Abby Mann, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of 1961's "Judgment at Nuremberg" and such acclaimed TV movies as 1973's "The Marcus-Nelson Murders" and 1989's "Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story," died Tuesday of heart failure in Beverly Hills. He was 80.
During his more than 50-year career as a writer, producer and director, Mann built a strong reputation for his issue-oriented, thought-provoking projects. A multiple Emmy winner, Mann was especially critical of the inner workings of the American criminal justice system. He was known for creating complex characters and was scrupulous in his investigative research.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, April 01, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 44 words Type of Material: Correction
Mann obituary: The obituary of Oscar-winning screenwriter Abby Mann in Friday's California section said "Judgment at Nuremberg" was based on the Nuremberg war trials in Germany in 1948. In fact, Mann's script covered the "Judges' Trial," a war-crimes trial held in Nuremberg in 1947.
"A writer worth his salt at all has an obligation not only to entertain but to comment on the world in which he lives," Mann said when he accepted his Oscar for "Judgment at Nuremberg," the Stanley Kramer drama about the Nuremberg war trials in Germany in 1948. One of the film's stars, Richard Widmark, died Monday at age 93.
Born Abraham Goodman in Philadelphia on Dec. 1, 1927, Mann was the son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant jeweler and grew up in East Pittsburgh in a predominantly Catholic working-class neighborhood. As one of the few Jews in the area, Mann always felt like an outsider, and his scripts years later focused on the world of outsiders -- the poor and racial minorities who were subjected to prejudice and injustice.
"I think he obviously was a very serious, substantive writer who was able to deal with a very strong social conscience and a very strong sense of what it was like to be an outsider, functioning within a society or system that didn't have your best interests at heart," said David Bushman, television curator at the Paley Center for Media in New York. "He elevated the level of television because of his skills as a writer and his devotion to taking on serious, controversial issues, . . . usually taking on the side of the underdog."
After attending Temple University and New York University, Mann served in the Army during World War II. He began his professional writing career in the early days of live television in the 1950s, penning scripts for such popular anthologies as "Cameo Theater," "Studio One," "Robert Montgomery Presents" and "Playhouse 90." "Judgment at Nuremberg" was originally presented live on "Playhouse 90" in 1959.
In a 2001 interview with the Associated Press, Mann said that when the drama first aired, "there were a lot of people who felt we really should not do it. The Cold War was at its height. Some people felt I was embarrassing the [Eisenhower] administration."
