MARTY (1955) dir. Delbert Mann Essayist Judith Smith explains in her discussion of Marty that its writer Paddy Chayefsky “meant Marty’s love story to rebuke Hollywood’s conception of glamour: ‘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.’ “He also meant for Marty’s world of the ordinary to provide an alternative to drama that uncritically reproduced the privileges of wealth and power. ‘These values are dominant in our way of life and need to be examined for what they are… [Marty] was a comment on the social values of our times… I am just now becoming aware of this area, this marvelous world of the ordinary.’” In a 2008 interview with Henry Colman and Jenni Matz, Ernest Borgnine recalled his audition for Marty before director Delbert Mann and Chayefsky. The three were in a motel room in Lone Pine, California, where Borgnine had been on location. “And we got to the part where she says, ‘Why don’t you put on the blue suit or the grey suit and go down—there’s a lot of tomatoes’—you know, and it—and I turn to her and I said, ‘Mom, don’t you understand? I’m just an ugly, ugly man!’ And I—I started to cry, because I was that much into it, you know? And they turned away, and I came back for my retort—said, ‘Alright, I’ll put on my blue suit,’ but then I saw [Chayefsky] crying. And I looked at Delbert and he was crying. And inwardly I said, God, I’ve got the part! [boisterous laughter] It was the best performance of my life, that day, to try to prove to those two men that I could do it.” Borgnine’s portrayal of Marty Piletti was unforgettable. The following year, he would—to his own bewilderment—receive the Academy Award for Best Actor. Marty would also win additional Awards for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, and Best Director.
