When you walk into Walter Mirisch's office at Universal, the phone rings incessantly as he describes the new project he's producing for Disney.

But what stops the conversation cold is something that catches your eye on his credenza: three best-picture Oscar statues, for The Apartment, West Side Story, and In the Heat of the Night, along with an Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. It's sort of the grand slam of motion-picture accolades. And it's nothing if not jaw-dropping.

"We were just trying to make good movies," says the 82-year-old four-time president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a self-deprecating shrug. It's as if he too is just a little amazed at having made some of the most admired movies of the past half-century. "We never expected that they would still resonate with audiences all these years later," he says, and then catches himself, adding, "Well, maybe Billy Wilder did."

And with this, he begins to regale a visitor with tales about making Some Like It Hot, The Magnificent Seven, The Pink Panther, The Great Escape, and Fiddler on the Roof, collaborating with directors like Wilder, John Huston, and Blake Edwards, and casting Shirley MacLaine, Sidney Poitier, Jack Lemmon, Peter Sellers, Tony Curtis, Steve McQueen, and Marilyn Monroe in some of their most memorable roles. All told, it's a pretty good trailer for the memoir he's finished that will be published by the University of Wisconsin Press later this year.

If Walter Mirisch isn't a household name these days, it's because he was more interested in making movies than taking credit for them. He let the movies take the spotlight.