In Memoriam, Delbert Mann

We must sadly report a recent loss with strong Brontë echoes. Director and producer Delbert Mann:

Delbert Mann, a director from the heyday of live television who won an Oscar for his first big-screen effort, “Marty,” in 1955, died Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 87 and lived in Los Angeles.
The cause was pneumonia, his family said. (Margalit Fox in The New York Times)

Delbert Mas was also the director of a TV version of Jane Eyre in 1971 with George C. Scott and Susannah York. The film was awarded with an Emmy for best music (John Williams) and was released theatrically in Europe.

Not so well known is that he directed Brontë in 1983 with Juliet Harris. Brontë was based in the radio play Currer Bell, Esq. by William Luce, a monologue written for Julie Harris.

Julie Harris portrays the poignant short life of the great English writer Charlotte Brontë in this filmed version of Harris's tour-de-force, one-woman act. Filmed on location in Ireland (substituting for Brontë's Yorkshire home), the landscape brings forth the author's stunning natural environment, and the house and its furnishings evoke a 19th -century setting. The drama begins in 1849 when Charlotte comes back home to her minister father after attending the funeral of her sister Anne, dead at age 29. Younger sister Emily died the year before, her brother Bronwell before that, her colorful Aunt Branny and many others have also died. Jane Eyre has just been published two years earlier -- Charlotte's triumph flung in the face of so many tragedies. As she walks around her home, she recalls people and times gone by, a love that never came to realization, the dissolute life of her brother, and her father's insistence that she never marry -- memories are nostalgic, caustic, humorous, and always captivating. (Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide)

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