Don Mischer, the Emmy-accumulating director-producer who called the shots on the biggest live entertainment events in the world, from Super Bowl halftime shows and Olympic opening ceremonies to the Oscars and the Emmys, has died. He was 85.
Mischer died peacefully in his sleep in Los Angeles on Friday, a family spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter.
The San Antonio native also helmed the Kennedy Center Honors, starting with the inaugural 1978 event through 1986 — he then produced the CBS telecast from 1993-2001 — and guided Barbara Walters‘ highly-rated ABC interview shows beginning in the late 1970s.
Meanwhile, Mischer was the architect of dozens of landmark TV specials, including 1983’s Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, which featured a reunion of The Jackson 5 and Michael Jackson’s “moonwalk” during a “Billie Jean” performance, and 1990’s The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson and 1998’s Sonny & Me: Cher Remembers, both of which aired mere months after the shocking deaths of the Muppets creator and Sonny Bono.
During his illustrious five-decade career, Mischer did television with everyone from Bob Hope, Gene Kelly, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Shirley MacLaine, Nell Carter and Don Rickles to Robin Williams, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, Eddie Murphy and Beyoncé.
“There are directors and producers who almost look at talent as a nuisance, and they can be at times, I’m sure, but you’ve got to demonstrate that you care about them and you have their best interests [in mind],” he said during a 2008 chat for the Television Academy Foundation website The Interviews. “And then when they score, it helps you as well.”
Mischer’s trophy case included 13 Primetime Emmys, a Daytime Emmy, a Sports Emmy, a Peabody Award, 10 DGA awards and lifetime achievement awards from the directors and producers guilds.
“Don’s mastery of directing live events is a sight to behold: a fast-paced symphony of meticulous planning and on-the-spot decision-making that brings our nation’s greatest cultural events into our living rooms. And he does it all with grace and confidence,” DGA president Thomas Schlamme noted in 2018.
He directed four Super Bowl halftime shows: in 1993, when Jackson insisted he be hired over the objections of NBC, which wanted its own sports guy for the job; 2005 (Paul McCartney); 2006 (The Rolling Stones); and 2007 (Prince, who performed “Purple Rain” during a magically fortuitous rain shower in Miami).
Mischer also produced the halftime entertainment in 2008 (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) and 2009 (Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band). He noted that a typical halftime show has 300 camera shots in a little more than 11 minutes.
He helmed the opening ceremony for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta — he said he was one of only five people who knew in advance that Muhammad Ali was the one lighting the torch — and produced the kickoff of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, the first major global event held in the wake of 9/11.
He directed the Academy Awards telecasts in 2011 (hosted by James Franco and Anne Hathaway), 2012 (Billy Crystal in his final Oscar gig) and 2013 (Seth MacFarlane) and produced the Primetime Emmys 15 times from 1993-2019, including the twice-postponed 2001 show, another occasion impacted by the terrorist attacks.
“I’ve always tried to produce the Emmys so that people in our business, if they were there in the theater or watching it at home, when the show signed off, you felt good about being in television,” he said. “That was always the objective.”
A “stress junkie,” Mischer embraced the high-wire act that is live television — “it’s high risk, and that’s part of the attraction,” he said — but knew that “more can go wrong that can ever go right.”
An example: He was directing the final night of the 2004 Democratic Convention when he called for the balloons that were stored in the rafters at Boston’s TD Garden to be dropped to celebrate the nomination of John Kerry for president.
Against his wishes, a local company had been hired for the job, and it screwed it up. His cry to the crew for “more balloons, bring ’em, balloons, balloons, balloons … what the fuck are you guys doing up there?” was heard live on CNN. He would issue an apology, and “it was one of those things that I thought I would never be able to laugh about,” he said four years later.
Mischer also worked on a pair of famously ill-fated variety shows: Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell and Dolly, hosted by Dolly Parton. “Two of the biggest failures in the history of television I’ve been associated with,” he noted, “but fortunately, I survived.”
Donald Leo Mischer was born on March 5, 1940, and raised in a San Antonio suburb. His father, Elmer, worked in the insurance business; his mother, Lillian, was a housewife who died of breast cancer when he was 17.
He said he was always enthralled with the small screen. When he was young, “nobody was taking television very seriously, but I fantasized about it. … it was something that swept me off my feet.”
He played in a traveling country band as a teenager while attending Douglas MacArthur High School, then got his bachelor’s degree and master’s in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin, intending to be a teacher.
Hours after President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, TV journalists from around the country descended on Austin to do stories about Lyndon Johnson, the vice president from Texas, and Mischer was selected by one of his college professors to be a runner.
“By 5 o’clock that afternoon, I was in cars with these guys, all from New York, listening to how they’re thinking, listening to how they’re moving, massively impressed with the quickness of their decision-making,” he recalled. “I had been ready to go on for my Ph.D. but I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to get into this business, that’s it.’”
He received a grant of about $2,800 from The Ford Foundation to work for a year at the public TV station on the UT campus, then moved to Washington to direct and produce news pieces for the U.S. Information Agency, a public relations arm of the government, and political spots for Oscar-winning documentarian Charles Guggenheim.
The first thing he directed that was seen nationwide was a 30-minute live program in 1968 featuring Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey.
Mischer moved to New York to direct the PBS magazine show The Great American Dream, then collaborated with Don Kirshner in 1973 on In Concert, a 90-minute rock show in stereo that aired after the late local news on Friday nights.
In 1975, he had to pick whether to direct Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell, a new primetime variety show produced by Roone Arledge for ABC, or join another new offering, Saturday Night Live, a late-night program at NBC. He decided on the Cosell show, which was fraught with production problems and canceled after 18 episodes.
Despite that, famed producer George Schlatter brought him to L.A. and hired him to direct TV specials starring the likes of Barry Manilow, Goldie Hawn, Liza Minnelli and John Denver.
Mischer was nominated for 42 Primetime Emmys, winning for the first time in 1981 for producing the children’s program Donahue and Kids, hosted by Phil Donahue, and for directing the Kennedy Center Honors.
For Jackson’s Super Bowl appearance in 1993, Mischer’s crew of 270 volunteer police and firefighters had three minutes and 48 seconds to set up the band and a 12-ton stage in 26 pieces, plus machines for lighting, pyrotechnics and wind, on the Rose Bowl field in Pasadena. “We made it with like 12 seconds to spare,” he said.
Jackson’s performance was one of the most-watched events in TV history.
After the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction during MTV’s production of the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, the NFL went with the steady hand of Mischer. “If I ever run into Janet Jackson, I have to thank her,” he said.
He also worked on the other live events including the Tony Awards, the Billboard Music Awards, the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, the AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony and a 2009 Barack Obama inauguration special.
Mischer directed episodes of Laugh-In, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, Dolly, Normal Life, The Wayne Brady Show and Murder, She Wrote but for the most part opted against doing series television, despite its financial rewards.
“Why would I want to strap myself down for one year in one studio with one artist when in March I’m working with Willie Nelson and in May I’m working with Baryshnikov and then doing the closing ceremony of Liberty Weekend with Frank Sinatra in July,” he said.
His memoir, :10 Seconds to Air: My Life in the Director’s Chair, was published in 2023.
Survivors include his second wife, Suzan Reed, a former CBS executive; his children, Jennifer, Heather, Charles and Lilly; and his grandchildren, Everly and Tallulah.
“What I do is basically create entertainment, like a lot of people. I mean, it’s not brain surgery, as someone once said,” he noted in his 2008 interview. “I just want to be known as someone who loved doing his work, treated people well and had a few opportunities in his life to do some things that were outstanding — just a couple.”
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