Marty (1955), directed by Delbert Mann. Trylon Cinema, Tuesday, April 25.
Marty (1953), directed by Delbert Mann. Criterion’s Golden Age of Television DVD, Tuesday, April 25.

Back in the 1950s, at the dawn of television, there were dramatic programs like Playhouse 90 or The Philco Television Playhouse or United States Steel Hour, often pretentious dramas sponsored by major corporations. No one could quite figure out what to do with TV, so they’d have these live productions, like theater, dealing with important issues of the time, a way for big companies to get the word out about their product–like steel?–and elevate the masses with great drama. And, strangely enough by today’s standards, some of these productions were adapted into movies.

This was when theater was typically made up of bright, bombastic musicals or more modest, intense, kitchen-sink dramas written by white men obsessed with “the little guy”. Think Arthur Miller and Clifford Odets, the type of playwrights the Coens made sport of in Barton Fink. Well, there were a lot of good writers and directors who found work in early TV, making these types of strange, somewhat (or outright) dated productions, guys like Rod Serling and especially Paddy Chayefsky. From this world came 12 Angry Men, The Twilight Zone, and even Network years later.

Imagine this: there’s a TV movie that people consider to be so good they make it into a feature film, from a major studio. I guess in a way this is because the studios looked at these productions like they were theater, which, essentially, they were. Marty, like 12 Angry Men and a few other now-forgotten films (Patterns, No Time for Sergeants and Requiem for a Heavyweight being three), was one of these live TV dramas, broadcast on The Philco Television Playhouse. In fact, Marty, the film, was the biggest hit of the group of adaptations (even if 12 Angry Men has held up better, or at least is more well known today), winning Oscars for Best Picture, Actor, Director and Screenplay. Christ, it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, being one of three movies to win that and Best Picture. But what strikes me as so weird is how vastly inferior it is to the live TV version.

For Marty, the motion picture starring Ernest Borgnine, is a feel-good little movie, the kind of fun, “indie” picture that does what that name states–it makes everyone feel good, leaving the theater with a great big smile on their face. They’ve been making these type of Oscar-bait flicks for years, marketing them as “surprises” at Oscar time, as if they weren’t the product of a massive publicity machine like any other film. CODA and Everything Everywhere are the modern versions. Nothing wrong with that, just don’t pretend like they’re not what they are, products as much as the big tentpole films.

But the Philco Marty, as I’ll call it, with the same writer and director, the same story (but 30 minutes shorter) is not the same beast–it is a brutal, devastating little production that leaves you feeling worn and sad, but alive.

Both are the tale of the eponymous man, a mid-thirtysomething butcher who is forever being hounded to get married. “When are you gonna get married, Marty? You oughta be ashamed of yourself!” says nearly every woman in the picture, and a few men, too. For the next hour (TV) to 90 minutes (film), we’ll see Marty trying desperately to just live his life, find a girl, nearly lose her and maybe do the right thing and win her love.

Except in the movie, that last part is not in question. This is the vast difference between the two stories. First, though, let’s look at the leads. The Philco Marty stars Rod Steiger, a great actor. The film version stars Ernest Borgnine. Now, I’d honestly rather watch a bunch of Borgnine movies, or rather, films with Borgnine, since he was often a supporting actor. Usually, directors knew very well that you don’t wrap a whole movie around Ernest Borgnine, because he’s pretty one-note, and that one note is perfect as Sgt. Judson in From Here to Eternity, or the growling heavies in The Dirty Dozen or Emperor of the North or Bad Day at Black Rock. Steiger could hold his own against Brando, for cat’s sake, and had the shoulders to carry a whole picture. But for sheer fun I’ll take those Borgnine pics to Steiger’s–I’m just not as keen about On the Waterfront, The Pawnbroker or In the Heat of the Night.

Supposedly, Burt Lancaster’s production company, which had bought the rights to Marty, wanted to have Steiger in the movie, but also wanted to bully him into signing a three-film contract. So he declined. Then, when someone decided on Borgnine, I don’t know if they felt like he couldn’t handle the intense emotions or if they just decided to go against type, but they made him a really nice guy. And that’s how the picture works, as a nice guy on the losing end who finally wins.

In both versions, Marty is a guy surrounded by other guys who are all wounded by love. These wounds are often self-inflicted–actually, they’re 99% self-inflicted. These men aren’t the best looking, but that’s far from the problem–they’re also deeply ugly inside, cruel to women and to one another, growing more and more desperate and mean as they move through the years without someone to love who is not their mother or sister or family member. The ogle porn and read aloud from the viciously sexist Mickey Spillane novels. You can find these guys everywhere, today and forever.

Rod Steiger plays Marty as a man who is bleeding from a thousand cuts. But he never plays him with any self-pity. Steiger’s Marty walks as though he’s carrying a side of beef, slightly stooped and appearing as though he’s on the verge of crying or screaming. Borgnine can’t carry this emotion–his Marty is very much self-pitying, he’s a nice guy, but a nice guy whose niceness is blared out with the subtly of a tornado warning–he’d fit right in here in Minnesota-nice territory.

Each version has chosen its lane and drives right down the center. With Steiger, the film takes dark, painful turns. Consider the first moment when Marty tries to set himself up with a date, a moment that exists in both versions. He and his best friend, Angie (Joe Mantell in both, who was nominated for an Oscar for the film and is best known as saying “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown,” in Polanski’s film), are sitting around a delicatessen on a Saturday night, reading a newspaper together and mumbling about what they’re going to do that evening. Angie wants to go out dancing, or wandering up and down some street (this is New York) and look for girls. Marty’s sick of being rejected. Angie persuades him to call a woman with whom they went to the movies a few weeks back, then later hung out with at a restaurant. Marty reluctantly agrees.

The phone call is a pivotal moment, the first time we see Marty being damaged. Borgnine plays this scene for pity. He looks hurt, like a puppy dog that lost its toy, eyes shiny and you can almost expect him to slap his thigh and go “aw, shucks, not again!” There’s no anger in the performance, it’s all sadness, maudlin despair. It’s fine, but hardly powerful.

In the Philco Marty, we only hear Marty’s side of the phone conversation, but Steiger’s work here is a masterclass on emoting. His face goes from reticent to disappointed, to frustrated, to angry, to, finally, utter devastation. He looks at the receiver in his hand as though he wished it were a gun that he could use to finally end his misery. Steiger knew that the sadness would be truly effective if it was leavened with the growing anger this guy would feel.

Eventually, at the urging of his mother, Marty goes with Angie to a dance, and there meets Clara, a wallflower who has just been rejected by her blind date. Betsy Blair, then Gene Kelly’s wife, plays her in the film, after Kelly lobbied like crazy to get her in (she was also nominated for an Oscar). Again, the TV version has the better actor: Nancy Marchand plays Clara as though she’s just escaped from some prisoner of war camp, hesitant, nervous, clearly on the receiving end of numerous slights and outright abuses. Blair is quiet and kind and the kind of beautiful woman only Hollywood would consider “ugly”.

Aside from the main actor, what makes the cinematic Marty less edgy is its extra 30 minutes. The Philco Marty is an exercise in efficiency–there’s no reason to take more than 60 minutes to tell this story. But the movie uses that extra 30 minutes (understandable, as no feature is 60 minutes long) to give us more backstory and actually show us that Marty is going to be happy. This is never in question, and I think it hurts the film, is contrary to the whole point of this exercise.

Marty, in the film, has the potential for a bright future. In the Philco Marty, he is a butcher, end of story. In the movie, Marty is a butcher with the opportunity to buy the shop and then go in on a supermarket. Clara is a teacher who wonders if she should take a promotion to be head of a department in a better high school (in the Philco Marty she’s just a teacher). In the movie, the two will talk endlessly in a coffee shop and on sidewalks, and the film scores its one advantage with great location shooting of 1950s New York. Later, Clara will go home and talk about Marty to her folks, and about how excited she is to receive his call the next day.

This is a huge difference, because it lets us know that all Marty has to do is pick up the phone and he’ll cement his future with his true love. Clara has practically said as much to her folks. We yearn for them to get together, and secretly know that there’s really nothing to stop them other than Marty’s one phone call, which, considering the long conversation we’ve just witnessed, we’re certain he’ll make. We also know that they’re both going to be successful people in life.

But the Philco Marty has its awkward date between Marty and Clara end with a near-kiss that just doesn’t work for either party, and we have no clue as to whether this Clara will even respond to his later call. Clara says she wants him to call, says she looks forward to it, but that could be just to get out of his house with his strange mother and his groping hands. When Clara rejects Marty in the movie, she is very quick to tell him it’s because she doesn’t know how she’d respond, and he understands and we’re all happy.

What’s best to me is that the Philco Marty is brave enough to show us that Marty isn’t really all that different from the toxic men surrounding him. Steiger’s Marty is real, and we hope against hope that when he finally does call Clara later, he’ll find some solace and finally be the good man he claims he already is. But we also understand that he may not end up happy, that he may end up one of these warped, Playboy– and Spillane-reading louts that have only other brutes for company, growing more and more sour as the years wear away their kindness. In fact, even if he does get together with Clara he might not be a very good partner–we’re just not sure. That’s honest.

The closing credits of the film tell you all you need to know as to how Marty’s future will go.

Though I enjoyed both Martys, the original, which I remember seeing in the 1980s with Dad on PBS, is the one that sticks with me, leaves me with the residue of strong feeling. They both have wonderful moments making fun of Mickey Spillane, which I personally find so fulfilling. If you love Ernest Borgnine and want to see him in something fun, check out his Marty. If you want an evening feeling as though you’ve got good company during your loneliest moments, Rod Steiger is your man.