Louis Wolfson, the owner of 1978 Triple Crown winner Affirmed, died Sunday at his home in Bal Harbour, Fla. He was 95.

In addition to breeding generations of winning thoroughbreds, Wolfson was a financier and industrialist who gave Mel Brooks his first big break in movies.

A high school football star in Jacksonville, Fla., he went on to play for the University of Georgia before dropping out during the Depression. He got into construction and shipbuilding, and was a millionaire by age 28.

As chairman of Merritt-Chapman & Scott, he headed the conglomerate that built Arizona’s Glen Canyon Dam. He also became a principle stockholder of Capital Transit Co., Washington D.C.’s main bus and streetcar company, and of American Motors Corp. His Universal Marion Co. owned several newspapers and produced Mel Brooks’s “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Producers.”

In 1960, he established Harbor View Farms, where Affirmed was raised. Affirmed edged rival Alydar in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont, and became the third horse in six years to win the Triple Crown. He followed Secretariat in 1973 and Seattle Slew in 1977, but his victories weren’t as dominant; the cumulative total of his three Triple Crown wins over Alydar was just 2 lengths.

The financier was also an important figure in a scandal that led to the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas. Wolfson was convicted in 1967 of selling unregistered securities and tried to appeal the conviction.

His appeal was ultimately turned away by the Supreme Court, but not before Fortas resigned following a disclosure that he had agreed to accept a $20,000 annual fee from a foundation headed by Wolfson.

At the time of the disclosure, Wolfson was serving a one-year prison sentence on the securities law conviction.

After being released, he became a staunch advocate of prison reform, and urged the U.S. Senate to amend the federal penal code to eliminate harsh sentences for first-time offenders.