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, 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 was born in New York City in 1921. His father was an Eastern European Jewish immigrant, as were his maternal grandparents. Hisin 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.
, a low-budget crime drama starring Leo Penn , and soon thereafter became head of production at Allied Artists Studio.Wichita. In 1957, he and his older brothers, Harold and Marvin Mirisch, founded The Mirisch Company, entering a distribution agreement with United Artists., Mirisch continued the relationship with the Austrian-born writer-director.