[1] Walter Mirisch began to work as a producer at Monogram Pictures beginning with Fall Guy (1947), the profitable Bomba the Jungle Boy series, Wichita (1955), and The First Texan (1956), by which time the company was known as Allied Artists.
The Mirisch Company was founded in 1957[2] at which time it signed a 12-picture deal with United Artists (UA) that was extended to 20 films two years later.
[3] UA acquired the company on March 1, 1963, but the Mirisch brothers continued to produce for their distribution, under other corporate names, in rented space at the Samuel Goldwyn Studio.
It produced many successful motion pictures for United Artists, beginning with the release of Fort Massacre (1958) but later including Some Like It Hot (1959), The Horse Soldiers (1959), The Apartment (1960), The Magnificent Seven (1960), West Side Story (1961), Follow That Dream (1962 with Elvis Presley), The Great Escape (1963), The Pink Panther (1963), Hawaii (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), and many others.
[6] The company forged long-term associations with directors such as Billy Wilder, Blake Edwards, Robert Wise, George Roy Hill, William Wyler, J. Lee Thompson, John Sturges, and Norman Jewison, who directed three consecutive successes for it: The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967), and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).