Marty Director Delbert Mann Dies At 87

[Mr. Television]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/ar....html?ref=arts

Delbert Mann, Director, Is Dead at 87

By MARGALIT FOX
Published: November 13, 2007


Delbert Mann, a director from the heyday of live television who won an Oscar for his first big-screen effort, “Marty,” in 1955, died Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 87 and lived in Los Angeles.

The cause was pneumonia, his family said.

Mr. Mann had directed the original, live television version of “Marty,” broadcast on NBC in 1953. With a script by Paddy Chayefsky, it starred Rod Steiger as Marty Pilletti, a shy Bronx butcher, and Nancy Marchand as his equally awkward love interest.

Reviewing the television production in The New York Times, Jack Gould praised its “austere and tender artistry,” adding, “Delbert Mann’s direction has the sparing simplicity of a documentary.”

When “Marty” was remade two years later as a Hollywood film, it starred Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair. The movie earned four Academy Awards: for best picture, best screenplay (Mr. Chayefsky), best actor (Mr. Borgnine) and best director (Mr. Mann). “I was so stunned at being called the winner, I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Mann recalled in an interview with Daily Variety in 2002. “I didn’t have a speech prepared. I simply stood up and said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and walked off the stage.”

For Hollywood, Mr. Mann also directed “The Bachelor Party” (1957), which, like “Marty,” began as an NBC television drama, written by Mr. Chayefsky and directed by Mr. Mann.

Among Mr. Mann’s other feature films are “Desire Under the Elms” (1958), “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” (1960), “That Touch of Mink” (1962) and “Mister Buddwing” (1966).

His television movies include “Jane Eyre” (1970), “A Girl Named Sooner” (1975), “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1979), “Incident in a Small Town” (1994) and “Lily in Winter” (1994). They also include a film that would haunt him to the end of his life: “Heidi,” whose ultrapunctual broadcast on NBC in 1968 famously eclipsed the final minute of a dramatic football game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders.

Delbert Martin Mann Jr. was born on Jan. 30, 1920, in Lawrence, Kan. He grew up in Nashville, where his father taught sociology at Scarritt College. The younger Mr. Mann earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Vanderbilt University in 1941 and during World War II served with the Army Air Corps as a B-24 bomber pilot. After the war, he earned a master’s degree from the Yale School of Drama.

In 1949, Mr. Mann, then directing regional theater in South Carolina, moved to New York to take a job as a floor manager at NBC. Though he had never seen a television program before, he quickly rose as a director there: his many credits include the Philco Television Playhouse, for which he directed more than 100 live dramas.

Mr. Mann’s wife, the former Ann Caroline Gillespie, whom he married in 1942, died in 2001. He is survived by three sons, Fred, of Wayne, Pa.; David, of Los Gatos, Calif.; and Steven, of Pasadena, Calif.; and seven grandchildren. A daughter, Susan, died in an automobile accident in 1976.

A past president of the Directors Guild of America, Mr. Mann was made an honorary life member of the guild in 2002. But for all his accolades, it was “Heidi” that interviewers unfailingly seemed to ask him about.

On Sunday, Nov. 17, 1968, the Jets were leading the Raiders 32-29, with about a minute left to play. The game was broadcast live on NBC, and on the stroke of 7 p.m., the network, intent on keeping to its published schedule, dutifully cut away to “Heidi.”

Enraged calls flooded in: what millions of viewers did not get to see was Oakland scoring two touchdowns to pull off a last-minute victory, 43-32. Famous to this day in the annals of broadcasting bloopers, the debacle was known ever after as the Heidi Game.

Mr. Mann, who had directed “Heidi,” was angry too, but for a different reason. During the film, NBC, bowing to the tide of phone calls, superimposed the football score on the screen.

“They ran the banner with the score during a very important scene,” Mr. Mann told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2000. “It’s the one when Klara, who was Heidi’s friend, is trying to walk. It’s very emotional, and when I saw the banner, I thought it was handled very insensitively. I was so upset, I gave a scream of anguish.”