Imagine that you’re a bored, single, plain-looking, lonely school- teacher who still lives at home. You’re 29 and in 1955 that’s like being 40. You’re at a dance and the guy your girlfriend has tried to set you up with has just ditched you. In tears, you think to yourself “I must be a dog”. And then just in the nick of time, a sweet, heavy-set fellow (a butcher) asks you to dance. As you confess that you have been crying a lot and that you’ve been stood up one too many times, he leans in closer and says: “You don’t get to be good hearted by accident, you get kicked around enough, you get to be a real Professor of Pain. I know exactly how you feel. And I also want you to know that I’m having a very good time with you right now and I’m really enjoying myself – You’re not such a dog as you think you are.” Who wouldn’t fall in love with this guy?

Directed by Delbert Mann in 1955, Marty is a simple story. It’s about a kind and ordinary guy (Ernest Borgnine) who falls in love with a kind and ordinary woman (Betsy Blair) in the course of 24 hours despite protests from his jealous mother and loser friends. It’s tender sincerity, the superb performances, insightful dialogue and naturalistic shots of the Bronx won it many fans, the Palme d’Or, as well as, several Academy Awards. Marty was originally an hour-long teleplay (a play produced for TV) written by Paddy Chayefsky, an acclaimed playwright and screenwriter of television’s “golden age”. The teleplay was adapted by Chayefsky into a feature film, which Delbert Mann directed a couple of years later. Before, directing Marty, Mann mostly directed dramas for Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse. He was most known for his work with directing live-episodes for TV and for his plays. As the result of the remarkable box-office success of the film, Mann’s career shifted into filmmaking and he was embraced by all of Hollywood. He went on to make several more films that either received or won an Academy Award, such as, The Bachelor Party (1957), Seperate Tables (1958), Desire Under the Helms (1968), The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), and That Touch of Mink (1960).

(Picture: MARTY, producer Harold Hecht, director Delbert Mann, cinematographer Joseph LaShelle, art director Edward S. Haworth, Betsy Blair, Ernest Borgnine on set, 1955)