Los Angeles: Acclaimed and Oscar-winning filmmaker Walter Mirisk, who helmed classic films like “Some Like It Hot”, “West Side Story” and “In the Heat of the Night”, has died of natural causes. Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Saturday. He was 101, according to a statement from Academy CEO Bill Kramer and its president, Janet Yang. Merrick died on Friday in Los Angeles.
“Walter was a true visionary, both as a producer and an industry leader,” he said, noting that he had served as Academy President and an Academy Governor for many years. “His passion for filmmaking and the Academy never wavered, and he remains a dear friend and mentor. We send our love and support to his family during this difficult time.”
Mirish received a Best Picture Academy Award for 1967’s “In the Heat of the Night,” and the company run by him and his brothers also produced Best-Picture Oscar winners “The Apartment” and “West Side Story.”
Born eight years before the first Academy Awards ceremony, he served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1973 to 1977 and received two honorary Oscars, in 1978 and 1983, for his work and his humanitarian efforts.
As a producer, Mirisch aggressively recruited top filmmakers such as Billy Wilder and Norman Jewison, then gave them the freedom to craft the films as they saw fit.
In 1983 he told the Los Angeles Times, “We offered these filmmakers what they needed.” ‘Need to know. … In effect, we became partners of our directors.”
Regular directors of his company included not only Wilder and Jewison but also Blake Edwards and John Sturgess. The company also produced films by John Ford, John Huston, William Wyler, George Roy Hill, and Hal Ashby.
Mirish entered the movie business in his teens, starting with management jobs with a theater chain before moving on to production work on low-budget action flicks and Westerns in the late 1940s.
The company he founded with his brother Marvin and half-brother Harold in 1957 was one of the most successful independent production organizations to arise from the old studio system as television cut into film attendance.
Mirish scored a string of hits in the 1950s to 1970s, among them “The Magnificent Seven,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “The Great Escape,” “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” “The The Thomas Crown Affair,” “The Pink Panther” and its sequel, “A Shot in the Dark.”
His company started out with a handful of Westerns before producing 1959’s “Some Like It Hot,” a Wilder comedy with crowd-pleasing cross-dressing musicians co-starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. .
Mirish was willing to take on unusual projects. A Harvard-trained business executive, he skillfully oversaw the commerce side of things, allowing his filmmakers to focus on their films.
Elmore Leonard – crime novelist and screenwriter of two Mirisk productions, 1974’s “Mr. Majestic” and the 1987 TV movie “Desperado” – dedicated his Hollywood satire “Get Shorty” to Mirisk, calling him “one of the good guys”. Said.
Mirisch was also one of a handful of filmmakers to acknowledge Sidney Poitier in his speech at the 2002 Academy Awards when he accepted an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement.
Merrick’s “In the Heat of the Night” and the sequel “They Call Me Mr. Tibbs!”
The Merrick brothers adjusted their management style from film to film, based on the level of oversight they felt a director wanted or needed. In a 1972 interview in “Films and Filming” magazine, Mirisch said that some directors did a good job as their own producers, while others showed little interest beyond the actual filmmaking.
“We’ve worked with fantastic directors and producer-directors, and I must say that the relationship with each of them has been completely different,” he said.
A team for most of their career, the Mirish brothers also worked in theatre. Before joining the Allied Artists Production Company in the 1940s, Walter worked as a producer and later head of production, and Harold and Marvin held administrative jobs.
While at Allied, Walter produced a series of westerns and low-budget titles in the “Bomba the Jungle Boy” series, starring Johnny Sheffield, who played Boy in the 1940s “Tarzan” films Was.
After their eldest brother, Harold, died in 1968, the surviving siblings continued their company with Marvin as president and youngest brother Walter in charge of production. Marvin died in 2002.
Walter Merrick continued to produce dramatic films into the 1980s. Although the quality and commercial success of his films generally declined, there were still some hits, including an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for “Same Time Next Year”. Other film appearances late in his career included “Midway,” “Grey Lady Down,” and a 1979 version of “Dracula.” He was also the executive producer of some television projects in the 1990s.
Walter Mortimer Mirish was born on November 8, 1921, in New York City. After studying at the City College of New York, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1942 and a bachelor’s degree in business from Harvard in 1943.
In 1947, Mirisch married Patricia Kahn, who preceded him in death. They had three children, Anne, Andrew and Lawrence.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Motion Picture and Television Fund (MPTF).
A memorial service will be held at a future date.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)