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Marty

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Drama / Anthology

Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

13 people want to read

About the author

Paddy Chayefsky

75 books71 followers
Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky , was an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay.

He was considered one of the most renowned dramatists of the so-called Golden Age of Television. His intimate, realistic scripts provided a naturalistic style of television drama for the 1950s, and he was regarded as the central figure in the "kitchen sink realism" movement of American television.

Following his critically acclaimed teleplays, Chayefsky continued to succeed as a playwright and novelist. As a screenwriter, he received three Academy Awards for Marty (1955), The Hospital (1971) and Network (1976). Marty was based on his own television drama about a relationship between two lonely people finding love. Network was his scathing satire of the television industry and The Hospital was considered satiric.

Chayefsky's early stories were notable for their dialogue, their depiction of second-generation Americans and their sentiment and humor. They were frequently influenced by the author's childhood in the Bronx. The protagonists were generally middle-class tradesmen struggling with personal problems: loneliness, pressures to conform or their own emotions.

Chayefsky died in New York City of cancer in August 1981 at the age of 58.

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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Profile Image for Jason Lee.
Author 3 books5 followers
May 8, 2024
The only thing that kept me from giving four stars was the strange, superfluous criticism of tough guy prose, near the end. Too “on the nose.” Took me out of it for a moment.
Otherwise, a lovely, well-written (as you’d expect) tale.
Profile Image for Classic reverie.
1,868 reviews
February 16, 2021
I love the award winning "Marty" and have seen it many times, I recently watched it last weekend and love it still, I will watch it many more times in the future. It is not an action packed movie but it just a lovely average human romance story. I read from a collection of Paddy Chayefsky's work which included the comment below from the playwright. I wanted to read the play and compare, which is basically spot on except with some extra dialogue and characters.


"set out in Marty to write a love story, the most ordinary love story in the world. I didn't want my hero to be handsome, and I didn't want the girl to be pretty. I wanted to write a love story the way it would literally have happened to the kind of people I know. I was, in fact, determined to shatter the shallow and destructive illusions-prospered by cheap fiction and bad movies-that love is simply a matter of physical attraction,"

Play in short- An "ugly" man and woman meet at a dance hall.

💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢SPOILER ALERT 💢💢💢💢💢💢💢


When Marty meets Clara at the dance hall, she is with a girlfriend and is set up with a man who meets a girl who he wants to find a "stag" to take her home, saying he knows the person. In the play Clara is not with a friend but her date does want to pay $5 to give her away.
There is no extra scenes in a dinner or actually taking her home with talking about their dreams about work. Also the Frank Surtton role is not in the play nor is where Angie sees Marty and Clara, looking to join them. Clara is a science teacher in the movie but the book a history teacher.


from Wikipedia below

"In 1955, Marty Piletti (Ernest Borgnine) is an Italian American butcher who lives in The Bronx with his mother (Esther Minciotti). Unmarried at 34, the good-natured but socially awkward Marty faces constant badgering from family and friends to settle down, pointing out that all his brothers and sisters are already married with children. Not averse to marriage but disheartened by his lack of prospects, Marty has reluctantly resigned himself to bachelorhood.

After being harassed by his mother into going to the Stardust Ballroom one Saturday night, Marty connects with Clara (Betsy Blair), a plain science teacher at Benjamin Franklin High School, who is quietly weeping on the roof after being callously abandoned at the ballroom by her blind date. They spend the evening together dancing, walking the busy streets, and talking in a diner. Marty eagerly spills out his life story and ambitions, and they encourage each other. He brings Clara to his house, and they awkwardly express their mutual attraction, shortly before his mother returns. Marty takes her home by bus, promising to call her at 2:30 the next afternoon, after Mass. Overjoyed on his way back home, he punches the bus stop sign and weaves between the cars, looking for a cab instead.

Meanwhile, his cranky, busybody widowed Aunt Catherine (Augusta Ciolli) moves in to live with Marty and his mother. She warns his mother that Marty will soon marry and cast her aside. Fearing that Marty's romance could spell her abandonment, his mother belittles Clara. Marty's friends, with an undercurrent of envy, deride Clara for her plainness and try to convince him to forget her and to remain with them, unmarried, in their fading youth. Harangued into submission by the pull of his friends, Marty doesn't call Clara.

That night, back in the same lonely rut, Marty realizes that he is giving up a woman whom he not only likes, but who makes him happy. Over the objections of his friends, he dashes to a phone booth to call Clara, who is disconsolately watching television with her parents. When his friend asks what he's doing, Marty bursts out saying:

You don't like her, my mother don't like her, she's a dog and I'm a fat, ugly man! Well, all I know is I had a good time last night! I'm gonna have a good time tonight! If we have enough good times together, I'm gonna get down on my knees and I'm gonna beg that girl to marry me! If we make a party on New Year's, I got a date for that party. You don't like her? That's too bad!

Marty closes the phone booth's door when Clara answers the phone. In the last line of the film, he tentatively says, "Hello ... Hello, Clara?"

Cast
Ernest Borgnine as Marty Piletti
Betsy Blair as Clara Snyder
Esther Minciotti as Mrs. Teresa Piletti, Marty's mother
Augusta Ciolli as Aunt Catherine, Ms. Piletti's sister
Joe Mantell as Angie, Marty's best friend
Karen Steele as Virginia, Aunt Catherine's daughter-in-law
Jerry Paris as Tommy, Aunt Catherine's son
Frank Sutton as Ralph"
Profile Image for Becca Garcia.
31 reviews21 followers
July 31, 2019
Simplemente hermosa.

Una historia cruda sobre la soledad y el amor que se encuentra detrás de ella.

Marty y Clara, que encuentran compañía en el compartir de su soledad, son unos personajes puros, pero amargos y endurecidos por las consecuencias de su vida.

La historia es llevada de tal forma que el dolor de los personajes se vuelve propio, y la perspectiva cambia.

Marty nos muestra el otro lado de la moneda. Ese lado sucio que nadie quiere ver, del que nadie habla. Marty es el marginado, el carnicero al que jamás le pasa nada increíble; Marty, sin embargo, representa la cotidianidad de una manera increíble.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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