[11] Mann was head of his high school drama club when he met Fred Coe, the future television producer and director, who was leading a church-sponsored acting society.

[1][2] Mann also attended the Yale School of Drama, where he earned a master's fine arts degree in directing.

[12] In 1949, at Coe's invitation, Mann joined him in New York, where he became a stage manager and assistant director at NBC.

He also directed more than two dozen films for television from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, including Heidi (1968), David Copperfield (1969), Jane Eyre (1970) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1979).

[4] In addition to Marty (1955), other films directed by Mann include The Bachelor Party (1957), Desire Under the Elms (1958), Separate Tables (1958), Middle of the Night (1959), The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), The Outsider (1961), That Touch of Mink (1962), A Gathering of Eagles (1963), Dear Heart (1964), Fitzwilly (1967), Kidnapped (1971) and Night Crossing (1982).

[16][17] On November 11, 2007, Mann died of pneumonia at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, at age 87.