Don Mischer, TV Director-Producer of the Oscars and Olympics, Dies at 85

Don Mischer, 15-time Emmy-winning TV director and producer of high-profile events like the Oscars and the Olympics, died Friday at home in Los Angeles, according to multiple media reports. He was 85.

Mischer, whose work included the Oscars, the Emmys, the Super Bowl and the Olympics, most recently produced the 2025 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony in LA on April 5.

He intended to retire soon after and recently told Deadline, “I want you to know that, after more than six decades in television, I will be doing my last show tomorrow on Saturday, April 5th here in Los Angeles. I started at the PBS station in Austin at the University of Texas campus in 1963, and I turned 85 last week. Man it feels like time has just flown by.”

In his time Mischer produced nearly every major television event, including 15 Emmy ceremonies, multiple Oscars ceremonies, several Kennedy Center Honors, People’s Choice Awards and Breakthrough Prize Ceremonies, the annual 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York, the Opening Ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics and the 2002 Winter Olympics, and more.

He was also responsible for capturing some of the most spectacular moments of recent pop culture history, including Michael Jackson’s first moonwalk, Prince’s Super Bowl performance of “Purple Rain,” and Meryl Streep’s first Oscar win in 29 years.

While speaking to TheWrap’s Steve Pond for DGA Quarterly in 2013, Mischer noted directing the Academy Awards ceremony “requires more effort and more focus” than other shows. “There’s a lot of anticipation and a lot of expectations, and its harder to deliver on some of that stuff in the environment in which we now find ourselves. Directing it always feels like a great responsibility. You’re sitting there with a live event, making choices that affect how people will interpret the show. If you’re on the wrong shot at the wrong time, it works against you. And little things happen,” he explained.

“Directing a show like the Oscars is kind of like playing Russian roulette with two bullets in the chamber,” he also said.

Misher also revealed that his interest in directing and producing dated back to his early teen years. “In junior high school I had fantasies of being a television cameraman. I would dream that someday maybe I would be able to run camera on a show that would be broadcast nationally,” he said.

“When I was 13, my father gave me an 8 mm Bell & Howell camera, and I started making little films with that. It was something that I was just fascinated with, to the point where when I went to football games or parades or that kind of stuff, I wanted to find where the television cameras were and watch what they were doing.”

He attended college at the University of Texas in Austin where he majored in sociology and minored in political science, earned his master’s in sociology, and was contemplating pursuing a doctorate in the discipline when a friend who worked in public television told him the Ford Foundation had grants available for academics who were interested in working in TV.

“I applied for one of those grants and got it. It was a substantial amount of money; like, $2,600 for the year [laughs], or something like that,” he told Pond.

The experience changed the trajectory of his career. His background in political science led to his begin assigned to news teams in Austin after President Kennedy was shot, which “just solidified it for me that this is a medium that had tremendous power.”

Mischer moved to Washington, D.C., when that same friend and mentor (Bob Squier) did so and asked him to follow suit. He began working on political documentaries, then for the Democratic National Convention, and then for PBS and late night TV.

His prolific career resulted in several awards, including 15 Emmys, the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award, two NAACP Image Awards, 10 DGA Awards, and the 2012 Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television.

Mischer was born on March 5, 1940, in San Antonio, Texas. He graduated from Douglas MacArthur High School before enrolling in classes at the University of Texas in Austin.

He and his first wife Beverly had two daughters, Jennifer Christine and Heather Mischer Godsey. He and his second wife Suzan, a former CBS executive, welcomed their children Charles Donald and Lilly Ellison together.

Don Mischer is survived by his wife Suzan, his four children, Heather, Jennifer, Charlie and Lily, as well as two grandchildren, Everly and Tallulah.

This news was first reported by Deadline.

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