Paddy Chayefsky: Difference between revisions

Paddy Chayefsky
File:Still photo.jpg Circa 1972
Born	Sidney Aaron Chayefsky (1923-01-29)January 29, 1923 New York City, U.S.
Died	August 1, 1981(1981-08-01) (aged 58) New York City, U.S.
Alma mater	City College of New York (1943)
Occupation(s)	Playwright, novelist and screenwriter
Years active	1944–1980
Spouse	Susan Sackler ​ (m. 1949)​
Children	1

Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky (January 29, 1923 – August 1, 1981) was an American playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay (the other three-time winners, Francis Ford Coppola, Charles Brackett, Woody Allen, and Billy Wilder, have all shared their awards with co-writers).

He was one of the most renowned dramatists of the 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. Martin Gottfried wrote in All His Jazz that Chayefsky was "the most successful graduate of television's slice of life school of naturalism."

Following his critically acclaimed teleplays, Chayefsky became a noted playwright and novelist. As a screenwriter, he received three Academy Awards for Marty (1955), The Hospital (1971) and Network (1976). The movie Marty was based on his own television drama about two lonely people finding love. Network was a satire of the television industry and The Hospital was also satiric. Film historian David Thomson called The Hospital "years ahead of its time. […] Few films capture the disaster of America's self-destructive idealism so well." His screenplay for Network is often regarded as his masterpiece, and has been hailed as "the kind of literate, darkly funny and breathtakingly prescient material that prompts many to claim it as the greatest screenplay of the 20th century."

Chayefsky's early stories were frequently influenced by the author's childhood in The Bronx. Chayefsky was part of the inaugural class of inductees into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' Television Hall of Fame. He received this honor three years after his death, in 1984.

Early life

Chayefsky as a senior in high school, 1939.

Sidney Chayefsky was born in the Bronx, New York City to Russian-Jewish immigrants Harry and Gussie Stuchevsky Chayefsky. Harry Chayefsky's father served for twenty-five years in the Russian army so the family was allowed to live in Moscow, while Gussie Stuchevsky lived in a village near Odessa. Harry and Gussie emigrated to New York in 1907 and 1909 respectively.

Harry Chayefsky worked for a New Jersey milk distribution company in which he eventually took a controlling interest and renamed Dellwood Dairies. The family lived in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and Mount Vernon, New York, moving temporariyl to Bailey Avenue in the West Bronx at the time of Sidney Chayefsky's birth while a larger house in Mount Vernon was being completed. He had two older brothers, William and Winn.

As a toddler Chayefsky showed signs of being gifted, and could "speak intelligently" at two and a half. His father suffered a financial reversal during the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the family moved back to the Bronx. Chayefsky attended a public elementary school. As a boy, Chayefsky was noted for his verbal ability, which won him friends. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School, where he served as editor of the school's literary magazine, "The Magpie." He graduated from Clinton in 1939 at age 16 and attended the City College of New York, graudating with a degree in social sciences in 1943. While at City College he played for the semi-professional football team Kingsbridge Trojans. He studied languages at Fordham University during his Army service.

Military service

In 1943, two weeks before his graduation from City College, Chayefsky was drafted into the United States Army, and served in combat in Europe. While in the Army he adapted the nickname "Paddy." The nickname was given spontaneously when he was awakened at dawn for kitchen duty. Although actually Jewish, he asked to be excused to attend Mass. "Sure you do, Paddy," said the officer, and the name stuck.

Chayefsky was wounded by a land mine while serving with the 104th Infantry Division in the European Theatre near Aachen, Germany. He was awarded the Purple Heart. The wound left him badly scarred, contributing to his shyness around women. While recovering from his injuries in the Army Hospital near Cirencester, England, he wrote the book and lyrics to a musical comedy, No T.O. for Love. First produced in 1945 by the Special Services Unit, the show toured European Army bases for two years.

The London opening of No T.O. for Love at the Scala Theatre in the West End was the beginning of Chayefsky's theatrical career. During the London production of this musical, Chayefsky encountered Joshua Logan, a future collaborator, and Garson Kanin, who invited Chayefsky to collaborate with him on a documentary of the Allied invasion, The True Glory.

Post-war

Returning to the United States, Chayefsky worked in his uncle's print shop, Regal Press, an experience which provided a background for his later teleplay, Printer's Measure (1953), as well as his story for the movie As Young as You Feel (1951). Kanin enabled Chayefsky to spend time working on his second play, Put Them All Together (later known as M is for Mother), but it was never produced. Producers Mike Gordon and Jerry Bressler gave him a junior writer's contract. He wrote a story, The Great American Hoax, which sold to Good Housekeeping but was never published.

He relocated to Hollywood, where he met his future wife Susan Sackler, and the couple married in February 1949. Failing to find work on the West Coast, Chayefsky returned to New York.

During the late 1940s, he began working full-time on short stories and radio scripts, and during that period, he was a gagwriter for radio host Robert Q. Lewis. Chayefsky later recalled, "I sold some plays to men who had an uncanny ability not to raise money." During 1951–52, Chayefsky wrote adaptations for radio's Theater Guild on the Air: The Meanest Man in the World (with James Stewart), Cavalcade of America, Tommy (with Van Heflin and Ruth Gordon) and Over 21 (with Wally Cox).

His play The Man Who Made the Mountain Shake was noticed by Elia Kazan, and his wife, Molly Kazan, helped Chayefsky with revisions. It was retitled Fifth From Garibaldi but was never produced. In 1951, the movie As Young as You Feel was adapted from a Chayefsky story.

Television

Chayefsky in 1958

He moved into television with scripts for Danger, The Gulf Playhouse and Manhunt. Philco Television Playhouse producer Fred Coe saw the Danger and Manhunt episodes and enlisted Chayefsky to adapt the story It Happened on the Brooklyn Subway about a photographer on a New York City Subway train who reunites a concentration camp survivor with his long-lost wife. Chayefsky's first script to be telecast was a 1949 adaptation of Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? for Philco.

Since he had always wanted to use a synagogue as backdrop, he wrote Holiday Song, telecast in 1952 and also in 1954. He submitted more work to Philco, including Printer's Measure, The Bachelor Party (1953) and The Big Deal (1953). One of these teleplays, Mother (April 4, 1954), received a new production October 24, 1994 on Great Performances with Anne Bancroft in the title role. Curiously, original teleplays from the 1950s are almost never revived for new TV productions, so the 1994 production of Mother was a conspicuous rarity.

In 1953, Chayefsky wrote Marty, which was premiered on The Philco Television Playhouse, with Rod Steiger and Nancy Marchand. Marty is about a decent, hard-working Bronx butcher, pining for the company of a woman in his life but despairing of ever finding true love in a relationship. Fate pairs him with a plain, shy schoolteacher named Clara whom he rescues from the embarrassment of being abandoned by her blind date in a local dance hall. The production, the actors and Chayefsky's naturalistic dialogue received much critical acclaim and influenced subsequent live television dramas. Chayefsky had a unique clause in his Marty contract that stated that only he could write the screenplay, which he did for the 1955 movie.

Chayefsky's The Great American Hoax was broadcast May 15, 1957 during the second season of The 20th Century Fox Hour. This was actually a rewrite of his earlier Fox film, As Young as You Feel (1951) with Monty Woolley and Marilyn Monroe. The Great American Hoax was shown on the FX channel after Fox restored some The 20th Century Fox Hour episodes and telecast them under the new title Fox Hour of Stars beginning in 2002.

Screenplays

Chayefsky went to Hollywood in 1947 with the aim of becoming a screenwriter. His friends Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon found him a job in the accounting office of Universal Pictures. He studied acting at the Actor's Lab and Kanin got him a bit part in the film A Double Life. He returned to New York, submitted scripts, and was hired as an apprentice scriptwriter by Universal. His script outlines were not accepted and he was fired after six weeks. After returning to New York, Chayefsky wrote the outline for a play that he submitted to the Wiilliam Morris Agency. The agency, treating it as a novella, submitted it to Good Housekeeping magazine. Movie rights were purchased by Twentieth Century Fox, and Chayefsky was hired to write the script, and he returned to Hollywood in 1948. But Chayefsky was discouraged by the studio system, which involved rewrites and relegated writers to inferior roles, so he quit and moved back to New York, vowing not to return.

Marty

Main article: Marty (film)

Chayefsky was initially uninterested when producer Harold Hecht sought to buy film rights for Marty, still upset by his treatment years before. He demanded creative control, consultation on casting, and the same director as in the TV version, Delbert Mann. Surprisingly, Hecht agreed to all of Chayefsky's demands, and named Chayefsky "associate producer" of the film. Chayefsky then requested and was granted "co-director" status, so that he could take over production if Mann was fired.

The screenplay was little changed from the teleplay, but with Clara's role expanded. Chayefsky was involved in all casting decisions and had a cameo role, playing one of Marty's friends, unseen, in a car. Actress Betsy Blair, playing Clara, faced difficulties because of her affiliation with left-wing causes, and United Artists demanded that she be removed. Chayefsky refused, and her husband Gene Kelly also intervened on her behalf. Blair remained in the cast.

In September 1954, after most of the movie had been filmed, the studio ceased production due to accounting and financial difficulties. Producer Harold Hecht encountered resistance to the Marty project from his partner Burt Lancaster the beginning, with Lancaster "only tolerating" it. The film had a limited publicity budget. But reviews were glowing, and the film won the Palme d'Or at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival, the first American film to do so, greatly boosting Chayefsky's career.

Broadway

The seventh season of Philco Television Playhouse began September 19, 1954 with E. G. Marshall and Eva Marie Saint in Chayefsky's Middle of the Night, a play which relocated to Broadway theaters 15 months later; In 1956, Middle of the Night opened on Broadway with Edward G. Robinson and Gena Rowlands, and its success led to a national tour. It was filmed by Columbia Pictures in 1959 with Kim Novak and Fredric March.

The Tenth Man (1959) marked Chayefsky's second Broadway theatrical success, garnering 1960 Tony Award nominations for Best Play, Best Director (Tyrone Guthrie) and Best Scenic Design. Guthrie received another nomination for Chayefsky's Gideon, as did actor Fredric March. Chayefsky's final Broadway theatrical production, a play based on the life of Joseph Stalin, The Passion of Josef D, received unfavorable reviews and ran for only 15 performances.

Although Chayefsky was an early writer for the television medium, he eventually abandoned it, "decrying the lack of interest the networks demonstrated toward quality programming". As a result, during the course of his career, he constantly toyed with the idea of lampooning the television industry, which he succeeded in doing with Network. The film is said to have "presaged the advent of reality television by twenty years" and was a "sardonic satire" of the television industry, dealing with the "dehumanization of modern life."

Novels

Inspired by the work of John C. Lilly, Chayefsky spent two years in Boston doing research to write his science fiction novel Altered States (HarperCollins, 1978) about a man's search for his primal self through psychotropic drugs and an isolation tank. Chayefsky suffered greatly from stress while working on the novel, resulting in his heart attack in 1977. Subsequent to that misfortune, he was sued by one of the numerous scientific advisors he hired to help him with research. He wrote the screenplay for the 1980 film, but he is credited by his real first and middle name, Sidney Aaron, because of disputes with director Ken Russell.

Personal traits

Paddy Chayefsky's monument in Sharon Gardens Division of Kensico Cemetery

Paddy Chayefsky's footstone

Drama critic Martin Gottfried described Chayefsky as "compact and burly in the bulky way of a schoolyard athlete, with thick dark hair and a bent nose that could pass for a streetfighter's. He was a grown-up with one foot in the boys' clubs of his city youth, a street snob who would not allow the loss of his nostalgia. He was an intellectual competitor, always spoiling for a political argument or a philosophical argument, or any exchange over any issue, changing sides for the fun of the fray. A liberal, he was annoyed by liberals; a proud Jew, he wouldn't let anyone call him a 'Jewish writer.'"

In his biography Mad As Hell, author Shaun Considine says that Chayefsky had a "dual personality." Chayefsky's "Paddy" persona had "character, caprice; it appealed to his sense of swagger" and gave him confidence to stand up for his rights. "Sidney" was the "silent creator" who had the talent and genius.

Political activism

Opposition to McCarthyism

Early in his career, Chayefsky was an opponent of McCarthyism. He signed a telegram signed by other writers and performers protesting federal inaction after a concert featuring Paul Robeson in Peekskill, New York prompted violence in which 150 persons were injured. As a result, his name appeared in the anti-Communist vigilante publication The Firing Line, published by the American Legion. Although Chayefsky feared being subpoeanaed and his career ruined, that never happened. Actress Betsy Blair described Chayefsky as a Social Democrat and as an anti-Marxist.

Soviet Jews and Israel

In the 1970s Chayefsky worked for the cause of Soviet Jews, and in 1971 went to Brussels as part of an American delegation to the International Conference on Soviet Jewry. Believing that the conference was insufficiently aggressive, he founded a new activist group in New York, Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East. Co-founders included Colleen Dewhurst, Frank Gervasi, Leon Uris, Gerold Frank and Elie Wiesel. Chayefsky believed that "Zionists" was a code word for "Jews" by Marxist anti-Semites.

Chayefsky was increasingly interested in Israel at that time. While filming The Hospital, Chayefsky commenced work on a film project called "The Habbakuk Conspiracy," which he described as a "study of life within an Arab guerrilla cell on the West Bank of the Jordan." The project was sold to United Artists but never filmed, which resulted in lingering resentment toward the studio.

Chayefsky composed, without credit, pro-Israel ads for the Anti-Defamation League at the time of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. In the late 1970s riters and Artists for Peace in the Middle East placed full-page newspaper ads written by Chayefsky attacking the Palestine Liberation Organization for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics.

He rejected Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave for the role of the female lead in Network because of their "anti-Israel leanings," even though Redgrave was director Sidney Lumet's first choice. When Redgrave, accepting the Best Actresss Academy Award for Julia, made a speech denouncing "Zionist hoodlums," Chayefsky, appearing later, upbraided Redgrave and said "a simple 'Thank you' would have sufficed." The Redgrave and Chayefsky remarks prompted controversy.

Family

Paddy and Susan (née Sackler) Chayefsky's son Dan was born six years after their 1949 marriage. Despite an alleged affair with Kim Novak, which resulted in his asking his wife for a divorce, Paddy Chayefsky remained married to Susan Chayefsky until his death. She died in 2000.

Death

Chayefsky contracted pleurisy in 1980 and again in 1981. Tests revealed cancer, but he refused surgery out of fear that surgeons would "cut me up because of that movie I wrote about them," referring to The Hospital. He opted for chemotherapy. He died in a New York hospital on Aug. 1, 1981, aged 58, and was interred in the Sharon Gardens Division of Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, Westchester County, New York. Longtime friend Bob Fosse performed a tap dance at the funeral, as part of a deal he and Chayefsky had made when Fosse was in the hospital for open-heart surgery. If Fosse died first, Chayefsky promised to deliver a tedious eulogy or Fosse would dance at Chayefsky's memorial if he was the one to die first. His personal papers are at the Wisconsin Historical Society and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division.

Filmography

• The True Glory (1945), uncredited, with Garson Kanin
• As Young as You Feel (1951), with Lamar Trotti
• Marty (1955)
• The Catered Affair (1956)
• The Bachelor Party (1957)
• The Goddess (1958)
• Middle of the Night (1959)
• The Americanization of Emily (1964)
• Paint Your Wagon (with Alan Jay Lerner) (1969)
• The Hospital (1971)
• Network (1976)
• Altered States (1980)
• The Habakkuk Conspiracy (unproduced) (1983)

Television and stage plays

Television (selection)

• 1950–55 Danger
• 1951–52 Manhunt
• 1951–60 Goodyear Playhouse
• 1952–54 Philco Television Playhouse
• 1952 Holiday Song
• 1952 The Reluctant Citizen
• 1953 Printer's Measure
• 1953 Marty
• 1953 The Big Deal
• 1953 The Bachelor Party
• 1953 The Sixth Year
• 1953 Catch My Boy On Sunday
• 1954 The Mother
• 1954 Middle of the Night
• 1955 The Catered Affair
• 1956 The Great American Hoax

Stage

• No T.O. for Love (1945)
• Middle of the Night (1956)
• The Tenth Man (1959)
• Gideon (1961)
• The Passion of Josef D. (1964)
• The Latent Heterosexual (originally titled The Accountant's Tale or The Case of the Latent Heterosexual) (1968)

Novels

• Altered States: A Novel (1978)

Academy Awards

Year	Category	Film	Result
1955	Best Adapted Screenplay	Marty	Won
1958	Best Original Screenplay	The Goddess	Nominated
1971	Best Original Screenplay	The Hospital	Won
1976	Best Original Screenplay	Network	Won

Bibliography

• Considine, Shaun (1994). Mad as hell: the life and work of Paddy Chayefsky (1st ed.). New York: Random House. ISBN 0679408924.

External links

• Paddy Chayefsky at IMDb
• The Angry Man WNYC: On The Media audio profile of Paddy Chayefsky, October 27, 2006
• Paddy Chayefsky papers at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
• Paddy Chayefsky Papers at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.
• Talking About Paddy Chayefsky at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
• Museum of Broadcast Communications: Paddy Chayefsky