At one point during a legendary career of producing Hollywood movies that had titles like “Some Like It Hot,” “West Side Story” and “In the Heat of the Night,” Walter Mirisch was elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
That meant Mirisch hired the producer of the annual Academy Awards show and also handled various behind-the-scenes tasks, one of which, in 1974, involved trying to convince Katharine Hepburn to appear on the program to present an award to her friend, the producer Lawrence Weingarten.