Walter Mirisch, the legendary independent producer who is the only recipient of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences’ Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, the Irving G. Thalberg Award and an Academy Award for Best Picture, has passed away. He was 101.
The affable Mirisch, who served four terms as president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences from 1973 to 1977, died of natural causes in Los Angeles on Friday, AMPAS announced.
“Walter was a true visionary, both as a producer and as an industry leader,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang said in a joint statement. “He was a great influence on the film community and the Academy, and was our president and governor of the Academy for many years. His passion for filmmaking and the Academy never wavered, and he remained a dear friend and advisor.”
Survivors include his son Larry Mirisch, the owner of The Mirisch Agency, the under-the-line store he founded in 1992.
Mirisch earned his Oscar statuette in 1968 for producing the edgy thriller In the dead of night (1967). His production outfit, The Mirisch Co., produced two other classics that took home the Academy’s ultimate prize: Billy Wilder’s gripping comedy. The apartment (1960) and the musical drama by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins West Side Story (1961).
In the dead of night star Sidney Poitierin the foreword to Mirisch’s 2008 book I thought we were making movies, not historycalled him a “legendary producer, visionary filmmaker, courageous seeker of truth, especially in difficult times.”
And novelist Elmore Leonard famously dedicated Get Shortiehis scathing 1990 satire on the film industry, to the producer: “To Walter Mirisch, one of the good guys.”
In August 1957, Mirisch, then in charge of Allied Artists, founded The Mirisch Co. with his older brothers Marvin and Harold, and they signed a distribution deal with United Artists. The company prospered, producing a wide variety of 67 films over the next two decades, while amassing 28 films. Oscars. Among those features: Some love it when it’s hot (1959), The beautiful seven (1960), The great escape (1963), The Pink Panther (1963), The fortune cookie (1966), The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming (1966), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Fiddler on the roof (1971) and Same time, next year (1978).
In addition to In the dead of nightMirisch himself produced films such as The man in the net (1959), Two for the seesaw (1962), Toys in the attic (1963), seven-time Oscar nominee Hawaii (1966), Mr. your Majesty (1974), Halfway through (1976) and earlier series of Bomba, the jungle boy movies in the 1950s (filmmaker Ron Howard has said he loved those movies as a kid.)
Throughout his career, Mirisch worked with several top directors, including William Wyler, John Ford, John Sturgis, Blake Edwards And Norman Jew.
Respected for taking intelligent risks and tackling social problems, Mirisch and his associates In the dead of night colleagues were honored by the Academy in 1998 with a specially restored print celebrating the film’s 30th anniversary.
The drama, directed by Jewison from the screenplay by Stirling Silliphant and starring Rod Steiger as a Mississippi lawman and Poitier as a black detective investigating a murder in a racist Southern town, won a total of five Oscars.
“Even today it has a lot to say to us,” Mirisch said at the 1998 ceremony. finally not as stereotypes but as individuals.”
Mirisch also served as president of the Producers Guild of America for three terms and received the 1995 David O. Selznick Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1978 he received the Thalberg Award and in 1983 the Hersholt Prize.
In 1976, he received the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, that organization’s highest film award.
The Mirisch Co. came to television in 1959 with the Western series Wichita Citystarring Joel McCrea, and went on to produce shows like The rat patrol And Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson’s Hey, landlord. UA acquired The Mirisch Co. in March 1963 and the brothers continued to produce films and TV shows for the studio.
In an interview from 2012 of The Hollywood Reporter on his last day as president of the Academy, the late Tom Sherak said Mirisch was invaluable in making a decision to renegotiate AMPAS’ contract with the Kodak Theater (now known as the Dolby Theater), home of the Oscars.
“I was concerned about where we are [could] go and who would want us,” said Sherak THR. “And I’ll never forget, it was Walter Mirisch… who looked at me and said, ‘Tom, listen to me. It’s the Academy Awards. You will find a place to go. Negotiate again, Tom. Believe me.’ And then I went to exercise our right to renegotiate.
“We immediately received offers. We stayed there because we belonged there. So it was Walter Mirisch who in his own way gave me the go-ahead to say go do it; someone will want us, don’t worry. And he was right.”
Born in New York City on November 8, 1921, Mirisch received a B.A. in history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1942, winning a fellowship in history. Despite his academic aptitude, he loved movies, hoping to get into the entertainment industry, but because film schools didn’t exist, he chose to go to Harvard to study business.
After completing a master’s degree, Mirisch got his first job in showbiz at a theater chain, where he learned about the films from the exhibition side. He soon migrated to Monogram Studios in 1945, and his first credit as a producer was on the crime drama Fall dude (1947).
By 1951, he was executive producer and in charge of Monogram and its subsidiary Allied Artists.
Mirisch also held leadership positions at the Los Angeles Music Center, the Motion Picture & Television Fund, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and UCLA.
Survivors include his children, Anne, Andrew and Lawrence; his granddaughter, Megan, and her husband, Craig; and his great-grandsons, Emery and Levi Bloom. His wife, Patricia, died in 2005.
In lieu of flowers, the family is asking for donations to the MPTF.
Duane Byrge contributed to this report.