Delbert Mann, the director who won an Oscar® for Marty (1955) and had a fine career directing several more films and television productions, died of pneumonia on November 11 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 87.

He was born Delbert Martin Mann Jr., on January 30, 1920, in Lawrence, Kansas, but raised in Nashville since the age of 11 when his father took a teaching position at Scarritt College. His interest in theater began in his youth and he headed his high school drama club before attending Vanderbilt University in Nashville and continuing his dramatic studies. After he graduated in 1941, he had a stint in the Army Air Force and when he returned Stateside, he enrolled in the Yale School of Drama and graduated with a master of fine arts in directing.

After accepting a position as a director of a regional theater in Columbia, South Columbia, Mann received an invitation from an old friend and mentor, Fred Coe, whom Mann knew in Nashville, to join him in New York where Coe was a stage manager and assistant director at NBC. By the early '50s, Mann was working on some key dramatic anthology series such as The Philco Television Playhouse and Goodyear Television Playhouse and earned a solid reputation as a fine director of live television.

His break came in 1953 when he was tapped to direct Marty, a simple story about a lonely Bronx butcher struggling to find love. Written by Paddy Chayefsky and starring Rod Steiger in the title role, this early live telecast was a considerable critical and commercial success. When it came time for the big screen adaptation of his teleplay, Chayefsky insisted that Mann be the director. The result was Marty (1955) and it won Academy Awards for best picture, best director (Mann), best screenplay (Chayefsky) and best actor (Ernest Borgnine).

After Marty, Mann continued to direct some first rate work that exemplified his strengths, namely his low-key naturalism, excellent narrative control, and a gift for coaxing fine, sensitive performances out of his actors. The proof is available for all to see: Jack Warden and Don Murray as insecure New York white collar workers in The Bachelor Party (1957); the Oscar® winning turns of David Niven and Wendy Hiller in Separate Tables (1958), the surprising chemistry of Fredric March and Kim Novak in Middle of the Night (1959), and the terrific ensemble that included Robert Preston, Dorothy McGuire and Angela Lansbury for The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960).

Later on he also proved that he was adept at directing supple comedies as well as intense drama, and he notched some box office hits with two Doris Day vehicles: Lover Come Back (1961), That Touch of Mink (1962) and the charming romantic coupling of Glenn Ford and Geraldine Page for Dear Heart (1964). By the late '60s Mann returned to the small screen to direct some high-end telefilms: Heidi with Maximilian Schell, Michael Redgrave, and Jean Simmons; David Copperfield (1969), starring Richard Attenborough, Laurence Olivier, and Michael Redgrave; and Jane Eyre (1970) that paired George C. Scott and Susannah York.

By the '70s, Mann spent an equal amount of time between film and television, and toward the end of his career he directed two stellar pieces, the excellent television miniseries All Quiet on the Western Front (1979), and a fine adventure about the crossing of the Berlin Wall in Night Crossing (1981). His last film was the race relations drama, Lily in Winter (1994) starring Natalie Cole. Afterwards, Mann lived comfortably in retirement and in 2002, he received the Directors Guild of America's Honorary Life Member Award. He is survived by his sons Fred, David and Steven and seven grandchildren.

by Michael T. Toole