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After despairing about how to spend it, and then suffering another humiliating rejection when he calls a girl to ask her out, Marty finally decides to attend a lonely hearts social at the Waverly Ballroom. There he meets a girl (Nancy Marchand) who has just been ditched by her blind date—a slick fellow who offers Marty "five bucks if you take ...
- Introduction
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Media Adaptations
- Characters
- Themes
- Topics For Further Study
- Style
- Historical Context
- Compare & Contrast
Marty, a teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky, was broadcast on live television in 1953, a time when such teleplays were common. It was such a tremendous hit that it was immediately optioned for film. The film version, only slightly different than the television version, was released in 1955 by Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions and is considered a classic of...
Sidney "Paddy" Chayefsky was born in New York City on January 29, 1923, to immigrant Ukrainian Jewish parents. He attended Dewitt Clinton High School in the city, and then went to City College, where he earned a bachelor's degree in accounting in 1943. He briefly attended Fordham University before going into the U.S. Army to fight in World War II. ...
Act 1
Martybegins on a Saturday afternoon in a butcher shop in the Italian area of New York. Marty Pilletti, a butcher, is a thirty-six-year-old man who generally maintains a cheerful disposition, even when he is feeling pressure. In this opening scene, Marty is talking with Mrs. Fusari, who the script identifies as the Italian Woman. She is interested in hearing about the marriage of Marty's younger brother Nickie over the past weekend. She asks about other members of the family while Marty works,...
Marty premiered on May 24, 1953, during the fifth season of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) live series Philco Television Playhouse. This production starred Rod Steiger as Marty, Esther Min...The 1955 film version of Marty, starring Ernest Borgnineand Betsy Blair, is considered a film classic, being one of only two movies to have won both the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Golde...A musical stage adaptation of the film had a brief run beginning in 2002, directed by Mark Brokaw with a book by Rupert Holmes, music by Charles Strouse, and lyrics by Lee Adams. It premiered at th...Angie
Angie is Marty's friend. He is thirty-four years old and slight in build. He and Marty are so familiar with each other that when Marty sits down across from him at the table in the bar, Marty simply takes a section of the newspaper Angie is reading, without saying a word. In the first act, Marty is content to just spend the evening with Angie, but Angie feels that, since it is Saturday night, they should try to get dates. When Marty backs away from calling girls, Angie leaves without him. Mar...
The Aunt
Marty's Aunt Catherine is a bitter woman. She has been living in a one-bedroom apartment with her son Thomas, his wife Virginia, and their infant baby when the teleplay begins. The young couple feels that Catherine is difficult to live with because she makes Virginia nervous and angry. When Virginia throws a bottle of milk against the wall, Catherine goes to her sister, Marty's mother, and says that bottle was thrown at her. Theresa asks Catherine if she would like to move into the house wher...
The Bartender
Soon after Marty has been rejected by Mary Feeney, whom he calls for a date, the Bartender, Lou, asks about his brother Nickie's wedding. Instead of being bitter, Marty answers politely that it was a very nice wedding. Without meaning to, the Bartender compounds the pain of Marty's rejection by telling him he should be married too, not realizing how aware Marty is that women do not find him attractive.
Marriage and Courtship
Martybegins the weekend after the marriage of Marty's younger brother, Nickie. Though Nickie does not appear in the teleplay, his marriage has a significant impact on Marty's life. Not only is Marty the only one of the six Pillettis still unmarried but he has also been overtaken by a sibling younger than himself, upsetting what people take to be the natural order. People in his neighborhood feel free to tell him that he ought to be married, and that he should be ashamed of himself because he...
In the years between the end of World War IIin 1945 and the advent of television in the 1950s, many Americans socialized by going to dance halls like the Waverly Ballroom mentioned in the script. S...Paddy Chayefsky has been called the greatest writer of television's Golden Age. Obtain a script from a more recent television program that you think is well written, and prepare a chart that shows...Marty nearly misses the chance to go out with Clara after his friends talk badly about her. Think about a time in your life when you decided against doing something because you did not think other...In the final scene of the teleplay, the Critic tells his friends about the way Mike Hammer, a character in detective fiction of the time, wins the affection of women by treating them cruelly. Find...Slang Diction
Chayefsky wrote Martyusing the sort of informal, colloquial style that would be common in the working class section of New York in the post-war years. This includes contractions that are specific to the Italian immigrant families whom these characters represent, as when the script contains the line "Watsa matter" for "what's the matter," or "lemme" for "let me," or "she spills a couple-a drops" for "a couple of drops." Chayefsky also includes particular phrases that would have been common in...
The Emergence of Television
Marty was written as a teleplay for television, broadcast on the Philco Television Playhouseon Sunday, May 23, 1953. Though television became commercially available in the United Statesin 1940, the country did not really embrace it while World War II was going on. Resources were being drawn on by the war effort, and most households could not afford the costly television sets. When the war ended in 1945, however, the country found itself flush with a new prosperity that it had not known since...
1950s: Most Americans get their meat from a butcher shop like the one Marty runs.Today:In many cases, the function of the independent butcher shop has been incorporated into local supermarkets.1950s: A man who is in his mid-thirties and unmarried is unusual in the prevailing social structure. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average age at which most men in the United States marr...1950s: Calling a woman to formally ask her for a date later the same day is considered an insulting breach of etiquette in the United States.Today:Social conventions are more relaxed. Aman like Mar...1950s: A teleplay like Marty is broadcast live, once. If it is a success, it might be adapted to a full-length movie for release in theaters.Today:Films that are made for television broadcast are o...He recently met an unattractive lady (Nancy Marchand) at the dance hall and the scene showing how they meet is pretty heart-rending. But, despite this, they hit it off and begin to forge, awkwardly, a relationship.
After being harassed by his mother into going to the Stardust Ballroom one Saturday night, Marty connects with Clara, a plain high school science teacher, who is weeping outside on the roof after being abandoned by her blind date.
May 4, 2015 · I don’t hear authentic dialogue when Marty first meets Clara at the ballroom (“You see, dogs like us, we ain’t such dogs as we think we are”); I don’t buy the premise that Clara’s date ...
Aug 14, 2019 · One night at the Stardust Ballroom while he’s out with his best pal Angie (nominee Joe Mantell), he meets Clara (played by Betsy Blair, who was a Broadway dancer and actress married to Gene Kelly at the time).
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One Saturday night, Marty meets Clara Snyder (Betsy Blair), a twenty-nine single, ugly (obs: `dog', in accordance with the description of Marty's friends in the story, but indeed Betsy Blair was a charming woman, having beautiful eyes and lovely smile and voice) and rejected woman, in a ballroom.
