Kojak creator and Oscar-winning screenwriter dies

ABBY MANN, writer of socially-conscious scripts for movies and television and winner of the 1961 Academy Award for adapted screenplay for Judgment at Nuremberg, has died aged 80. The cause of death was not given.

Mann also won multiple Emmys, including one in 1973 for The Marcus-Nelson Murders, which created a maverick New York police detective named Theo Kojak. The film, which starred Telly Savalas, was spun off into the long-running TV series Kojak.

In a career spanning more than 50 years as a writer, director and producer, Mann also covered morally conscious themes, doing TV films on subjects like Martin Luther King, human rights advocate Simon Weisenthal, and the Teamsters.

“From his earliest days as a writer, Mann was guided by a moral compass that never wavered,” said Del Reisman, former president of the Writers Guild of America, West and a longtime friend.

Mann was a struggling TV writer in the 1950s when he became fixated on the postwar Nuremberg trials that brought to justice the top surviving leaders of the Nazi regime.

His Judgment at Nuremberg had become a successful drama on TV and against, all advice, he was determined to convert it into his first movie script.

“A lot of people didn’t want it done,” he commented in a 1994 interview. “People wanted to sweep the issue under the rug.”

Mann persisted and Stanley Kramer made the film, with a cast that included Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift and Maximilian Schell.

Judgment at Nuremberg was nominated for 11 Oscars and won awards for Schell and Mann.

Widmark, who played a US prosecutor in the film, died last Monday at 93.

“I believe a writer worth his salt has an obligation not only to entertain but to comment on the world in which he lives — not only to comment, but maybe have a shot at reshaping the world,” Mann said when he accepted his Oscar.

Mann was born Abraham Goodman in Philadelphia on December 1, 1927, the son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant.

He started writing plays at Temple University and New York University.

After three years in the US army, he began writing drama scripts for TV’s golden age, when high quality dramas were in demand.

His credits included Lux Video Theatre, Playhouse 90, and Studio One.