Turner Classic Movies salutes Walter Mirisch (plus an exclusive MP3 interview)

This evening, Turner Classic Movies (check your local listings) will pay tribute to Walter Mirisch, one of the most successful and respected motion picture producers of the second half of the 20th century.

Mirisch, who is now 86, is responsible for an incredible number of essential films, including "Some Like It Hot" (1959), "The Apartment" (1960), "The Magnificent Seven" (1960), "West Side Story" (1961), "The Great Escape" (1963), "The Pink Panther" (1964), "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming" (1966), "In the Heat of the Night" (1967), "Fiddler on the Roof" (1971) and "Midway" (1976), to name just a few.

He also served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for four terms and as the president of the Producers Guild of America for three. Recently, he penned a compelling memoir entitled "I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History."

The TCM tribute will get under way at 8 p.m. EST with the world premiere of "Private Screenings: Walter Mirisch," an hour-long conversation with the producer about his life and work hosted by film historian Robert Osborne.

The program will be followed by screenings of four of Mirisch's films, including the three that won the Academy Award for best picture: "In the Heat of the Night," "West Side Story" and "The Apartment," as well as another, "Fort Massacre" (1958), a western starring Mirisch's close friend Joel McCrea. As always, the niche cable network will air all of this without commercial interruption.

I highly recommend tuning in for the Mirisch-Osborne chat, which I was offered a look at last week, as well as any of the other original documentaries and special presentations that TCM periodically serves up -- the most recent offering was last July's "Spielberg on Spielberg," and the next will be December's "Ron Howard: 50 Years in Film," both documentaries by Richard Schickel.

If you have the time, you may also enjoy the chat that yours truly had with Mirisch last Monday, which you can listen to at the bottom of this post. Inevitably, we talked about a number of the same things that he gets into with Osborne, but also a great many that he does not.

Overall, I think both conversations offer a fascinating look at the roles of a producer (what he does, where he learns to do it, what challenges he may face, etc.), movie making during the Golden Age (B-movies, the fall of the studio system, the blacklist), and, perhaps neatest of all, how so many of our favorite movies grew from ideas into classics. Like sausage or legislation, you may be surprised and fascinated to learn how at least some of them were made.

Click here to listen to Scott's interview with Walter Mirisch

Photo: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Classic Movies]

An unknown fact about Walter Mirisch is that he was a very young achiever. He became production head at Allied Artists Studio at the young age of 29. Here he was overseeing some 30 big budget films.

Cheers!