Working in TV from 1947, Mann directed over 100 live plays, the best known of which was Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty" (1953). The following year he directed a big-screen version, starring Ernest Borgnine as the lonely Bronx butcher in search of love. The success of the film--it took the Palme d'Or at Cannes--paved the way for a number of low-budget films on "small" subjects that flourished in the mid-1950s.

Mann's other successes include the finely acted "The Bachelor Party" (1956), also scripted by Chayefsky, and "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1960). He made some deft comedies in the 1960s