[Deathwatch] Abby Mann, writer, 80

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Abby Mann, screenwriter of socially conscious movies

By BOB THOMAS

LOS ANGELES ? Abby Mann, writer of socially conscious scripts for
movies and television and winner of the 1961 Academy Award for adapted
screenplay for Judgment at Nuremberg, has died at 80.

Writers Guild of America spokesman Gregg Mitchell said Mann died
Tuesday. The cause of death was not given.

Mann also won multiple Emmys, including one in 1973 for The
Marcus-Nelson Murders, which created a maverick New York police
detective named Theo Kojak. The film, starring Telly Savalas, was spun
off into the long-running TV series Kojak.

In a career spanning more than 50 years as a writer, director and
producer, Mann returned repeatedly to morally conscious themes, doing
films for television on such subjects as Martin Luther King Jr., human
rights advocate Simon Weisenthal and the Teamsters.

"Abby was brought along by great producers like Herbert Brodkin, but
his passion was his own. From his earliest days as a writer, he was
guided by a moral compass that never wavered," said Del Reisman, former
president of the Writers Guild of America, West, and a longtime friend.


Mann was a struggling television writer in the 1950s when he became
fixated on the postwar Nuremberg trials that brought to justice the top
surviving leaders of the Nazi regime. His Judgment at Nuremberg had
become a successful drama on television, and against all advice, he was
determined to convert it into his first movie script.

"A lot of people didn't want it done," he commented in a 1994
interview. "People wanted to sweep the issue under the rug."

Mann persisted, and producer-director Stanley Kramer made the film with
a cast that included Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich,
Judy Garland, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift and Maximilian Schell.
Judgment at Nuremberg was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won
Oscars for Schell and Mann. (Widmark, who played a U.S. prosecutor,
died Monday at 93.)

"I believe that a writer worth his salt at all has an obligation not
only to entertain but to comment on the world in which he lives, not
only to comment, but maybe have a shot at reshaping the world," Mann
said when he accepted his Oscar.

His other movies included A Child Is Waiting (starring Lancaster and
Garland) about retarded children; Ship of Fools (with Vivien Leigh,
Simone Signoret, Jose Ferrer and Lee Marvin) involving human interplay
on an ocean liner; and Report to the Commissioner (featuring Michael
Moriarty) about police corruption.

Finding film studios increasingly unwilling to tackle controversial
subjects, Mann returned to television.

After creating Kojak, which aired until 1978, he wrote and directed the
Emmy-nominated miniseries King, a biography of Martin Luther King Jr.

Other made-for-TV movies: Skag (1980), which became a short-run series
for Karl Malden; Murderers Among Us: The Simon Weisenthal Story (1989);
Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story (1992); Sinatra (1992); and
Indictment: The McMartin Trial (1995), which won him another Emmy.

One of his last works was 2002's Whitewash: The Clarence Brandley
Story, based on the true-life story of a man wrongly convicted of
murder because of racism.

In 2001, his script of Judgment at Nuremberg was produced in New York
by the National Actors Theater.

Mann was born Abraham Goodman in Philadelphia on Dec. 1, 1927, the son
of a Russian-Jewish immigrant. He grew up in a tough factory
neighborhood where he said he always felt like an outsider.

He began writing plays at Temple University and New York University.

After three years in the Army, he began writing scripts for
television's Golden Age when high-quality TV dramas were in demand. His
credits included Lux Video Theatre, Playhouse 90 and Studio One, among
many others.

Survivors include Mann's wife and son.

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary