Sydney “Paddy” Chayefsky was one of the most renown dramatists to emerge from the “golden age” of American television. His intimate, realistic scripts helped shape the naturalistic style of television drama in the 1950s. After leaving television, Chayefsky succeeded as a playwright and novelist. He won greatest acclaim as a Hollywood screenwriter, receiving Academy Awards for three scripts, including Marty (1955), based on his own television drama, and Network (1976), his scathing satire of the television industry.

Chayefsky began his television career writing episodes for Danger and Manhunt in the early 1950s. His scripts caught the attention of Fred Coe, the dynamic producer of NBC’s live anthology dramas the Philco Television Playhouse and the Goodyear Television Playhouse, which were alternating series. Chayefsky’s first script for Coe, “Holiday Song,” won immediate critical acclaim when it aired in 1952. Subsequently, Chayefsky bucked the trend of the anthology writers by insisting that he would write only original dramas, not adaptations. The result was a banner year in 1953. Coe produced six Chayefsky scripts, including “Printer’s Measure” and “The Reluctant Citizen.” Chayefsky became one of television’s best-known writers, along with such dramatists as Tad Mosel, Reginald Rose, and Rod Serling.

Chayefsky’s stories are notable for their dialogue, their depiction of second-generation Americans, and their infusions of sentiment and humor. They frequently draw on the author’s upbringing in the Bronx, New York. The protagonists are generally middle-class tradesmen struggling with personal problems: loneliness, pressures to conform, blindness to their own emotions. The technical limitations of live broadcast suited these dramas. The stories take place in cramped interior settings and are advanced by dialogue, not action. Chayefsky said that he focused on “the people I understand; the $75 to $125 a week kind”; this subject matter struck a sympathetic chord with the mainly urban, middle-class audiences of the time.

“Marty,” a typical Chayefsky teleplay and one of the most acclaimed of all the live anthology dramas, aired in 1953. Rod Steiger played the lonely butcher who believes that whatever women want in a man, “I ain’t got it.” When Marty finally meets a woman, his friends cruelly label her “a dog.” Marty finally decides that he is a dog himself and has to seize his chance for love. The play ends happily, with Marty arranging a date. Critics have compared “Marty” and other Chayefsky teleplays to the realistic dramas of Arthur Miller and Clifford Odets. In Chayefsky’s plays, however, positive endings and celebrations of love tend to emerge from the naturalistic framework. The Chayefsky plays also steered clear of social issues, like most of the anthology dramas.

After Marty enjoyed phenomenal success as a Hollywood film, Chayefsky left television in 1956. His exit narrowly preceded the demise of the live dramas, as sponsors began to prefer prerecorded shows. Even while the live dramas were declining, however, Chayefsky’s teleplays found new life, as Simon and Schuster published a volume of them, and three of them, in addition to Marty, became Hollywood films: The Bachelor Party (1957) and Middle of the Night (1959), adapted by Chayefsky, and The Catered Affair (1957), adapted by Gore Vidal.

In the 1960s, Chayefsky abandoned the intimate, personal dramas on which he had built his reputation. His subsequent work was often dark and satiric, like the Academy Award–winning film The Hospital (1971). Network, Chayefsky’s send-up of television, marked the apex of his satiric mode. He depicted an institution that had sold its soul for ratings and become “a goddamned amusement park,” in the words of news anchor Howard Beale, the movie’s main character. Before Chayefsky’s death in 1981, he wrote one more screenplay, Altered States (1980), based on his own novel. He refused a script credit, however, due to disagreements with the film’s director, Ken Russell.

Chayefsky wrote only one television script after 1956, an adaptation of his 1961 play Gideon. His reputation as a television dramatist rests on the 11 scripts he completed for the Philco and Goodyear Playhouse series. His influence on the live anthologies was considerable, but he is just as notable for the career he forged after television.