Loring Mandel, Emmy-Winning TV Writer, Dies at 91

By Klaritza Rico

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Loring Mandel, a playwright and screenwriter who won two primetime Emmys for his work, died on March 24. He was 91.

Mandel died of cancer at his home in Lenox, Mass., his son Alan Mandel told

Variety

. 

The Chicago native, who was born May 5, 1928, went on to earn a total of five Emmy nominations throughout his career, winning two. He won his first primetime Emmy in 1968 for his work on “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night“ on “CBS Playhouse” and in 2001 for the telefilm “Conspiracy,” starring Kenneth Branagh, Clare Bullus and Stanley Tucci. He also received a Peabody and BAFTA award for the TV film.

In his early years, Mandel wrote for local and national radio in Chicago on shows such as the “Jack Benny” show and the “Today Show” with Dave Garraway. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and serving in the Korean War, Mandel moved to New York where he began his career as a writer.

He wrote for television series including, “Love of Life,” “Studio One in Hollywood,” “The Seven Lively Arts,” “Armstrong Circle Theatre” and “Playhouse 90,” among many others. His “Project Immortality” script on “Playhouse 90” earned him a Sylvania award and his first Emmy nomination in 1959. In 1975, he received another Emmy nom for his writing on the CBS miniseries “The Lives of Benjamin Franklin.”

In addition, Mandel also served as a president of the WGA East in the 1970s, and in 2004, he was given the guild’s Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for lifetime contributions to television. His papers, scripts, articles and correspondence are located at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. 

He is survived by his wife Dorothy, whom he married in 1950; his sister Charlotte Browning; his sons, Joshua and Alan, and their respective wives Laura and Ellen; and his granddaughters Hannah, Eliza and Natalie.