Delbert Mann, 1920 - 2007.

Delbert Mann, who transformed Paddy Chayefsky's classic teleplays Marty and The Bachelor Party into big-screen triumphs and helped bring TV techniques to the film world, died Sunday. He was 87.

Jeremiah Marquez, the AP.

See also: The Museum of Broadcast Communications.

Updated through 11/13.

Updates, 11/13: "Describing Mann as 'the quietest, most wonderful guy,' [Ernest] Borgnine said he 'was the kind of director that you get home at night and say to yourself, "Gee, I gave a pretty good performance," without realizing that he was the guy that got it out of you,'" notes Dennis McLellan in the Los Angeles Times.

His films include one "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," writes Margalit Fox in the New York Times. "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."

Posted by dwhudson at November 12, 2007 12:51 PM