Russ Banham
Encyclopedia
Russ Banham an American writer and reporter formerly with The Journal of Commerce
and later a freelance journalist writing for The Wall Street Journal
, CFO, Forbes
, The Economist
, Euromoney, Financial Times
, Treasury & Risk
and several other business publications. Banham also is the author of 21 books, including The Ford Century, an international bestseller translated into 13 languages.
, where he studied Speech and Theatre. He later earned a Master of Arts in Drama Theory and Criticism from the University of Montana. On a Jacob K. Javits
teaching fellowship at the university, he also earned a Master of Fine Arts, while teaching classes in drama for three years.
debut in The Merchant, which starred Zero Mostel
as Shylock. 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.
With prospects as an actor quickly dimming, Banham tried his hand at producing plays. He produced the world premiere of Oliver Hailey’s Kith and Kin at the Dallas Theatre Center and later at the White Barn Theatre
in Greenwich, Connecticut
. He also produced the Off Broadway premiere of Hailey’s Red Rover, Red Rover, with Tony-award winners Phyllis Newman
and Helen Gallagher
, at the Park Royal Theatre. Both received mixed reviews and failed commercially.
At the same time, he began his career in financial journalism, writing stories on spec for The Journal of Commerce
. The daily 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.
, one year before the Enron
debacle came to light, was cited by writer Kurt Eichenwald
in his book, Conspiracy of Fools
. “Banham … captured everything pretty well: asset securitization, special-purpose entities, the reduction of balance-sheet debt,” Eichenwald wrote.
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.
, a major national insurance company. He followed it up with similar chronicles of Coors Brewing Company
, Conoco, 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.
Banham also wrote three authorized biographies: on discount brokerage magnate Ernest Jacob Olde, Houston developer Kenneth Schnitzer, and Gary Milgard, founder of Milgard Manufacturing, the third largest producer of windows in the U.S.
. 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). More than 750,000 copies of the book are in print around the world.
Banham also is the author of Wanderlust
, which profiles his journey in an Airstream travel trailer to meet and interview so-called Airstreamers at rallies and conventions. The book also evaluates the design impact of the Silver Bullet
trailer and its historical relevance.
His newest book is The Fight for Fairfax, a post-World War II political and economic history of Fairfax County, Virginia, published by George Mason University Press
.
, Macbeth
, Henry V
and Twelfth Night for Seattle Shakespeare Company, Merchant of Venice for Wooden O Theatre, Of Mice and Men
for Seattle Public Theatre, 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.
Mark Waldstein, “He Said, She Said,” Encore magazine. http://www.encoremediagroup.com/arts_coalition/IE_Mar_04.pdf
Banham, “Party of Three,” CFO magazine, May 8, 2006, http://www.cfo.com/printable/article.cfm/6874879/c_6880743?f=options
The Journal of Commerce
The Journal of Commerce is a weekly magazine published in the United States that focuses on trade topics. First published in 1827, the Journal has a circulation of approximately 15,000...
and later a freelance journalist writing for The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, CFO, Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
, The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, Euromoney, Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
, Treasury & Risk
Treasury & Risk
Treasury & Risk magazine is a U.S. based monthly business-to-business publication founded in 1991, that is written for CFOs, Treasurers, Controllers, and others in the field...
and several other business publications. Banham also is the author of 21 books, including The Ford Century, an international bestseller translated into 13 languages.
Education and early life
He graduated from St. John's University in New YorkNew York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, where he studied Speech and Theatre. He later earned a Master of Arts in Drama Theory and Criticism from the University of Montana. On a Jacob K. Javits
Jacob K. Javits
Jacob Koppel "Jack" Javits was a politician who served as United States Senator from New York from 1957 to 1981. A liberal Republican, he was originally allied with Governor Nelson Rockefeller, fellow U.S...
teaching fellowship at the university, he also earned a Master of Fine Arts, while teaching classes in drama for three years.
Early career
Banham early on had hoped to become a playwright or theatre director. Instead, he fell into acting after college, making his BroadwayBroadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
debut in The Merchant, which starred Zero Mostel
Zero Mostel
Samuel Joel “Zero” Mostel was an American actor of stage and screen, best known for his portrayal of comic characters such as Tevye on stage in Fiddler on the Roof, Pseudolus on stage and on screen in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Max Bialystock in the original film version...
as Shylock. 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
Ivan Reitman
Ivan Reitman, OC is a Canadian film producer and director. He is known for the comedies he has directed and produced, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.He is the owner of The Montecito Picture Company, founded in 2000.-Early life:...
and starring Bill Murray
Bill Murray
William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...
in his first film role. That year he was cast as Brad Hopkins
Brad Hopkins
Bradley D. Hopkins is a former American football player. He played left tackle for 13 seasons in the National Football League, all of them with the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans organization.-Early years:...
in producer Norman Lear
Norman Lear
Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...
's short-lived television situation comedy, Joe’s World, opposite Christopher Knight from The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz and starring Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, and Ann B. Davis. The series revolved around a large blended family...
. The series ran for 12 episodes on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
before it was cancelled.
With prospects as an actor quickly dimming, Banham tried his hand at producing plays. He produced the world premiere of Oliver Hailey’s Kith and Kin at the Dallas Theatre Center and later at the White Barn Theatre
White Barn Theatre
The White Barn Theatre was a small theater founded by actress, producer and theater impresario Lucille Lortel on the property of her estate in Norwalk, Connecticut that premiered numerous plays from major playwrights and plays that went on to successful Broadway and Off-Broadway runs.Lortel founded...
in Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town had a total population of 61,171. It is home to many hedge funds and other financial service companies. Greenwich is the southernmost and westernmost municipality in Connecticut and is 38+ minutes ...
. He also produced the Off Broadway premiere of Hailey’s Red Rover, Red Rover, with Tony-award winners Phyllis Newman
Phyllis Newman
Phyllis Newman is an American actress and singer. She was nominated twice for the Drama Desk Award and won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.-Early life:...
and Helen Gallagher
Helen Gallagher
Helen Gallagher is an American actress, dancer, singer and makeup artist.-Early years:Born in Brooklyn, she was raised in Scarsdale, New York for several years until the Wall Street crash which heralded the Great Depression, and her family moved to the Bronx. Her parents separated and she was...
, at the Park Royal Theatre. Both received mixed reviews and failed commercially.
At the same time, he began his career in financial journalism, writing stories on spec for The Journal of Commerce
The Journal of Commerce
The Journal of Commerce is a weekly magazine published in the United States that focuses on trade topics. First published in 1827, the Journal has a circulation of approximately 15,000...
. The daily 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.
Enron
Banham’s CFO magazine profile of Andrew FastowAndrew Fastow
Andrew Stuart Fastow was the chief financial officer of Enron Corporation that was based in Houston, Texas until the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into his and the company's conduct in 2001...
, one year before the Enron
Enron
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 22,000 staff and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with...
debacle came to light, was cited by writer Kurt Eichenwald
Kurt Eichenwald
Kurt Alexander Eichenwald , an American writer and investigative reporter formerly with The New York Times and later with Condé Nast's business magazine, Portfolio...
in his book, Conspiracy of Fools
Conspiracy of Fools
Conspiracy of Fools is a book by Kurt Eichenwald detailing the Enron scandal. It was published in 2005 when Eichenwald was a business journalist with The New York Times.- Synopsis :...
. “Banham … captured everything pretty well: asset securitization, special-purpose entities, the reduction of balance-sheet debt,” Eichenwald wrote.
U.S. Embassy
Banham was submitted by The Journal of CommerceThe Journal of Commerce
The Journal of Commerce is a weekly magazine published in the United States that focuses on trade topics. First published in 1827, the Journal has a circulation of approximately 15,000...
for the 1986 Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for Investigative Journalism. The nomination recognized his series of investigative stories on the bugged U.S. Embassy in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. 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.
Corporate Histories and Biographies
In 1996 Banham was approached to write his first book, a 100-year history of USF&GUSF&G
USF&G was an American insurance company which existed from 1896 until 1998. Originally called United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company, the Baltimore, Maryland-based company was organized on March 19, 1896, and commenced business on August 1, 1896...
, a major national insurance company. He followed it up with similar chronicles of Coors Brewing Company
Coors Brewing Company
The Coors Brewing Company is a regional division of the world's fifth-largest brewing company, the Canadian Molson Coors Brewing Company and is the third-largest brewer in the United States...
, Conoco, Guardian Life, Dover Corporation
Dover Corporation
Dover Corporation is a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 manufacturer of specialized industrial products and equipment within six segments. Dover Corporation is based in Downers Grove, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. The company relocated its headquarters from New York in mid-2010.-History: can trace...
and Appleton Paper Company, among others. The Coors
Coors Brewing Company
The Coors Brewing Company is a regional division of the world's fifth-largest brewing company, the Canadian Molson Coors Brewing Company and is the third-largest brewer in the United States...
book, Rocky Mountain Legend, reached number four on the Denver Post’s regional bestseller list.
Banham also wrote three authorized biographies: on discount brokerage magnate Ernest Jacob Olde, Houston developer Kenneth Schnitzer, and Gary Milgard, founder of Milgard Manufacturing, the third largest producer of windows in the U.S.
The Ford Century
In 2003, Banham was asked to write the official 100-year history of Ford Motor CompanyFord Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...
. 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
Bruce McCall
Bruce McCall is a Canadian author and illustrator, best known for his frequent contributions to The New Yorker.Born and raised in Simcoe, Ontario, Canada, he was fascinated by comic books and showed an early aptitude for drawing fantastical flying machines, blimps, bulbous-nosed muscle cars and...
(12/08/2002). More than 750,000 copies of the book are in print around the world.
Banham also is the author of Wanderlust
Wanderlust
Wanderlust is a strong desire for or impulse to wander or travel and explore the world.-Etymology:The loanword from German language became an English term in 1902 as a reflection of what was then seen as a characteristically German predilection for wandering that may be traced back to German...
, which profiles his journey in an Airstream travel trailer to meet and interview so-called Airstreamers at rallies and conventions. The book also evaluates the design impact of the Silver Bullet
Silver Bullet
A silver bullet is a method to kill mythical creatures such as werewolves or a metaphor for any solution of extreme effectiveness.Silver Bullet may also refer to:* Silver Bullet , a 1985 American film based on a Stephen King novella...
trailer and its historical relevance.
His newest book is The Fight for Fairfax, a post-World War II political and economic history of Fairfax County, Virginia, published by George Mason University Press
George Mason University Press
George Mason University Press is the official publishing extension of George Mason University. Its review board is composed of prestigious faculty, including Peter Stearns, the provost and noted author. GMU Press is distributed through University of Virginia Press....
.
Theatre
Banham has kept his hand in the professional theatre as a playwright and director in Seattle, his home base. He is a veteran director in the city’s professional theatre community, directing OthelloOthello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
, Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
, Henry V
Henry V
Henry V may refer to:People* Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor * Henry V, Count of Luxembourg * Henry V of England * Henri, comte de Chambord, nominally Henry V of France, Entertainment...
and Twelfth Night for Seattle Shakespeare Company, Merchant of Venice for Wooden O Theatre, Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California, USA....
for Seattle Public Theatre, and three of his own plays, adaptations of Ethan Frome
Ethan Frome
Ethan Frome is a novel published in 1911 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton. It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts, New England, United States...
, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (with Jennifer Sue Johnson) and Romance with a Double Bass
Romance with a Double Bass
Romance with a Double Bass is a 1974 short film from the United Kingdom. It was written by John Cleese, Connie Booth, and Bill Owen, and based on the short story of the same name by Anton Chekhov.-Plot:...
(based on four short stories by Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
), all for Book-It Repertory Theatre.
External links
Meatballs http://www.MeatballsOnline.comMark Waldstein, “He Said, She Said,” Encore magazine. http://www.encoremediagroup.com/arts_coalition/IE_Mar_04.pdf
Banham, “Party of Three,” CFO magazine, May 8, 2006, http://www.cfo.com/printable/article.cfm/6874879/c_6880743?f=options