HBO - OSCAR WINNING SCREENWRITER ABBY MANN DEAD AT 84

Screenwriter Abby Mann, whose work often carried controversial social messages, died Tuesday in Beverly Hills of heart failure at age 84. Many of his dramas were created during television's Golden Age in the 1950s. One of them, Judgment at Nuremberg, origina lly created for the anthology series Playhouse 90 and directed by George Roy Hill in 1959, was brought to the screen by director Stanley Kramer two years later and won Mann an Oscar. He is also credited with being the creator of the Ko jak TV series, although he had no involvement in its production. In 1995 he and his wife Myra collaborated on Indictment: The McMartin Trial for HBO in which they argued that the charges of child abuse brought against the McMartin family had been manufactured by overzealous prosecutors and exploited by the news media. As production began their house was burned to the ground in a case of arson that was never solved. Recently he had been working with former Illinois Gov. George Ryan on a screenpla y about Ryan's decision to halt executions in his state.

27/03/2008