, which starred Zero Mostel as Shylock, and was directed by two-time Tony award-winning Director John Dexter. Mostel died upstage right after the first public performance of the play in Philadelphia. Banham also appeared in several Off- and Off-off-Broadway plays, and co-starred in the ninth biggest movie of 1979, Meatballs, directed by Ivan Reitman and starring Bill Murray in his first film role. That year he was cast as Brad Hopkins in Producer Norman Lear's short-lived television situation comedy, Joe's World, opposite Christopher Knight from The Brady Bunch. The series ran for 12 episodes on NBC before it was cancelled.

At the same time, he began his career in financial journalism, writing articles for The Journal of Commerce. The daily Business newspaper, then owned by Knight-Ridder, asked him to join its staff in 1983 as a reporter and Editor covering insurance and risk management. Banham left the paper in 1987 to pursue work as a freelance Journalist. He quickly found a niche writing for numerous trade and Business periodicals. Early stories covered insurance and risk, but he soon added Finance, Technology, global trade and investing to his reporting subjects.

Banham was submitted by The Journal of Commerce for the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism. The nomination recognized his series of investigative stories on the bugged U.S. Embassy in Moscow. His articles disputed the presence of the eavesdropping devices, which he contended were covered financially by a secret insurance policy underwritten by American International Group, Inc., and reinsured by Ingosstrakh, the Russian state insurer. In effect, the Soviet Union would be on the hook financially for the damage to the building. The articles were cited in the Congressional Review. The Cold War ended before the alleged eavesdropping devices were ever ascertained.

In 1996 Banham was approached to write his first book, a 100-year history of USF&G, a major national insurance company. He followed it up with similar chronicles of Coors Brewing Company, Conoco, Hawaiian Airlines, Guardian Life, Dover Corporation and Appleton Paper Company, among others. The Coors book, Rocky Mountain Legend, reached number four on the Denver Post’s regional bestseller list.

In 2003, Banham was asked to write the official 100-year history of Ford Motor Company. He obtained vital access to Ford family artifacts and company archives, culminating in The Ford Century. The book received favorable reviews in the New York Times and other publications. "A tale that churns through every decade of the 20th century makes for a rich pictorial bath, all the more so since somebody got at Ford's inner archives and has made imaginative use of them." New York Times Book Review - Bruce McCall (12/08/2002). The book recently was selected as one of the five best books ever written about Detroit. More than 750,000 copies of the book are in print around the world.

Banham has kept his hand in the professional theatre as a Playwright and Director in Seattle. He is a veteran Director in the city’s professional theatre community, directing Othello, Macbeth, Henry V, Twelfth Night, and A Doll's House for Seattle Shakespeare Company; Merchant of Venice for Wooden O Theatre; Of Mice and Men, Mauritius and Superior Donuts for Seattle Public Theatre; Crooked for Theater Schmeater; and three of his own plays, adaptations of Ethan Frome, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (with Jennifer Sue Johnson) and Romance with a Double Bass (based on four short stories by Anton Chekhov), all for Book-It Repertory Theatre. Broadway World called Banham's direction of A Doll’s House for Seattle Shakespeare Company a “crisp and engaging production. Once again he has assembled a stellar cast and crew and molded the story into a rock solid evening of theater.” He is a recipient of five Seattle Times Footlight Awards as the city's Best Director.