The Directors: Daniel Mann

As a Broadway director, he almost wanted his characters to leap into the laps of those watching them.  As a movie director, he still wanted the essence of that.  Characterization was everything to him.  Regardless of medium, he wanted his characters to exhibit strengths and weaknesses as they wandered through their modern-day lives.  He had a gift for listening and dialogue.  He wanted more than anything that his audiences felt something for his characters.

Daniel Mann, probably best known for his adaptation of plays into films, seemed to have a special affinity for women's stories.  George Cukor was tagged the premier women's director but Mann could easily be seen as first runner-up.  Three actresses won Oscars under his direction and overall six women were nominated and one man.  I think some of these women did their best work under Mann's even-handed direction.

He only made 25 theatrical films with his best work in the 50's at the dawning of his career.  Audiences who know him at all may still get him confused with two other directors named Mann... Delbert and the highly-esteemed Anthony.  All true movie aficionados during the 50's have seen the work of Daniel Mann.

Born in 1912 Brooklyn, he was the youngest of five children of a lawyer.  Showbiz got into his blood as a young child and he attended New York's Professional Children's School.  For awhile he had a band that provided him with a living.  He won a scholarship to the esteemed Neighborhood Playhouse, studying under the brilliant Sanford Meisner.  In short order, Mann became his assistant.  Later he became one of the first acting instructors at The Actor's Studio.

Soon Mann established himself as a Broadway director who had an easy way with his actors.  In 1950 he became the director for William Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba, which would win Tonys for its stars, Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer.  The following year Mann directed Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo which would win Tonys for its stars, Maureen Stapleton and Eli Wallach.

When Paramount bought the rights to Sheba, they brought along Mann and Booth, both making their film debuts in the 1952 production.  Blackmer was replaced with the more famous Burt Lancaster in the most passive role of his long career.  It concerned the lives of a lonely, motor-mouthed wife whose recovering- alcoholic husband cannot stand her delusions.  Booth won an Oscar for her role although the dowdy actress had a rough time trying to ignite her screen career.  She would try twice more with Mann.

Booth was hurried into About Mrs. Leslie (1954) to aid in the allure of her Oscar win.  Told in flashbacks, the story of a rooming house landlady and her onetime marriage to a rich man (Robert Ryan) was no great shakes. 

Mann would always consider 1955 to be the year he attracted the most attention.  He would steer not one but two fiery actresses to Oscar nominations in separate films.  One gave arguably her best performance in a storied career and the other was making her English-language film debut.

I thought that of those two performances, Susan Hayward should have won for her sizzling performance as alcoholic songstress Lillian Roth in the grim I'll Cry Tomorrow.  The story of Roth's ups and downs with her various husbands and boyfriends and her controlling mother (Jo Van Fleet) is riveting movie-making.

Mann with Lancaster & Magnani

But Anna Magnani would win the Oscar for The Rose Tattoo and her role as a reclusive widow whose passions are fired up by a hunky truck driver (Lancaster again).  Tennessee Williams had written his play with Magnani in mind but she didn't then know English well enough to tackle the role.  The often temperamental actress who had directors for brunch took a shine to Mann.  Too bad they never worked together again.

Often Broadway directors make their best films based on their own plays. Such was certainly the case for Mann and Sheba and Tattoo.  I saw most of his films and outside of a couple more, most were just average fare.  I never particularly considered Mann the right director for comedy and it takes a certain genius to pull them off.

The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956) won a Pulitzer Prize as a comedy play but the film didn't do so well despite an engaging performance by Marlon Brando as a Japanese interpreter.  The family drama Hot Spell (1958) also didn't do so well despite the presence of Booth, Shirley MacLaine and Anthony Quinn.  It focused on a wife trying to keep her marriage together despite an unfaithful husband.  The public wasn't faithful either.

Under Mann's direction, Paul Muni received an Oscar nomination in his final big-screen film, The Last Angry Man (1959).  The story of a journalist who wants to produce a documentary about his aging uncle who is an esteemed doctor had its moments but probably never connected with audiences as Mann might have liked.  Muni, however, was superb.    

Mann's only venture into war films came with 1960's The Mountain Road, about an Army major in China in 1944 attempting to stop the invading Japanese.  It was nothing new or innovative and failed at the box office despite a toplining James Stewart.

Mann with Liz & Larry

That same year Mann helmed BUtterfield 8 which won Elizabeth Taylor her first Oscar as a prostitute trying to reform due to her love for a lecherous married man, superbly played by Laurence Harvey.  Taylor hated the film and her acting in it and I think she was wrong on both counts.  

While he was highlighting hookers he made Ada (1961) with Susan Hayward and Dean Martin.  He's a weak governor and she's the tough cookie who married him and saved a state.  For me it was a fun look at the shenanigans of politics and had, as always, an oh-so-watchable Hayward performance.  Alas, it, too, tanked at the box office. 

Mann got still another chance to make a movie from a successful Broadway play with Five Finger Exercise (1962) which concerned a husband, wife, son, daughter and a tutor who are all wildly dysfunctional.  Rosalind Russell, recent Oscar winner Maximilian Schell and West Side Story heartthrob Richard Beymer couldn't save the day.

There are no kind words for two Dean Martin comedies, Who's Got the Action? (1963) and Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1964) so we won't try to look for any.  I do wince at most movie titles that ask questions.  Our Man Flint (1966) with James Coburn, along with Martin's Matt Helm series, was trying its best to parody James Bond.  Oh puh-leeze.  Judith (1966) is a routine, cloak and dagger tale surrounding the birth of Israel that has little interest other than its title star, Sophia Loren.

Mann again teamed with Quinn to make the director's best film of the decade,  A Dream of Kings (1969).  It concerns a Greek-American father who wants to take his seriously ill son to Greece in the hope his health will improve.  Quinn, perhaps recalling a few tricks from playing Zorba, shines in a multi-layered role.  Irene Pappas, as always, is glorious as his dubious wife and Inger Stevens, in her final theatrical movie before her suicide, played Quinn's mistress, a role she played in real life as well.

A happy moment for Quinn and Pappas

Willard (1971), the story of a rat and the boy who loves him, was, as you would expect, critically bashed but the undiscerning public thought it was seeing Shakespeare.

When I, the lover of westerns, bum-raps one of them, you can trust me... it's horrid.  Mann was never really an action-adventure director and he'd never directed a western so no surprise that The Revengers (1972) was a dog.  The story of a man out to track down his family's killers has been done scores of times but never so poorly.  When one considers the stars are two of my all-time favorites, William Holden and Susan Hayward (in her final film), one wonders how such a movie came to be.

During the 70's and 80's his films were consistently poor and fewer than in the previous two decades.  He began doing television which was par for the course when movie work dwindled.  It should be mentioned that he made a television movie in 1980 that is one of the best pieces of work Mann ever did.  Playing for Time is a poignant look at female prisoners at Auschwitz and features magical performances from Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Alexander.  How sad that the same year, he started Arch of Triumph with Schell, Trevor Howard and Suzanne Pleshette and it was never completed.

Daniel Mann died of heart failure in Los Angeles in 1991 at age 79.  He was married twice and had two children, one of whom was married to comedian Harold Ramis.

A summary couldn't contain any more than what you have already gathered.  He was highly trained in his profession and lit the lights of Broadway with his expertise.  He brought distinguished plays and novels to the screen with mostly success.  His best work is in his first few years.  He seemed too good and too well trained to have such an overall lackluster career.  It seems a shame. 



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A good 50's film