You are here: MaxAbout.com > People

Delbert Mann

Personal Profile

Delbert Mann
  • Birth Name:
    Delbert Martin Mann Jr.
  • Date of Birth:
    January 30, 1920
  • Zodiac Sign:
    Aquarius
  • Place of Birth:
    Lawrence, Kansas, USA
  • Place of Death:
    Los Angeles, California, USA
  • Date of Death:
    November 1, 2007
  • Cause of Death:
    Pneumonia
  • Sex:
    Male
  • Nationality:
    American

Family

Delbert Mann
  • Spouse:
    Ann Caroline Gillespie

Career

Delbert Mann

Trivia

Delbert Mann
  • His old friend Fred Coe, a producer at NBC, offered Mann the opportunity to direct live television drama on the network's "Philco Television Playhouse."
  • Mann accepted the job offer and moved to New York in 1949.
  • For NBC, Mann directed many dramas for the "Philco Playhouse," which later alternated its broadcasting weeks on the network with the "Goodyear Television Playhouse," and "Producers' Showcase."
  • Mann directed episodes for all three showcases, including "October Story" with Julie Harris and Leslie Nielsen, "Middle of the Night" with Eva Marie Saint and E.G. Marshall, a remake of The Petrified Forest with the inevitable Humphrey Bogart and even two productions of Shakespeare's "Othello".
  • Mann was one of the best-known graduates of "The Golden Age of Television," when live original drama was a staple of network TV.
  • Other showcases he worked for included "The Repertory Theatre," "Ford Star Jubilee," and "Playwrights '56." In 1953, he directed a live tele-play written by another WWII vet, Paddy Chayevsky.
  • The episode of "Goodyear Television Playhouse" starring another vet, the up-and-coming Method actor Rod Steiger, as a lonely butcher named "Marty."
  • Delbert Mann's name will always be linked to the extraordinary cultural phenomenon that was "Marty," but it was as a film, not as television program, that Chayevsky's 1953 script became legendary, the first blockbuster hit of independent cinema.
  • However, Mann's first recognition from the culture industry didn't come from Chayevsky's "Marty," either on television or film, but from Thornton Wilder's theatrical warhorse about a small burg in New Hampshire, "Our Town."
  • In 1954, Mann won a Best Director Emmy nomination for the "Producers' Showcase" episode "Our Town," a musical adaptation featuring the young Paul Newman and the singing talents of swinging Frank Sinatra. Ironically, the TV play of "Marty," considered the summit of TV's Golden Age in retrospect, went unrecognized during the nascent industry's awards season, though it did receive an excellent buzz via word of mouth.

Biography

Delbert Mann
Last Updated: Saturday, August 29, 2009

Delbert Mann, the Oscar-winning film director, was born Delbert Martin Mann, Jr. in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1920. His father moved the family to Nashville, Tennesse after taking a teaching position at Scarritt College. The young Mann graduated from Vanderbilt University, where he met his future wife, Ann Caroline Gillespie. Mann developed a lifelong friendship with Fred Coe, whom he met at the Nashville Community Playhouse, that would prove critical in his professional life.

After his 1941 graduation from Vanderbilt, Mann joined the Army and was assigned to the Air Corps, eventually becoming a pilot with the Eighth Air Force. As a B-24 bomber pilot with the "Mighty Eighth," Mann, flew thirty-five combat missions in the European Theater of Operations. After being demobilized at the end of WWII, interested in another kind of theater, he attended the Yale Drama School. From Yale, he moved on to a directing job with the Town Theatre of Columbia, South Carolina.

Though he could not know it then, "Marty" was the highpoint of Mann's career. While Chayevsky went on to win two more Oscars, Mann never won another Oscar nomination, though he did pick up two more Emmy nominations in 1972 and 1980 during his productive career. More significantly, Delbert Mann had the respect of his peers: in addition to his three subsequent Directors Guild of America nominations to go along with his win for "Marty," the DGA honored him with its Robert B. Aldrich Achievement Award in 1997 and an Honorary Life Membership in 2002.

 

Filmography

Delbert Mann

Submit Content