Delbert Martin Mann, Jr. (January 30, 1920 â?? November 11, 2007) was an American television and film director. He won the Academy Award for Directing the film Marty; it was the first Best Picture winner to be based on a television program, being adapted from a 1953 teleplay of the same name which he had also directed. From 1967 to 1971, he was president of the Directors Guild of America.
Mann was born in Lawrence, Kansas, the son of Ora (née Patton), a civic worker and teacher, and Delbert Martin Mann, Sr., a college professor.[1] Mann graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He was married to Ann Caroline Mann from 1941 until his wife's death in 2001. Mann died on November 11, 2007, at age 87, of pneumonia at a Los Angeles hospital.