"I'm a man without a corporation." -- Paddy Chayefsky
Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky (January 29, 1923August 1, 1981), 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, relatively realistic scripts helped determine the naturalistic style of television drama of the 1950s. After working as television screenwriter, Chayefsky continued to succeed as a playwright and novelist. He won his greatest acclaim as a cinematic screenwriter, receiving Academy Awards for three scripts: Marty (1955), The Hospital (1971) and Network (1976). Marty was based on his own television drama about a love affair between two homely people. Network was his scathing satire of the television industry and The Hospital was considered satiric. Film historian David Thomson termed it "daring, uninhibited, and prophetic. No one else would have dreamed of doing it."
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.
"Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.""God save us from people who do the morally right thing. It's always the rest of us who get broken in half.""It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it's always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.""Television is democracy at its ugliest.""You British plundered half the world for your own profit. Let's not pass it off as the Age of Enlightenment.""You don't send a man to his death because you want a hero."
He was born in the Bronx, New York during 1923 to Ukrainian Jewish parents, Harry and Gussie Stuchevsky Chayefsky. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School, and then the City College of New York. While there, he played for the semi-professional football team Kingsbridge Trojans. He graduated with a degree in accounting, and then studied languages at Fordham University.He joined the U.S. Army during World War II, where he received both a Purple Heart and the nickname Paddy. The nickname was given spontaneously when Chayefsky was awakened at 5 AM for kitchen duty. He asked to be excused so he could go to Mass. "Yesterday morning you said you were Jewish," said the duty officer. "Yes, but my mother is Irish," said Chayefsky. "Okay, Paddy," said the officer, and the name became habitual.
Military service
Serving with the 104th Infantry Division in the European Theatre, he was near Aachen, Germany when he was wounded, reportedly by a land mine. 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 during 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
After 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, A Printer's Measure. 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 known as The Great American Hoax, which was sold to Good Housekeeping but never published.
He relocated to Hollywood, and while there he met his future wife Susan Sackler and they wed during February 1949. He did not find employment there, so he relocated back to New York.
During the late 1940s, Chayefsky began working full time on short stories and radio scripts, and during this period, he was a gagwriter for radio host Robert Q. Lewis. Chayefsky would recall later "I sold some plays to men who had an uncanny ability not to raise money." During 1951-52, Chayefsky did several 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).
He wrote The Man Who Made The Mountain Shake, which was noticed by Elia Kazan. His wife, Molly Kazan, helped Chayefsky with revisions. It was retitled Fifth From Garibaldi, but it was never produced. He then wrote for TV shows Danger, The Gulf Playhouse , and Manhunt and submitted the story for the movie As Young as You Feel.
Fred Coe was the producer for the one-hour The Philco Television Playhouse and he had seen the episodes of Danger and Manhunt and enlisted Chayefsky to adapt the story It Happened on the Brooklyn Subway. The story is about a photographer on a New York subway train whose faith in God is restored when he reunites a concentration camp survivor with his long-lost wife. Chayefsky's first story that was broadcast was a 1949 adaptation of Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? for The Philco Television Playhouse
He wanted to use his Jewish heritage, and he had always wanted to write a script with a synagogue as backdrop. He created Holiday Song the main actor of which was Joseph Buloff. It was broadcast in 1952 and also in 1954. He submitted more work to Philco, and it was original and based on his experiences. They included but were not limited to Printer's Measure, The Bachelor Party and The Big Deal.
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.
During 1953, Chayefsky wrote the drama Marty, which was premiered on The Philco Television Playhouse, with Rod Steiger and Nancy Marchand. It concerns a Bronx butcher who meets a homely woman Clara, and how they realize they both suffer from the same mental torment. Chayefsky had a unique clause in his Marty contract that stated that only he could write the screenplay.
It was produced as a movie, released during 1955 with main actors Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair. It earned Academy Awards for best picture, best director (Delbert Mann), and best actor (Borgnine). Chayefsky won his first "best screenplay" Oscar for the movie. The production, the actors and Chayefsky's naturalistic dialogue received much critical acclaim and influenced subsequent live television dramas.
Gore Vidal adapted his teleplay The Catered Affair into a film of the same name. Chayefsky wrote the screenplay to The Bachelor Party. The latter was directed by Mann and the story concerns people questioning the idea of marriage, of commitment to one person, of going to the same, dull job, workday after workday, to support a family.
His next film, The Goddess, was based casually on the life of Marilyn Monroe. It was directed by John Cromwell and the main entertainer was Kim Stanley as Emily Ann Faulkner, who is a small town blonde girl who becomes the movies' sex symbol. She achieves fame and becomes emotionally disturbed and a problem to everyone: her producer, her director, and especially her husband (played by Lloyd Bridges).
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 fifteen months later and was filmed by Columbia Pictures during 1959.
After the theatrical version of Middle of the Night began on Broadway theatre during 1956, with main entertainers Edward G. Robinson and Gena Rowlands, its success led to a national tour. The Tenth Man (1959) marked Chayefsky's second Broadway theatrical success, garnering Tony nominations during 1960 for Best Play, Best Director (Tyrone Guthrie) and Best Scenic Design. Guthrie received another nomination for Chayefsky's Gideon, as did actor Frederic March. Chayefsky's final Broadway theatrical production, a play based on the life of Joseph Stalin, The Passion of Josef D, was criticized badly and had only 15 performances.
He resumed screen writing with a scathing military satire The Americanization of Emily (1964) with main entertainers James Garner, Julie Andrews, and Melvyn Douglas.
He then adapted the Lerner and Loewe musical Paint Your Wagon for cinema during 1969. Chayefsky was not very good with musical comedy and it was 66 minutes long, which was considered too long. His adaption was rewritten, and he never did another musical adaption. Even with entertainers Clint Eastwood, Jean Seberg, and Lee Marvin, the movie was not successful commercially.
His next movie, The Hospital (1971) had actors George C. Scott, Diana Rigg, and Barnard Hughes. It is a comedy about a badly managed big-city hospital where a maniac is killing promiscuous interns. The movie was successful both commercially and critically, earning Chayefsky another Oscar for screenwriting.
His next movie Network (1976) had Peter Finch as Howard Beale, an aging network anchorman who becomes crazed while being broadcast one night and has inspired revelations about saving mankind from television by using television. It also features Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall and William Holden. This earned Chayefsky his third Oscar for screenwriting.
His last film Altered States (1980) was based on his novel satirizing the scientific research community and its pretensions. During production, he and director Ken Russell had many disagreements, as Russell wanted the movie to be more of a symbolic, special-effects laden film than a satire. Chayefsky withdrew his name from the credits and replaced it with Sidney Aaron.
After the Philco years, 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. Recently The Great American Hoax was shown on the FX channel after Fox restored some The 20th Century Fox Hour episodes and broadcast them on TV with the title Fox Hour of Stars.
critic Martin Gottfried gives a general description of Chayefsky's personal traits as they may have affected his writings:
Chayefsky was a sturdy man of forty-two, 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 short, the life of the mind was a participant sport for Paddy Chayefsky.
Chayefsky was married to Susan Sackler in February 1949, and their son Dan was born six years later. Despite an alleged affair with Kim Novak, Paddy and Susan Chayefsky remained married until his death.
Chayefsky died in New York City of cancer in August 1981 at the age of 58, and was interred in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, Westchester County, New York. His personal papers are at the Wisconsin Historical Society and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division.
Chayefsky gained the reputation as a realist for his television scripting. His protagonists were often middle-class tradesmen struggling with personal problems, such as loneliness, conformity pressures, and blindness to their own emotions. Although they were televised as live broadcasts, the stories were well-adapted to the medium, as they were usually set in cramped interior settings and were developed mostly by dialogue, not action.
After the success of Marty, he worked mainly on films, scripting The Goddess, which starred Kim Stanley (for which he received an Oscar nomination) and The Bachelor Party. During the 1960s his credits included The Americanization of Emily, which featured James Garner, Julie Andrews, Melvyn Douglas and James Coburn; and Paint Your Wagon, a screen vehicle for Lee Marvin. Paint Your Wagon director, Joshua Logan said he "found Chayefsky to be close to a genius, but too close to stubborn."
The Hospital
He won two more Oscars, the first for The Hospital (1971) which featured George C. Scott and Diana Rigg. David Thomson describes it as a "lethally funny account of American social benevolence collapsing in its own bureaucratic chaos. Another review terms it "a scathing indictment of the medical community." During 1980, after he was diagnosed with cancer, he refused surgery, claiming that he "feared retribution by the doctors" for his caustic portrayal of them in the film. He died the next year.
Network
The film was followed by Network (1976), which featured Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch (who posthumously was awarded an Oscar for "Best Actor in a Leading Role") and Robert Duvall among other cast members. For both of these films Chayefsky received Golden Globe awards. The film annoyed many television executives and news anchors, but it won the acclaim of most critics. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning four, including Best Actress for Faye Dunaway. Beatrice Straight won for Best Supporting Actress and it resulted in Chayefsky's third and final award for Best Screenplay.
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."
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), which he adapted for his last screenplay. It was the story of 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, and this resulted in his having a heart attack during 1977. Subsequent to that misfortune, he was sued by one of the numerous scientific advisors he hired to help him with research.
In the film, Chayefsky is credited by his real first and middle name, Sidney Aaron, because of disputes with director Ken Russell.
Martin Gottfried wrote, "He was a successful writer, the most successful graduate of television's slice of life school of naturalism."
