Walter Mirisch, Oscar-Winning Producer of ‘In The Heat of the Night’ and co-founder of The Mirisch Company, Has Died at Age 101

Walter Mirisch, a film producer and executive whose name is synonymous with numerous canonized 20th-century works, has died, as was confirmed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Saturday evening. The independent film producer won the Oscar for best picture at the 40th Academy Awards for the police drama In The Heat of the Night, and received the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award 10 years later. At the 55th Academy Awards, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, making him the only person in history to receive all three. He was 101 years old.

Mirisch served as president of the Academy from 1973 to 1977. In their joint statement, AMPAS CEO Bill Kramer and President Janet Yang said, “Walter was a true visionary, both as a producer and as an industry leader,” adding, “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.”

Mirisch was born in New York City in 1921. His father was an Eastern European Jewish immigrant, as were his maternal grandparents. His first gig in show business as a teenager was an usher at the now-demolished State Theater in Jersey City, commuting seven days a week from The Bronx for 25¢ an hour. During the Second World War, he worked in a Department of Defense plant in Burbank, California, and afterward attended Harvard’s Graduate School of Business Administration. In 1947 he produced his first feature, Fall Guy, a low-budget crime drama starring Leo Penn (father of Sean Penn), and soon thereafter became head of production at Allied Artists Studio.

While there, he supervised the production of some well-known projects of the Eisenhower era, like Wichita, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Love in the Afternoon. In 1957, he and his older brothers, Harold and Marvin Mirisch, founded The Mirisch Company, entering a distribution agreement with United Artists.