Walter Mirisch obit

Walter Mirisch, Oscar-Winning Producer of ‘In the Heat of the Night,’ Dies at 101

He served as Academy president for four terms in the 1970s and is the only person to receive the best picture prize and the Thalberg and Hersholt awards. 

He was not on the list.

Walter Mirisch, the legendary independent-minded producer who is the only person to receive the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences’ Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, the Irving G. Thalberg Award and an Oscar for best picture, has died. He was 101.

The affable Mirisch, who served four terms as president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences from 1973-77, died Friday in Los Angeles of natural causes, 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 had a powerful impact on the film community and the Academy, serving as our president and as an Academy governor for many years. His passion for filmmaking and the Academy never wavered, and he remained a dear friend and adviser.”

Survivors include his son Larry Mirisch, the owner of The Mirisch Agency, the below-the-line shop that he founded in 1992.

Mirisch earned his Oscar statuette in 1968 for producing the edgy thriller In the Heat of the Night (1967). His production outfit, The Mirisch Co., produced two other classics that took home the Academy’s ultimate prize: Billy Wilder’s poignant comedy The Apartment (1960) and Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ musical drama West Side Story (1961).

In the Heat of the Night star Sidney Poitier, in the foreword of Mirisch’s 2008 book I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History, called him a “legendary producer, visionary filmmaker, courageous seeker of truth, especially in troubling times.”

And novelist Elmore Leonard famously dedicated Get Shorty, his scathing 1990 satire of the film industry, to the producer: “To Walter Mirisch, one of the good guys.”

In August 1957, Mirisch, then in charge at Allied Artists, formed The Mirisch Co. with his older brothers Marvin and Harold, and they signed a distribution deal with United Artists. The company thrived, producing a wide-ranging slate of 67 films during the following two decades while collecting 28 Oscars.

Among those features: Some Like It Hot (1959), The Magnificent 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 Heat of the Night, Mirisch himself produced such films as The Man in the Net (1959), Two for the Seesaw (1962), Toys in the Attic (1963), seven-time Oscar nominee Hawaii (1966), Mr. Majestyk (1974), Midway (1976) and, earlier, a series of Bomba, the Jungle Boy movies in the 1950s (filmmaker Ron Howard has said he loved those films as a kid.)

Throughout his career, Mirisch worked with a variety of top directors, including William Wyler, John Ford, John Sturges, Blake Edwards and Norman Jewison.

Respected for taking intelligent risks and tackling social issues, Mirisch and his In the Heat of the Night colleagues were honored in 1998 by the Academy with a specially restored print in celebration of the film’s 30th anniversary.

The drama, directed by Jewison from Stirling Silliphant’s screenplay and starring Rod Steiger as a Mississippi lawman and Poitier as a Black detective investigating a murder in a racist southern town, won five Oscars in all.

“Even today, it has a lot to say to us,” Mirisch said during the 1998 ceremony. “Instead of mounting a soapbox and making speeches, it makes its point by dramatizing how a southern redneck sheriff and an eastern, Black detective are finally able to see one another not as stereotypes but as individuals.”

Selected filmography

Year     Title            Notes

1958    Fort Massacre            producer

Man of the West            producer

1959    The Gunfight at Dodge City            producer

The Man in the Net            producer

Cast a Long Shadow            producer

1960    The Magnificent Seven            executive producer

1961    By Love Possessed            producer

West Side Story            executive producer (uncredited)

The Children's Hour            executive producer (uncredited)

1962    Follow That Dream            executive producer

Kid Galahad            executive producer (uncredited)

Two for the Seesaw            producer

1963    The Great Escape            executive producer (uncredited)

Toys in the Attic            producer

The Pink Panther            executive producer (uncredited)

1964    633 Squadron            executive producer (uncredited)

A Shot in the Dark            executive producer (uncredited)

1966    The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming            producer (uncredited)

Hawaii            producer

1967    How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying            executive producer (uncredited)

In the Heat of the Night            producer

Fitzwilly            producer

1968    The Party            executive producer (uncredited)

The Thomas Crown Affair            executive producer (uncredited)

1969    Sinful Davey            executive producer

Some Kind of a Nut            producer

1970    Halls of Anger            executive producer

The Landlord            executive producer (uncredited)

The Hawaiians            producer

They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!            executive producer

1971    The Organization            producer

Fiddler on the Roof            executive producer (uncredited)

1973    Scorpio            producer

1974    The Spikes Gang            producer

Mr. Majestyk            producer

1976            Midway            producer

1978    Gray Lady Down            producer

Same Time, Next Year            producer

1979    Dracula            producer

The Prisoner of Zenda            producer

1983            Romantic Comedy            producer

1993-1996            The Pink Panther            executive producer

2016    The Magnificent Seven            executive producer