by Joel Bocko
“I think of this as a great rainy afternoon movie. You’re flipping through the channels on one of those great lazy Saturdays…it’s summer but it’s raining outdoors and you’re stuck inside. You come across a classic movie channel (AMC, TCM–take your pick) and pause. What’s this? Ernest Borgnine? You always like him, why not stop for a moment and watch. It looks like it’s just beginning. ‘Marty’? Yeah, you’ve heard of it, vaguely. Won the Oscar or something, but it’s been kind of forgotten. So you start watching and before long you’re totally enchanted, completely charmed, by the simple story and realistic characters. Who can’t sympathize with Borgnine’s sensitive butcher, hanging out with his Italian friends and their goofy conversations about Mickey Spillane, all the while pining away with his heart of gold for a girl that his buddies call a ‘dog’? The conversations have the kind of natural humor and warmth that remind you of the old days hanging out with your pals. As you watch the movie, you find yourself enthralled and you never change the channel, watching it till the end, realizing that you’ve seen this plot riffed on and spoofed on various TV shows, films, and cartoons over the years. When the movie’s done, you’re really excited–this is one of those films you discovered on your own and nothing can beat that thrill.
“Now, this isn’t the way I saw ‘Marty’–I rented it and now own it on DVD–but it’s the spirit I get from it. I love the conversation between Marty and his best friend, its street poetry that’s entertaining without being false, in the diner as their Friday night lays out ahead of them. I love Marty and Clara’s walk, their honesty and his enthusiasm; you worry is he going too far, being too gregarious for the shy Clara? Will it work? I love the preparations for Sunday Mass, the fight between the married couple, and Marty agonizing over standing up his girl while his friends have an amusingly banal and silly conversation in which they keep repeating themselves. It’s really just a charming and wonderful film, joyful even in its sad moments. If you don’t enjoy it, what can I say, but my recommendation comes completely honest and from the heart. This is one of those personal favorites that also happens to be an underrated classic–but just underrated enough so that the joy of discovering it on a rainy Saturday afternoon remains undiluted.” – Me, April 24, 2003, my first online review (IMDb)
As you can see, Marty has been a favorite of mine for a long time. I would no longer characterize it as “kind of forgotten” (perhaps I meant that it wasn’t featured on many greatest-films lists), but otherwise I can stick by what I wrote as a 19-year-old. Yet in all these years of loving the movie, sinking into its vibe and sympathizing with Borgnine’s lovable butcher, I had never seen the original television play on which Marty was based. Watching that side-by-side with the Best Picture-winning feature highlights the fascinating ways the two “films” coincide and branch off in story, style, and tone, the obvious differences (and influences) between early live cinema and 1950s cinema, and the shared heart of both films – an unconventional take on romance which favors the subtle over the sublime, the sweet over the transcendent. Both Marty (1953) and Marty (1955) tell a simple story: Marty, a Bronx butcher, lives with his mother and suffers the indignities of badgering, nosy neighbors (“You should be ashamed of yourself,” one ironically shameless old lady scolds him in the butchershop. “When you gonna get married?”). Marty is forced out the door by his classic Italian mama, and at the ballroom that Saturday evening he meets Clara, a mousy schoolteacher jilted by her date, who offers him $5 to take her home. He declines the money but, taking pity and falling a bit in love, ends up taking Clara home anyway. Alone with him in his empty apartment, an uncertain Clara declines his kiss and breaks his heart, only to tell him she’ll be waiting eagerly for his phone call the next day. For the final stretch of Marty the question becomes, will Marty follow his heart or the social pressures surrounding him? Not only his callous friends (“she’s a dog, Marty”) but his own mother – disheartened by her own shrewish sister’s ejection from a newly married household – discourage Marty’s budding romance. He must come to his own decision in the story’s final minutes.
The teleplay was initially conceived by writer Paddy Chayefsky as the story of the woman but he quickly decided that a bashful man would make a more compelling protagonist – perhaps because his shy, sensitive qualities contrasted with social expectations about the assertive, aggressive male suitor. In May of ’53 Marty was broadcast live on NBC’s The Philco Television Playhouse to rave reviews. Rod Steiger played Marty as almost touchingly meek, his sad, soft features constantly exposing themselves to disappointment and frustration. As Clara, Nancy Marchand (who memorably closed her career as The Sopranos‘ Livia Soprano, a nightmarish variation of Marty’s aunt) has harder, more angular features than Steiger, which suggest a brittle fragility – the contrasting body types of the two are cannily used to evoke a similar vulnerability in each. As a television program, constrained not only by a low budget but the high-wire risks of live production, this early Marty emphasizes character interaction over environmental influence, cultivating an intimacy in which only the people onscreen have real existence while the world around falls into shadow. Despite – or rather because of – its modesty, the 50-minute TV movie sustains a crisp intensity.
The 1955 feature shares the teleplay’s short timeframe (essentially Saturday afternoon through Sunday evening) and humble setting but at 90 minutes, it feels a bit looser. Other factors contribute to the easygoing mood: a gregarious Ernest Borgnine replaces the reticent Steiger (who did not want to sign an extended contract with producer Burt Lancaster’s company), Marty’s and Clara’s courtship is extended with several late-night conversations exploring their characters’ lives and personalities, and the location shooting in those and other scenes allows room for an atmosphere in which the actors and director can luxuriate for a time, creating that relaxed rainy-day feeling I referenced above. On the other hand, Chayefsky has more room for subplots which crank up the stakes (the teleplay had just one, in which Marty’s cousin moves his mother to Marty’s house, distressing Marty’s own mother in the process – does a similar fate await her if Marty finds a bride?). Marty must decide whether or not to purchase his boss’ butchershop, Clara is worrying about a promotion distracting her from caring for her father, and Marty’s cousin becomes a more developed character, bickering guiltily with his wife and encouraging Marty to remain single (Chayefsky uses the opportunity to paint a portrait of nervous ethnic ascension; the cousin worries not just about abandoning his mother but his Italian heritage). In the teleplay, Marty’s mother disparages Clara on the way to Sunday Mass but backs off when she realizes how overbearing she’s become; in the film, the scene ends more negatively with the mother unrepentant and Marty more disgruntled. Perhaps Chayefsky is generating more suspense through plot development, a wise move because otherwise the film’s outcome seems less uncertain than the teleplay’s.
Although much of the dialogue is identical, Steiger’s Marty and Borgnine’s Marty are simply not the same character – a fascinating revelation of the difference a casting change can make. In The Encyclopedia of Movie Awards, Michael Gebert notes that “by casting Borgnine instead of Rod Steiger, whose plain, colorless Marty really did seem like the guy no one would look twice at, Hollywood was hedging its bets with a little hidden star appeal in this supposed ultrarealistic drama – Borgnine is a meatball Barry Fitzgerald, a warthog with a twinkle in his eye.” Gebert has a point (although, as noted, Steiger himself turned down the big-screen reprisal); while Borgnine’s pathos are real and poignant, his Marty is like an uncorked bottle ready to burst. When Clara releases his energy, Marty transforms into a busybody motormouth, lovably laughing about World War II exploits, scolding himself for previous suicidal tendencies, and offering enthusiastic advice to Clara herself as she reveals her own predicaments. Steiger’s Marty on the other hand is pathetic in the least pejorative sense possible (if such a sense exists): his is not a boisterous personality concealed by years of humiliation but a deep and entirely genuine sense of self-effacing goodness. Meanwhile Betsy Blair, Marchand’s replacement (due to the lobbying of husband Gene Kelly, who went to bat against the blacklist for his Communist-sympathizing wife), is both plainer and a bit prettier than the more sharply-featured Marchand and like Borgnine’s Marty, her Clara is rather warmer than the TV version.
On television (where it has been honored as one of the most important broadcasts in history) and especially in cinemas, the modest Marty made quite a splash. One of the few films to win both the Palme d’Or and Best Picture Academy Award, it also marked a moment of relaxed tension in the Cold War (not only was Blair one of the few film artists to overcome the blacklist, but the film itself was screened in the Soviet Union in 1959, the first Hollywood production to show up there since World War II). Marty also represented a turning point in postwar American cinema thanks to the growing influence of both television and European cinema (particularly neorealism, although its moment had already passed in Italy). Indeed, scanning the Best Picture winners of the 1950s shows Hollywood’s schizophrenic response to changing times and depleting audiences; on the one hand, lavish big-screen spectacles like The Greatest Show on Earth, Around the World in 80 Days, and Ben-Hur remind viewers what they’re missing by staying at home with the small screen – while on the other hand more intimate, realistic dramas like From Here to Eternity, On the Waterfront, and especially the low-stakes, warmly textured Marty co-opt the values of stage, art house, and small screen, recognizing that audiences aren’t simply looking for romantic escapism anymore.
And yet Marty is very much a movie-movie. Delbert Mann, who directed both TV and cinema versions (this was his Oscar-winning feature debut), sticks with sustained shots and expressive close-ups but also fills in details impossible to depict on a TV set. Shooting on location was one of the best ways for Hollywood to both match live TV’s penchant for homely realism and outmatch its stagebound aesthetic, and Mann makes full use of the Bronx locations to evoke an atmosphere that envelops the characters as the televised version never could. Meanwhile in the film’s studio-shot interiors, the lighting is more dramatic, the sets more decorative, and the crowds more crowded (compare the nightclub sequences for the greatest contrast). There’s something moving and inspiring in this approach. By taking this humble story and fleshing it out on a big canvas – while keeping its roots firmly planted in everyday reality – Marty is able to lend the warm, lively rhythms of ordinary life a bit of Hollywood glamour. It stands as one of the great romances precisely because it can invest its slice-of-life humanism with a dash of grandeur; modesty has seldom been so alluring. Still, TV’s Marty remains unforgettable as well, lingering at the outskirts and just barely finding its redemption in the end. I applaud the achievement of both Martys, Steiger’s baleful survivor and Borgnine’s scrappy underdog, but only in the former case do I sigh with real relief when he leaps into that phone booth: it all came so close to never happening.
Joel has nicely captured the simple humanity here. I decidely prefer the movie version. Not that I take anything away from Steiger’s portrayal, but I warm to Borgnine more.
Moreover for me anyway the movie is not so much 50s cinema but (as I have written elsewhere) in a tradition in film-making that finds universal truth in stories of simple humanity told with sincerity, respect, and affection, with a feeling for place and the wonderful nuance of character that shines in family life. The movie is also about the richness of language that develops from a transmigration of cultures. My favorite lines are when Marty’s mamma is talking to her sister about the girl Marty has just met, a shy school-teacher:
MRS. PILLETTI
Hey, I come home from your house
last night, Marty was here with a girl.
CATHERINE
Who?
MRS. PILLETTI
Marty.
CATHERINE
Your son Marty?
MRS. PILLETTI
Well, what Marty you think is gonna
be here in this house with a girl?
CATHERINE
Were the lights on?
MRS. PILLETTI
Oh sure. (frowns at her sister)
This girl is a college graduate.
CATHERINE
They’re the worst. College girls are
one step from the streets. They smoke
like men inna saloon. My son Joseph,
his wife, you know, she types onna
typewriter. One step from the streets,
I tell you.
(Mrs. Pilletti ponders this philosophy for a moment.)
MRS. PILLETTI
That’s the first time Marty ever
brought a girl to this house. She
seems like a nice girl. I think he
has a feeling for this girl. You
heard him sing. He been singing like
that all morning.
There is an interesting counterpoint in the screenplay where the unmarried guys talk about Mickey Spillane and how he depicts women. Not as savage a critique as Bezzeridis’ in Kiss Me Deadly, but quite witty:
JOE
…so the whole book winds up, Mike
Hammer, he’s inna room there with
this doll. So he says, “You rat, you
are the murderer.” So she begins to
con him, you know? She tells him how
she loves him. And then Bam! He shoots
her in the stomach. So she’s laying
there, gasping for breath, and she
says, “How could you do that?” And
he says, “It was easy.”
LEO
(without looking up
from his magazine)
Boy, that Mickey Spillane, boy he
can write.
[ … ]
JOE
What I like about Mickey Spillane is
he knows how to handle women. In one
book, he picks up a tomato who gets
hit with a car, and she throws a
pass at him. And then he meets two
beautiful twins, and they throw passes
at him. And then he meets some
beautiful society leader, and she
throws a pass at him, and…
LEO
Boy, that Mickey Spillane, he sure
can write.
Thanks Tony – I remember you saying you loved this film on Wonders a while back. Great selections as well – I really love the dialogue in this movie. I agree with your placing it in the canon of down-to-earth humanism.
Joel –
It’s been many, many years since I last saw MARTY, but your review makes me want to revisit it this Sunday afternoon! Lovely tribute to a wonderful film.
This delightfully off the cuff review and reminiscence of one of the American cinema’s most human and unpretentious romance is vintage Joel Bocko – a marvelous IMDb capsule lead-in to a wider appreciation of how the film seduced the audiences and critics with it’s spontaneity and simplicity. It is rightly one of Chayefsky’s most revered screenplays, and there are few who don’t relate to awakening of romance that has intruded upon a pat and mundane existence. I dare say I can vividly recall when I came upon the film, and how over the years I have reveled in the aching humor and domestic frustrations that beset an Italian-American family living in Brooklyn. For sure the film is set in a time-capsule, but all it’s pleasures and family dynamics are universal. Ironically it is one of the Best Picture winners from the 50’s that we can look back at and conclude ‘they got it right that time. I didn’t realize it won the Palme d’Or, but would add it also won the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Film. This is Borgnine’s signature performance and Ms. Blair is beguiling.
Such a great essay Joel. You showed up heart and soul.
Tony’s revisitation with some of this film’s all-too-identifiable, brilliant dialogue was a real treat this morning as I came upon this thread!
Joel, thank you for capturing the essence of this heartwarming film, which I feel was a sort of backlash to the big-budget Cinemascope films that began to emerge as post-World War II film technology focused more on bigness – no doubt an overreactive defense against the incursion of television.
This film surely established Borgnine’s persona as a warm-hearted lug, and there’s only one moment in his performance (at the dinner table with mom) that seems a little stagey or forced.
I’ve watched actors in scene-study class try to tackle the “whaddya wanna do” scene and, believe me, having done so makes me appreciate even more the seemingly effortless expertise of the film version.
Too bad Borgnine’s reputation got tarnished after that Brokeback Mountain fiasco at the Academy Awards, where he supposedly campaigned to make the film lose out to Crash. he was perfect in Marty, and I derived great please reading Joel’s glowing reflection and expert analysis.
Yes it is too bad. A lot of people really galvanized their outrage toward Borgnine (and Tony Curtis) when Brokeback lost. To this day it’s unclear to me just how aggressive Borgnine’s comments were about that. Maybe he was just the most convenient scapegoat. At his age I gave him a pass on it — I mean, how can one hold a grudge against Commander Quint McHale for pete’s sake?
He might well have been the scapegoat Pierre, for a whisper campaign.
Very fine essay Joel and you know a great deal about the film and the play. I didn’t even know it appeared on TV with Steiger. Seems like the film would have been very different with Steiger in it. I have only seen the film once and did like it just fine. I don’t think I took to it a whole lot at the time but it’s a fine film. I would need to get a refresher on it and watch again to be able to comment more fully.
Thanks for the kind words everyone! Funny that though this was my first online review for IMDb, it took me this long to write about it on a blog. Glad that Sam and the Wonders countdown gave me the opportunity.
Btw, if anyone wants to see the Steiger version it is on YouTube. Not a great copy, but it’s also on the Golden Age of Television set recently released by Criterion.
“It’s really just a charming and wonderful film, joyful even in its sad moments.”
You hit the nail right on the head about this small film. I think Sam called it a time capsule of the Italian-American experience at the time and he’s so right. Have not seen the original TV show but, and no offence to Rod Steiger, Borgnine is simply perfect for the role. I remember seeing an old NY newspaper ad from when the film was playing and it ran at one theater, (Sutton) for at least four months if not more. Great essay Joel!
What’s not to like with this film? Your fondness for the material is wonderful to read about.
Thanks guys! I view the Borgnine and Steiger Martys as totally different characters even though they have much of the same dialogue. They just come off as having very different personalities.