Marty - Reception

Reception

Tony Schwartz reviewed the television production in The New York Times:

It's the stark, simple portrait of a gentle, lonely man, played by Rod Steiger, who lives with his mother, works as a butcher and longs for a loving relationship as he heads toward middle age. "I'm 36 years old and I've been lookin' for a girl every Saturday night of my life," he tells his best friend. "I'm a fat little ugly guy and girls don't go for me, that's all." It's just that sort of unfettered sentiment that gives the drama such powerful resonance. The story centers mostly on a single Saturday night in Marty's life. After despairing about how to spend it, and then suffering another humiliating rejection when he calls a girl to ask her out, Marty finally decides to attend a lonelyhearts social at the Waverly Ballroom. There he meets a girl (Nancy Marchand) who has just been ditched by her blind date—a slick fellow who offers Marty "five bucks if you take this dog home for me." Marty approaches her, and in their mutual misery they find a bond. She rejects his first fumbling attempt to kiss her, but mostly in an effort not to seem overeager. Even in the afterglow of a wonderful evening, Marty is subjected the next day to ridicule from his friends, who insist that the girl is a homely loser not worth pursuing. The story hinges on whether he'll follow their advice or follow his own instincts to see her again. The drama is most convincing when it sticks with Marty—and much less so when it drifts off into a stilted subplot about his mother's attempts to convince a sister to move into their household. Because the whole play is less than an hour long (a subsequent film version of the play ran 90 minutes), the second story simply gets in the way.

The acclaimed television drama was honored a decade later when the kinescope of the production was selected for showing at the Museum of Modern Art on February 17–20, 1963, as part of Television USA: Thirteen Seasons, described by MoMA Film Library curator Richard Griffith as "a grand retrospective of the best that has been done in American television."

The original 1953 telecast is commercially available as part of a three-DVD set, "The Golden Age of Television" (Criterion Collection), a series which aired on PBS in 1981 with Eva Marie Saint as the host of Marty. It features interviews with Steiger, Marchand and Mann.

Only Esther Minciotti, Augusta Ciolli and Joe Mantell repeated their 1953 TV drama roles in the 1955 film adaptation. Steiger turned down the opportunity to repeat his role in the film because he did not want to compromise his independence, while producers Hecht-Lancaster insisted he sign a multi-picture contract.