Longtime Pacific Palisades resident David Russell, a retired advertising executive who wrote children’s books until his final year, died peacefully on January 29 with his family by his side. He was 84. Born David Rosen in Brooklyn, New York in 1928, he played baseball with the other local kids, including a younger Sandy Koufax, in neighborhood sandlot games, and continued to play during high school and college. He also loved music; his uncle taught him to play violin and he played the clarinet in high school. He later told his children that he was absent in one music class so many times (probably off to Ebbets Field for a Dodgers game), that at the end of the term his skeptical teacher challenged him to whistle a symphony, and when he did the teacher allowed him to pass the class. Russell continued to be a Dodger fan even after moving to Los Angeles. During college, Russell continued to play clarinet with different bands to help pay his college expenses at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.’ He joined the Coast Guard in 1947 and was stationed in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and for a time lived at a lighthouse. After he submitted a sample of his writing to the local newspaper, the editor gave him a column reporting on the local social scene. Subsequently, a local radio station hired him to read that same report, while he also worked as a disc jockey. In the early 1950s, when television was in its infancy, Russell landed a job setting up television stations in the Midwest, including Sioux City, Iowa and Sioux Falls, SD. He met his wife, Claryce, in New York; they were married in 1956. They had three children: Mara (1958), Ellen (1959) and Hilary (1965). When Russell tried to enter the advertising field, he had difficulty finding work with various agencies because of his Jewish surname. He changed his name from Rosen to Russell and was then hired by W.B. Doner in Detroit, where he did print and radio ads. He also broadcast local football and baseball games. In 1966, Russell was transferred to the Doner office in Baltimore, where he worked on numerous commercials, including Alka-Seltzer with Speedy, Colt 45 and Baltimore’s National Beer.’ The Russell family moved to Los Angeles in 1972, where David and two partners started a commercial production company in Hollywood. He had built relationships with clients while at Doner and with his partners was able to win commercial campaigns. Two years later, the family moved to the Palisades, and Russell started a new company, CPC, which did live-action and special-effects commercials. His company used cutting-edge computer graphics for commercials that included’the Pillsbury Doughboy, Aunt Jemima Syrup, Purina Chuck Wagon, American Airlines and Chevrolet. CPC also worked on special effects for the television show ‘Fantasy Island,’ and was one of the first Hollywood companies to use early blue screen technology (the precursor of the green screen). The company was responsible for the parting of the Red Sea in an NBC production of ‘The Ten Commandments.’ Additionally, Russell’s company also was contracted to produce U.S. Senate single-source films for the Office of Education/HEW, as well as for the U.S. Army and Westinghouse. He also started the companies Intercom and Raster Images, which that were later bought out by Coast Productions. In the late 1980s, Russell joined forces in a talent cooperative company, Carey Melcher Productions, which produced commercials for Hertz, Taster’s Choice, Mattel and Ford’s ‘World Car’ campaign introducing the Ford Contour, for which he traveled with a small crew to shoot footage of the car in various countries. When his grandchildren were born in the 1990s, Russell began writing stories and poems for their birthdays. His other love was traveling with Claryce to visit numerous countries worldwide. He submitted stories about these trips that were published in the Palisadian-Post’s annual Travel Tales issue. When Russell started to have health problems, his writing outlet became an online blog on HubPages. He also began publishing his children’s books, featuring poems and stories that were sold at Village Books, booksbyallmeans.com and most online booksellers. They can also be found at the Palisades Branch Library. Last year he published his sixth book, a children’s story titled ‘Who’z Who at the Zoo’ that was illustrated by Nathan Tamaki, a young family friend and art student at Maryland Institute College of Art. Russell is survived by his wife, Claryce; his children, Mara, Ellen and Hilary; and his grandchildren, Aaron and Rebecca. Private services have been held. In his honor, donations to the American Lung Association, LACMA’s Docent Council Bus Fund or the FSH Society (muscular dystrophy) are suggested.
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