Veteran Hollywood producer Walter Mirisch, known for bankrolling some of the industry’s classical hits, has died. He was 101.
The Mirisch brothers produced or oversaw the production of films which have been considered the best from the 1950s and 60s, and this includes titles like The Apartment, West Side Story, In the Heat of the Night, Some Like It Hot and The Pink Panther.
The last of the three brothers, Walter Mirisch also served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1973 to 1977. Interestingly, he was the first person to receive all three of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s highest honours: the 1968 best picture Oscar as the producer of In the Heat of the Night; the 1977 Irving G. Thalberg award, which is given to a producer, and, in 1983, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Mirisch, who died Friday in Los Angeles of natural causes per an academy statement, is survived by his children Anne, Andrew and Lawrence Mirisch; his granddaughter and her husband, Megan and Craig Bloom; and his great-grandsons Emery and Levi Bloom.
