Obit: Screen & TV writer Abby Mann at 80

[CrankyYankee]

Mr. Mann joined the first rank of screenwriters with “Judgment at Nuremberg,” released in 1961. It emerged from a script with the same title that Mr. Mann had written for CBS’s “Playhouse 90” two years earlier...Mann followed his “Nuremberg” script with more than four decades of serious dramas, many for movies made for television, a genre he helped pioneer. He won three Emmys for television movies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/movies/28mann2.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin

 

[RicoGregg]

His teleplay of "Indictment: The McMartin Trial" has to rank as among his finest works. It shamed the L.A. County District Attorney's office and embarrassed certain media people for their Nazi-like persecution of the innocent McMartin family.

It changed the way high profile cases are handled.

Abby Mann did himself proud.

 

[bpatrick]

He also wrote "The Marcus-Nelson Murders," based
on a true story and which served as the pilot for
"Kojak."

In 1980 he created a show for NBC which seemed
to have everything going for it: "Skag," a grim but
realistic view of a Pittsburgh steelworker starring
Karl Malden. Critics loved it, and the initial ratings
were quite strong. But apparently Mann severed his
ties with the show very early on (at least Fred Silverman
said so), the writing and the ratings soon deteriorated,
and the show was gone in five weeks. But the first
episode or two are worth seeking out.