A Deepest Of 50's Sleepers

Marty (1955) The Small One That Went Big

The littlest engine that could, Marty was seen and liked as rebuke to colossals that a public, and certainly critics, had gotten bored with. Cinemascope was by 1955 gone as novelty, films done in the process judged by content rather than width, thus flops-a-poppin' that began with first anniversary of scope's The Egyptian. Wasn't it time we went back to basics of good drama? 1954 Best Picture winner On the Waterfront indicated appetite for it on standard screens plus black-and-white, sole protection a glamour name in Marlon Brando. Marty would now strip even that, Brando at first considered for the title part, but wiser heads holding out for plain folk we'd easier identify with, those apparent losers at life much like many paying admission to watch them. Done for amount south of $350K (specific amounts vary), Marty went on with help of brilliant marketing (more spent on exploitation than the pic itself) to roll up profits ($4.4 million in worldwide rentals) not dreamed of in oft-strapped 50's when comfort of home and TV bade so sweetly. Independent firebrand Burt Lancaster and partners did Marty in concert with eager-to-please-the-team United Artists, latter basking in distribution fees Lancaster vehicles brought back. This star seemed a surest bet in pictures during the mid-50's. Burt said years later, and not a little wistfully, that everything he touched back then turned to gold, Heaven's apparent reward for Lancaster simply being Lancaster.

We can watch on You Tube a lot of what home viewers saw in stone-age 50's when box flicker was something you'd beat back with a right to the set, or twist of rabbit ears. It was worth the guff for entertainment had for free, that you could look at in pajamas, or eat sardines out of a can with. Theatres had none of that, and was distance to get to besides. Car park and baby-sitters had to be factored in along with too many of movies being tired formula applied over and again. It was no secret that a greater public had wearied of sameness after the war. To rescue of that came television with, among obvious advantages, a spin of drama to offer something more intimate, real people navigating true-life issues. Nay-sayers might call it illustrated radio, but the best of teleplays could put us in dens and kitchens where good writing depicted troubles more troubled than our own, not on overblown basis like Hollywood, but close-to-homes we knew or lived in.

TV also brought drama back east, so much of it Gotham set as to make New York seem a most agonized spot on earth. Dialogue-driven situations played best on early tubes, action and vistas much less so. Actors were again shrunk as if viewed from back rows and so had to emote harder. Intense and "interior" performing as taught by the Actor's Studio saw new technique of the art which television displayed nightly. Much of vid drama went out live, so flubs were common, no worry because errors were expected and viewers were forgiving. TV had a tent show quality that warmed audiences toward those trying so valiant to get things right. Exciting also was discovery of talent that movies might not give a chance to. James Dean and Rod Steiger got starts this way, along with countless others. Steiger in fact was the first Marty, a story well enough written and received to be vanguard of Hollywood adaptation. Here would be a crack in the door for many artists bred by television to come through. They'd shape, or better re-shape, the industry over a next several decades.

The movie of Marty acknowledges the power of TV. Rather than go out for a show, Betsy Blair and her parents stay home on Sunday night to watch Ed Sullivan. Ernest Borginine and his dateless pals talk about going to the Loew's Paradise or whatever RKO house is nearest, but they never actually do. Marty lets life play out on gritty streets that people used to visit picture palaces to get away from. There had been foreign films to show us what the human condition was really about, but here finally was one that did it close to home. All of Hollywood hugged the result as if to assure us that this was direction they'd like to have gone if only tinsel-tyrants would let them. Few small pictures racked such endorsements: Charlton Heston, Jane Russell, Martin and Lewis, Milton Berle, Danny Kaye, Irving Berlin, Phil Silvers. Note preponderance of comedians --- did they see Marty in themselves? Such plaudits weren't bought with money or influence. In fact, it would be a badge of honor to laud Marty and say loudly that an industry needed lots more like it.

Trouble was getting more genies out of such a delicate bottle. Crowds loved Marty because it was one lonely man's search for love, which Ernest Borginine played to utter conviction and sympathy. I enjoy it every time I watch, even as some scenes are purest agony. Who hasn't had dose of rejection like Marty gets? Few pictures of the time were so honest about seemingly small pains of life. Anyway, this one still touches the isolated in all of us, relieved by humor still guffaw-worthy (the guy rhapsodizing over Mickey Spillane). Hecht-Hill-Lancaster tried again with a same creative team, minus Ernie. That was The Bachelor Party, which failed to re-light the Marty fuse, despite strikingly similar backdrop and approach. Rivals eyed easy gain from street topics and lives lived down and near-out, but a mass crowd perhaps had its fill from Marty, thus red ink bins filled by Edge of the City, A Hatful of Rain, Monkey on My Back, even ones Lancaster applied his screen self to and came back bloodied. Would there have been a Sweet Smell of Success had he not been emboldened by grosses off Marty? At least Lancaster took continuing benefit of talent trained by television, John Frankenheimer most noteworthy of these. Marty shows up at TCM in HD and is available on Kino Blu-Ray, full-frame where it shouldn't be. In fact, this title could use an all-round preservation facelift.