Richly illustrated with rare photographs from Walter Mirisch’s personal collection, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History (University of Wisconsin Press, $29.95 ,hardcover) reveals Mirisch’s own experience of Hollywood. He shares the stories of the stars — emerging and established — who appeared in his films, including Natalie Wood, John Wayne, Peter Sellers, Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Sidney Poitier, Steve McQueen and Marilyn Monroe.

This moving, star-filled account of one of Hollywood’s true golden ages is told by a man in the middle of it all. Walter Mirisch’s company produced some of the most entertaining and enduring classics in film history, including West Side Story, Some Like It Hot, In the Heat of the Night, and The Magnificent Seven. His work has led to 87 Academy Award nominations and 28 Oscars. With hard-won insight and gentle humor, Mirisch recounts how he witnessed the end of the studio system, the development of independent production, and the rise and fall of some of Hollywood’s most gifted (and notorious) cultural icons.

Mirisch was known as a producer with a passion for creative excellence. In this book, he offers insights into his innovative filmmaking process, revealing a rare ingenuity for placating the demands of auteur directors, weak-kneed studio executives and troubled screen sirens.

From his early start as a movie theater usher to the presentation of such masterpieces as The Apartment, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Great Escape, Mirisch tells the inspiring life story of his climb to the highest echelon of the American film industry.

Available at local book stores, or online at amazon.com and at http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/.

Claire Yezbak Fadden is the Associate Editor of LifeAfter50.com.