A Unique Debut
Even for the anything-goes film industry, the Mirisch brothers - Marvin, Harold and Walter - made a unique entrance: the role of candy suppliers for the RKO chain in Wisconsin.
But the boys soon transitioned to producing, cutting a path through the plastic thickets of the Bomba the Jungle Boy series to the treasures held at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: three Oscars for Best Picture.
The Oscars, you could say, were the prizes way, way down in their Crackerjack boxes.
The Mirisch Memoir
Walter, the baby of this enterprising lot, is 87 now and the last Mirisch standing. Before time reunites him with his brothers, he has left us a memoir, the hefty, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History.
Like the most famous films made by these Bronx-born brothers, Mirisch's memoir is epic, well-paced, and plainspoken - perhaps the best adjective to describe his dry, gentlemanly prose. If this phone book sized souvenir lacks color, complication or kisses (of the tell-all variety,) one expects no less from a producer of that generation, moviemakers who purveyed taste, value and scale, not sophomoric sight gags or computer-generated gore.
An Eye for the Offbeat
And yet, for all of their old-fashioned dependability, the Mirisches had a noticeable eye for the offbeat. The long list of the films the brothers oversaw (a welcome appendage at the end of the book, by the way) brazenly unmasks them as the proud purveyors of Billy Wilder's sexy-sour subversiveness, William Wyler's parlour room pugnacity, and Norman Jewison's bent for societal betterment.
The Streak
By wading ever cautiously into changing times, The Mirisch clan managed to mark the fragmentation of the age without alienating bread and butter audiences. It was a long , ambitious and impressive streak, from 1960's The Apartment to '67's In The Heat of the Night (their third Best Picture winner was '61's West Side Story) And, as the first independent production outfit of repute, all accomplished without the stifling overhead of studio.
Then came decade's end, and the disruptive debut of a duo of dope-dealing delinquents; when Easy Rider roared past Mirisch-town, it left the brothers, and indeed, everybody of their ilk, completely in the dust.
Mirisch touches upon this fallow period, and, to his credit,without bitterness, rancour or regret. All that happens is a few more appearances of the word "unsuccessful," it and its antonym the only classifications he ever offers of his family's life's work.
The Rebound
The Mirisches rebound a little in seventies - there is the melodramatic Midway (surprisingly, their all time grosser!) and the mushy but profitableSame Time Next Year - but by decade's end, they're a dethroned dynasty. They retreat from the screen to revel in family and to count their laurels...er, Oscars.
Kid Gloves
The book offers humble attempts at anecdote, humour and the psychoanalysis of some of the industry's most complicated personalities. But when delivered in the author's even-tempered tone, not much of this connects. Even Steve McQueen and Peter Sellers, two genuine head cases with whom the Mirisches, for reasons unexplained in the book, would work again and again, suffer no more than nicks at the hands of Walter's kid gloves.
If Mirisch's steady, no-nonsense temperament makes for a disappointing memoir, let us not forget that for many years, it made for very good movies, and let that, as I'm certain Walter would have it, be the true testament of the brothers Mirisch.
