Personal Life
Drama 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 42, 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.
Paddy and Susan Sackler Chayefsky's son Dan was born six years after their 1949 marriage. 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 the Sharon Gardens Division of 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.
Read more about this topic: Paddy Chayefsky
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“Keep your own secret, and get out other peoples. Keep your own temper, and artfully warm other peoples. Counterwork your rivals with diligence and dexterity, but at the same time with the utmost personal civility to them: and be firm without heat.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (16941773)
“One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating. This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)