Arthur Hiller to Receive Hersholt Humanitarian Award

Jan 25, 2002 by Ian Evans

Director Arthur Hiller has been voted the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Academy President Frank Pierson announced today. The award, an Oscar statuette, will be presented to Hiller during the 74th Academy Awards Presentation on March 24th, 2002. The Hersholt Award is given to an individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.

“The board was persuaded not by Hiller’s participation in a single cause, but by the wide diversity of his charitable and educational interests,” Pierson said. “In a long and productive career as a director and producer, Arthur has been extraordinarily generous with his time, a most precious commodity in the hell-for-leather pace of motion picture making. His activities extend far beyond the community of film to the society at large.”

Hiller has been involved with such charitable organizations as the Motion Picture and Television Fund, KCET, Amnesty International, Inner City Filmmakers, the Los Angeles Central Library’s reading program, the Deaf Arts Council, the Anti-Defamation League, Los Angeles County Museum programs on film and television, Humanitas, the Streisand Centre at UCLA and the Venice Family Clinic. Hiller is a frequent participant in classes and workshops at universities, festivals and other organizations in the United States and abroad.

Hiller was nominated for an Academy Award® in 1970 for directing Love Story, and served as Academy President from 1993 through 1997. Hiller’s other film credits include The Americanization of Emily, The Out-of-Towners, Plaza Suite, Man of La Mancha, The Hospital, The In-Laws, Silver Streak, Author! Author!, Outrageous Fortune and The Man in the Glass Booth.

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