Abby Mann, at 80; wrote 'Judgment at Nuremberg'

Abby Mann, with actress Lee Remick, after he won an Oscar for screenwriting at the Academy Awards ceremony. (associated press/file 1962)

LOS ANGELES - 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.

In 50-plus years as a writer, producer, and director, Mr. Mann built a strong reputation for issue-oriented, thought-provoking projects. A multiple Emmy winner, he was especially critical of the inner workings of the criminal justice system. He was known for creating complex characters and was scrupulous in his research before writing his scripts.

"A writer worth his salt at all has an obligation not only to entertain, but to comment on the world in which he lives," Mr. Mann said when accepting 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, Mr. 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, Mr. Mann always felt like an outsider, and his later scripts focused on outsiders - the poor and racial minorities 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, Mr. 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, Mr. 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."

He also wrote a novel based on the movie.

The movie version of "Judgment" brought him to Hollywood, from where he wrote 1963's "A Child is Waiting," directed by John Cassavetes, a drama that dealt with mentally challenged children, and the 1965 adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter's novel "Ship of Fools," which was directed by Kramer and brought Mr. Mann a second Oscar nomination.

He received an Emmy and a Writers Guild of America Award for the 1973 TV movie "The Marcus-Nelson Murders," which introduced the character of Kojak, played by Telly Savalas. The character later was spun off into a long-running series.

The film was based on the 1963 rape and murder of two white professional women living in Manhattan. George Whitmore, a young black man who had been arrested previously for the murder of a black woman, signed a confession stating that he had murdered the two women. Whitmore later said that he had been beaten and coerced into signing it. Mr. Mann visited Whitmore in jail and became so convinced that he wasn't guilty - and that officials had ignored Whitmore's alibi that he was 50 miles away at the time of the murders - that he wrote the screenplay. After the film aired, Whitmore was set free.

Mr. Mann also created and was coexecutive producer of the 1975-76 series "Medical Story" and received an Emmy nomination for the pilot of "Skag," a short-lived 1980 series starring Karl Malden as the foreman of a Pittsburgh steel mill.

Mr. Mann generally concentrated on movies and miniseries for television. Among his other credits are "The Atlanta Child Murders," "Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story," and "King," a miniseries on the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which Mr. Mann also directed.

Mr. Mann leaves his wife, Myra, and a son.