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.