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About the author - Abby Mann

Abby Mann’s television and film writing career has spanned four decades and earned him widespread critical acclaim and numerous prestigious industry awards in the United States and abroad. He has received an Academy Award and New York Film Critics Award for his screenplay for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and Emmys for The Marcus-Nelson Murders (1973, the pilot for the TV series Kojak), Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story (1989), and Indictment: The McMartin Case (1995).

Mann’s made-for-television movies – a television genre in which he is widely acknowledged as a leading practitioner – have covered a breadth of subjects. His most daring (and controversial) scripts have offered viewers a withering critique of the functioning of America’s criminal justice system. Although some critics have argued that Mann has, on occasion, selectively marshaled facts and taken “polemical” positions in his portrayal of his subjects, almost all have expressed admiration for his exhaustive investigative research and his rich dramatic portrayal of character. Most importantly, few have questioned the factual basis for his arguments.

Mann, the son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant jeweler, grew up in the 1930s in East Pittsburgh – a predominantly Catholic working-class neighborhood he describes as a “tough steel area.” As a Jewish youth in these surroundings, Mann felt himself an outsider. Perhaps this in part explains the persistent preoccupation, in his scripts, with the working poor and racial minorities – outsiders who are trapped in a social system in which prejudice, often institutionalized in the police and judicial apparatus, is used to deprive them of their rights.

Mann began his professional writing career in the early 1950s, writing for NBC’s Cameo Theater, and for the noted anthology series Studio One, Robert Montgomery Presents, and Playhouse 90. His script for the celebrated film drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), recounting the Nazi war crimes trials, was originally produced for Playhouse 90. Mann moved to Hollywood as production on the feature film version began. Other successful film scripts quickly followed, including A Child Is Waiting (1963), directed by John Cassavetes, which offered one of the first sympathetic filmic portrayals of the care and treatment of mentally challenged children; and a screen adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter’s novel Ship of Fools (1965), the story of the interlocking lives of passengers sailing from Mexico to pre-Hitler Germany, directed by Stanley Kramer (who had directed Judgment at Nuremberg).

Mann returned to television writing in 1973 with the script for The Marcus-Nelson Murders, which launched Universal Television’s popular Kojak TV series. Universal had approached Mann about doing a story based on the 1963 brutal rape and murder of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert -- two young, white professional women living in midtown Manhattan. George Whitmore, a young black man who had previously been arrested in Brooklyn for the murder of a black woman, signed a detailed confession for the Wylie and Hoffert murders. Whitmore later recanted his confession, claiming he was beaten into signing it. Mann visited Whitmore in jail in New York before agreeing to write the screenplay, and became convinced not only that Whitmore was innocent, but also that some top officials in the Manhattan and Brooklyn district attorneys’ offices had ignored Whitmore’s alibi that he was in Seacliff, New Jersey –50 miles from New York City – at the moment of the murders. After the airing of The Marcus-Nelson Murders, for which Mann won an Emmy and a Writers Guild Award, Whitmore was released from prison.

Although he was not involved in the production of Kojak, Mann was unhappy with the treatment of the series by its producer, Universal Television, which, he argued, re-framed the police melodrama as a formulaic cops-and-robbers potboiler, whereas he had sought to show, in The Marcus-Nelson Murders, that law enforcement officials should be watched.

In his next television project, Mann cast his critical gaze on one of the country’s most sacrosanct institutions – the medical profession. Medical Story, an anthology series produced by Columbia, premiered on NBC in 1975 and had a brief four-month run. Mann was the series creator and also served as co-executive producer.

Mann made his directorial debut with King, a six-hour docudrama on the life of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. He had wanted to do a feature film on King while King was still alive, but was unable to raise the necessary financing.

Mann’s direct involvement with Medical Story and Skag (another television series) convinced him that the process involved in producing series TV inevitably led to too many compromises, both ideological, as politically controversial themes became “muddled,” and creative, as strong pilots were followed by aesthetically weak regular series episodes. For these reasons, he decided in the 1980s to focus his artistic energy exclusively on made-for-television movies, over which he had greater artistic control.

The Atlanta Child Murders aired on CBS in 1985. The notorious case focused on Wayne Williams, a black man who was accused of recruiting young boys for his homosexual father, using them sexually along with his father, and then murdering them. Mann was urged by prominent black leaders in Atlanta not to take on the project because, they argued, the additional publicity generated by a TV movie focusing on an accused black mass murderer would, in the end, only further damage the black community. Mann initially withdrew from the proposed project, but attended the Williams trial and was disturbed by the courtroom proceedings, which revealed to him the inadequate investigation into the murders of victims who belonged to poor minority families, the introduction of potentially unreliable evidence, and the sensationalized media coverage of the trial.

Mann’s most recent made-for-television movies have premiered on HBO, which he has found to be much more supportive of his often contentious stands on controversial social issues than were the commercial broadcast networks, who felt they must avoid the inherent commercial risks of alienating significant sectors of their mass audience. Most recent among these was Indictment: The McMartin Trial, created by Mann and his wife Myra. The film won an Emmy and a Golden Globe in 1995. Once again Mann questioned the workings of the judicial system. This case involved the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, at which it was alleged that seven preschool teachers had molested 347 children over the course of a decade. Most people in Los Angeles were convinced of the veracity of the charges, which were supported by the accounts of hundreds of children who attended the school. Mann became intrigued by the case when charges against five of the defendants were dropped. The two remaining defendants, Peggy Buckey, the school superintendent, and her son Ray were still under arrest. Buckey’s daughter argued on Larry King’s television show that the L.A. District Attorney was continuing with the prosecution of her mother and brother because they had been kept in jail so long that the DA could not admit his error without losing face. As Mann investigated the case, he once again confronted the seamy side of the justice system: informers who supposedly heard confessions only because they had made financial deals to their own advantage; greedy parents who were suing to get damages; and prosecutors who withheld crucial evidence and selectively ignored facts to advance their own careers by obtaining a conviction. Mann was also intent on exploring the important psychological question regarding the ease with which children can be led by manipulative adults into admitting events that never occurred.