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 Kojak pilot), 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.
This
recurrent overarching theme is developed in stories focusing on
the forced signing of criminal confessions; inadequate police and
District Attorney investigation of murder cases involving victims
who are minorities, or poor, or both; judicial and police officials
who protect their reputations and careers, when confronted with
evidence of possible miscarriage of justice, by refusing to re-open
cases in which innocent persons, often minorities, have been convicted;
the possibility that law enforcement officials conspired in the
assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; the failure of union leaders
to adequately fight for the rights of their workers; the greed and
questionable ethics of some members of the legal, medical, and mental
health professions; and the sensationalized coverage of murder cases
by the media, who tend to prejudge cases according to their perception
of general public sentiment.
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 series. Universal 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
mid-town 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--fifty 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. Ironically, unforeseen
circumstances brought the project to fruition in 1978, ten years
after King's death.
The
central figure in The Marcus-Nelson Murders, George Whitmore,
had claimed that he was watching King's "I Have A Dream" speech
on television when the murders were committed. Mann asked King's
widow, Coretta Scott King, for the rights to use the film clip of
King's speech in The Marcus-Nelson Murders, which she granted.
She then asked Mann if he was still interested in the piece on King's
life. Encouraged by Mrs. King's continued interest, Mann pursued
the project. In doing research on the script, Mann uncovered information
that led him to believe that a conspiracy involving the Memphis,
Tennessee police and fire departments may have been responsible
for King's death. The conspiracy theory focused on the reassignment,
just prior to the assassination, of a black police officer and two
black fire fighters who had been stationed in a fire house overlooking
the motel where King was shot, and this despite numerous threats
of assassination while King was in Memphis.
Reporter
Mark Lane assisted Mann in his investigation of the circumstances
surrounding the King assassination. The research resulted in an
official House of Representatives inquiry into whether a conspiracy
had indeed been involved in the assassinations. As a result, Mann
was publicly maligned by the Memphis Police and Fire Chiefs.
For
Skag, his next television project which aired on NBC in 1980,
Mann returned to the scene of his youth--the steel mills of the
suburbs surrounding Pittsburgh. He developed the concept and wrote
the script for the three-hour pilot, and was given "complete freedom"
by then NBC President Fred Silverman. Starring Karl Malden as Pete
"Skag" Skagska, Skag was the unflinching, realistic portrait
of a middle-aged steel worker who had worked hard all his life,
but when stricken by a stroke, found himself suddenly "expendable"
because he was no longer able to provide food for the table or perform
sexually with his wife. Skag also dealt with the larger social
issues of steel workers' unhealthy working conditions, and the failure
of their unions to fight for their rights. Steel workers unions
bitterly attacked Skag, calling Mann "anti-union." But with
this series Mann was attempting to draw attention to a class of
Americans who until the 1980s were grossly underrepresented in prime-time
television drama, a fictional world largely populated by white,
white-collar, middle-aged male protagonists.
While
the premiere episode won critical praise and high ratings, viewership
rapidly declined, and the series ended its run after six weeks on
the air. Mann, who was involved in the first two regular series
episodes, attributed the series failure to uneven directing of some
of the subsequent episodes and artistic interference from the show's
star Malden.
Mann's
direct involvement with Medical Story and Skag convinced
him that the process involved in producing series television 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 Atlanta
child murders case focused on Wayne Williams, a black, 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 television
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,
the only writer able to speak to Wayne Williams in prison after
his conviction, raised doubts about the case, arguing that the judicial
system itself was on trial, as was a society that had neither compassion
for the victims during their lives nor justice for them after their
deaths. Critics praised the dramaturgy of The Atlanta Child Murders,
but some questioned Mann's doubts about both the propriety of the
courtroom proceedings and Williams's guilt, arguing that after all,
the State Supreme Court of Georgia had upheld Williams's conviction.
After seeing the television movie, prominent defense attorneys Alan
Dershowitz, William Kunstler, and Bobby Lee Cook agreed to join
in a pro bono defense of Williams, but, according to Mann, once
the publicity died down they did not pursue the appeal to re-open
the case.
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 Pre-school
in Manhattan Beach, California at which it was alleged that seven
pre-school teachers had molested three hundred forty-seven 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 show that the Los Angeles District Attorney was
continuing with the prosecution of her mother and brother because
they had been kept in jail so long that the District Attorney 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 in exploring the
important psychological question regarding the ease with which children
can be led by manipulative adults into admitting events that never
occurred.
Ultimately,
despite two trials, no one was convicted in the McMartin case.
Indictment produced very strong reactions among viewers. According
to Mann, "People seem . . . obsessed by it. I suppose they realize
that they have watched and believed stories that were as incredible
as the Salem witch hunt." Reaction to the television film had a
direct impact on the Manns as well. On the day production on Indictment
began, their house was burned to the ground. Undeterred, Mann, at
age 69, is at work on his next HBO movie--on the lives and trial
of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
-Hal
Himmelstein
O'Connor, John J. "McMartin Preschool Case: A Portrait of Hysteria."
The New York Times, 19 May 1995.
Shales,
Tom. "Tipping the Scales of Justice." The Washington (D.C.)
Post, 20 May 1995.
