The Big Ms

With his great bull whip, so goes the legend, Columbia Pictures' late President Harry ("The White Fang") Cohn liked to snap out the lenses of his flunkies' sunglasses. That sort of management more or less characterized the feudal days when the major studio bosses--Goldwyn, Mayer, the Warners, Cohn--were almost as well known as their stars. Now that Hollywood is often duller than its pictures, the mighty name symbolizing the new Age of the Independent Producer is roughly as well known as the incumbent ruler of Bhutan.*

The name is Mirisch, and hardly anyone has heard of it except the Bank of America. The Mirisch Co., Inc. was formed in 1957 by three brothers who were anxious to leave their salaried executive positions at Allied Artists and join the "indie" wave. In less than four years they have grossed $43 million, achieving the fiscal stature of a major studio, and even a partial list of their credits is enough to make M-G-M wish its initials could be changed to MMM.

Plenty of Money. The brothers produced Some Like It Hot and The Apartment; they are releasing By Love Possessed this month, West Side Story in the fall; they have cast and scheduled a folio of properties that includes a film version of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour, Two for the Seesaw, Irma la Douce, Toys in the Attic, James Michener's Hawaii, and John O'Hara's A Rage to Live. And they have multiple picture deals with dozens of high-density stars such as Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Dean Martin, Jason Robards Jr. and Yul Brynner. "I call them the myriad Mirisches," says Lemmon. "I don't know where they come from, but they are all around. And somehow, we all want to work for them."

After buying the best material they can find, the Mirisch brothers hire the best directors in Hollywood, then give them artistic control over their films, plus part ownership of the negatives. This has attracted such major directorial names as Billy Wilder, William Wyler and Fred Zinnemann, all of whom are currently at work on Mirisch films. Since, as independents, the brothers operate with a negligible overhead (5% v. Columbia's 22 1/2%, lowest overhead of a major studio), there is plenty of money for directors and stars alike. Even other independents shy from the pace of the three Ms' largesse. "They keep going up and up and up," says Producer Jerry Wald, grimly but hopefully. "Eventually it's bound to lead to disaster."

Shook a Little. The central Mirisch is Harold, 54, a quietly tailored man who wears black-rimmed glasses and cannot contain himself at cocktail parties: he weaves in and out among the stars, offering them half a million here, half a million there, while his brothers Marvin, 43, and Walter, 39, eat fingernail canapes. At home almost every night, Harold watches motion pictures projected through openings in his living-room wall (when not in use, the little windows are covered with reproductions of masterpieces of art).

Suitably enough, a big part of the Mirisch brothers' original fortune came from one of the world's largest popcorn concessions, which is owned by the Mirisches and operated in 850 theaters and driveins around the country, under the control of still another brother, Irving, 57. Sons of a New York tailor, the Mirisches all worked in the movie business from their teens on, starting as office boys and ushers, rising to be bookers. theater managers, producers (Brother Walter put out a dozen of the Bomba. the Jungle Boy films). When they decided to go independent, they "shook a little" with apprehension, Walter remembers. But they made $5,000,000 in their first year--which goes to show that in the new Hollywood, anyone can be a movie mogul with a little luck and a lot of popcorn.

* Druk Gyalpo (Dragon King) Jigme Dorji Wangchuk.

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