(8 November 1921 - 24 February 2023)
What do the following films have in common: Some Like It Hot, The Magnificent Seven, West Side Story, The Great Escape, The Pink Panther, In the Heat of the Night, The Thomas Crown Affair and Dracula? You might perhaps think nothing at all, but in fact they are all the work from just one producer, Walter Mirisch, who has died from natural causes at the age of 101. In his time, Mirisch was doubtless the envy of Hollywood for, even after more than fifty years in the business, it must be rare for a single producer to have had so many successful films on his cv. Of course, the above titles are just some of the cream of the crop.
Walter Mortimer Mirisch was the youngest of three sons born to Max Mirisch, a tailor and émigré from Krakow in Poland, and his wife Josephine Urbach. After graduation, Walter worked as an usher in the State Theatre in New Jersey, his first entry into the film business. At 26 his first movie was Fall Guy, a film noir for Monogram Pictures, and just three years later he was production head at Allied Artists Studio. In 1952 he produced Flat Top, a war film with Sterling Hayden that received an Academy Award nomination, while Wichita, a Western with Joel McCrea, nabbed a Golden Globe. Three of his other films, The Apartment, West Side Story and In the Heat of the Night won best picture Oscars for Mirisch himself.
He seems to have been a one-man Hollywood hitmaker for, apart from the titles mentioned above, he was also responsible for John Ford’s The Horse Soldiers with John Wayne, John Sturges’ By Love Possessed with Lana Turner, two Elvis Presley pictures, Follow That Dream and Kid Galahad, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying with Robert Morse, Michael Winner’s Scorpio with Burt Lancaster, and Robert Mulligan’s Same Time, Next Year with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn, among a whole roster of other films. He also ventured into television with Wichita Town, Peter Loves Mary, Desperado, Troubleshooters and a series based on The Magnificent Seven.
Mirisch and his films were the recipients of multiple accolades including over eighty Academy Award nominations and twenty-eight Oscars. There were also personal tributes from the Producers’ Guild of America, the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, plus the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. The Republic of France decorated him with its Ordre d'Arts et Lettres. Walter Mirisch was married to Patricia Kahan from 1924 to 2005 and they have a daughter, Anne, and two sons, Andrew and Lawrence. In 2008 he wrote his autobiography I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History (University of Wisconsin Press).
MICHAEL DARVELL
