Oscar-winning filmmaker Abby Mann dies

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., March 27 (UPI) -- Abby Mann, an Oscar- and Emmy-winning filmmaker who specialized in hard-hitting, issue oriented projects, has died at 80 in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Mann -- who won the screenwriting Oscar for the 1961 drama "Judgment at Nuremberg" -- died Tuesday of heart failure, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

As writer, director and producer of such Emmy-winning TV movies as "The Marcus-Nelson Murders," "Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story" and "Indictment: The McMartin Trial," Mann often championed the underdog, taking particular aim at the U.S. criminal justice system, the Times said.

"A writer worth his salt at all has an obligation not only to entertain but to comment on the world in which he lives," Mann said as he accepted the Oscar for "Judgment at Nuremberg," an account of the prosecution of German war criminals in 1948.

Mann was born Abraham Goodman in Philadelphia Dec. 1, 1927. He attended Temple University and New York University and served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

He wrote for live TV in the '50s. The film version of "Judgment at Nuremberg" was adapted from his 1959 teleplay for "Playhouse 90."

Mann was nominated for an Oscar for his 1965 adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter's novel "Ship of Fools."