What do you think?
Rate this book
The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky: The Television Plays
A collection of six television plays by this brilliant Holiday Song , Printer's Measure , The Big Deal , Marty , The Mother , and The Bachelor Party . Includes an introduction and notes for each play by the author.
292 pages, Paperback
First published November 14, 1994
10 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
About the author
Paddy Chayefsky
75 books72 followersSidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky , was an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay.
He was considered one of the most renowned dramatists of the so-called Golden Age of Television. His intimate, realistic scripts provided a naturalistic style of television drama for the 1950s, and he was regarded as the central figure in the "kitchen sink realism" movement of American television.
Following his critically acclaimed teleplays, Chayefsky continued to succeed as a playwright and novelist. As a screenwriter, he received three Academy Awards for Marty (1955), The Hospital (1971) and Network (1976). Marty was based on his own television drama about a relationship between two lonely people finding love. Network was his scathing satire of the television industry and The Hospital was considered satiric.
Chayefsky's early stories were notable for their dialogue, their depiction of second-generation Americans and their sentiment and humor. They were frequently influenced by the author's childhood in the Bronx. The protagonists were generally middle-class tradesmen struggling with personal problems: loneliness, pressures to conform or their own emotions.
Chayefsky died in New York City of cancer in August 1981 at the age of 58.
He was considered one of the most renowned dramatists of the so-called Golden Age of Television. His intimate, realistic scripts provided a naturalistic style of television drama for the 1950s, and he was regarded as the central figure in the "kitchen sink realism" movement of American television.
Following his critically acclaimed teleplays, Chayefsky continued to succeed as a playwright and novelist. As a screenwriter, he received three Academy Awards for Marty (1955), The Hospital (1971) and Network (1976). Marty was based on his own television drama about a relationship between two lonely people finding love. Network was his scathing satire of the television industry and The Hospital was considered satiric.
Chayefsky's early stories were notable for their dialogue, their depiction of second-generation Americans and their sentiment and humor. They were frequently influenced by the author's childhood in the Bronx. The protagonists were generally middle-class tradesmen struggling with personal problems: loneliness, pressures to conform or their own emotions.
Chayefsky died in New York City of cancer in August 1981 at the age of 58.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 16, 2021
The navigation in this is poor but at the beginning there is a table of contents which directs you to the play. There are no errors noted this far and the reviews for the individual plays will be under the title.
March 7, 2026
Craftsman’s notes on a lost craft - the hour-long television play, that as far as I understand it could involve multiple sets and cameras but would be performed live. Also interesting I thought - the television-play industry was based out of New York rather than Hollywood
Chayefsky puts forward this idea of television-plays as the medium to explore the introspective age of the 50s, where there is a general neurotic malaise, the pace of history is destabilising meaning, and people chew the gristle off the self-help industry in their hunger for an answer (sounds familiar).
Now I am not sure I can think of a LESS introspective art form than television.
The plays in this book accelerate towards the void, uncertainty, decay and conflict within social relations at top speed. They cut to the bone and keep cutting. A singular fact about a person becomes the character, and this fact is often linked to the desperate need to balance economic necessity, family identity and some deeper existential grounding: the aging failed builder-entrepreneur who can’t make peace with his failure after 15 years, the master printer who is being replaced by a machine, the elderly mother who cannot find an employer that will exploit her labour at the sewing machine. Very reminiscent of Arthur Miller / Tennessee Williams, the way one bad fact, representing this dark opaque cannonball of economic-social-sexual importance to the person, begins to drag down an entire family unit.
Comparing hour-long play form of Marty / The Bachelor Party to full length movie versions only highlights the sharp scream edges of these plays, as there is no time really for any detail outside the black holes that premise each play.
Seeing all of them back to back, along with Chayefsky’s notes on each play, makes them seem a lot less purely
‘literary’ and more of a formal genre. He also talks about the role of Freudian theory for the writer, and even how the best actress he’d worked with would freely discuss the psychoanalytic states of her character. Not just pure social observation but an adopted intellectual scheme that dark energies lurk within each family and each person.
Marty and the groom in the Bachelor Party pulled between different magnetic claims of the superego till it becomes hard to say what their ‘true’ desires are, and I doubt the characters know.
All this feels very much the OPPOSITE of TV, which I associate with long-running, grounded, repetitious formats. Characters you depend upon. Often tied to a workplace or else (thinking of US sitcoms especially) following the path towards career success and family life for a group of friends.
I would say compared to later Chayefsky movies I’ve seen, the lives of the people in this book are dominated by work, family and marriage. AND the total proletarian situation of each person - the way each of these functions as a necessity, an object of desire, and a job.
Later Chayefsky feels like the spectacle of mass entertainment and has more totally penetrated into social relations, things are a lot noisier and more jagged. Things tend more towards farce than tragedy.
Chayefsky puts forward this idea of television-plays as the medium to explore the introspective age of the 50s, where there is a general neurotic malaise, the pace of history is destabilising meaning, and people chew the gristle off the self-help industry in their hunger for an answer (sounds familiar).
Now I am not sure I can think of a LESS introspective art form than television.
The plays in this book accelerate towards the void, uncertainty, decay and conflict within social relations at top speed. They cut to the bone and keep cutting. A singular fact about a person becomes the character, and this fact is often linked to the desperate need to balance economic necessity, family identity and some deeper existential grounding: the aging failed builder-entrepreneur who can’t make peace with his failure after 15 years, the master printer who is being replaced by a machine, the elderly mother who cannot find an employer that will exploit her labour at the sewing machine. Very reminiscent of Arthur Miller / Tennessee Williams, the way one bad fact, representing this dark opaque cannonball of economic-social-sexual importance to the person, begins to drag down an entire family unit.
Comparing hour-long play form of Marty / The Bachelor Party to full length movie versions only highlights the sharp scream edges of these plays, as there is no time really for any detail outside the black holes that premise each play.
Seeing all of them back to back, along with Chayefsky’s notes on each play, makes them seem a lot less purely
‘literary’ and more of a formal genre. He also talks about the role of Freudian theory for the writer, and even how the best actress he’d worked with would freely discuss the psychoanalytic states of her character. Not just pure social observation but an adopted intellectual scheme that dark energies lurk within each family and each person.
Marty and the groom in the Bachelor Party pulled between different magnetic claims of the superego till it becomes hard to say what their ‘true’ desires are, and I doubt the characters know.
All this feels very much the OPPOSITE of TV, which I associate with long-running, grounded, repetitious formats. Characters you depend upon. Often tied to a workplace or else (thinking of US sitcoms especially) following the path towards career success and family life for a group of friends.
I would say compared to later Chayefsky movies I’ve seen, the lives of the people in this book are dominated by work, family and marriage. AND the total proletarian situation of each person - the way each of these functions as a necessity, an object of desire, and a job.
Later Chayefsky feels like the spectacle of mass entertainment and has more totally penetrated into social relations, things are a lot noisier and more jagged. Things tend more towards farce than tragedy.
May 22, 2022
Excellent plays, all. The questions of bare existence are asked and answered with the sincerity and forthrightness of a child. Chayefsky’s ability to simplify the complex and complexify the simple is second to none. His endnotes, though, are the reason to buy this collection. He talks about his work like a skilled carpenter; self-assured but with the humbleness that comes with ‘just doing your job’. Excellent, if a little dated, insight and advice.
November 20, 2022
Title: The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky: The Television Plays
Author: Paddy Chayefsky
Year: 1983
Genre: Nonfiction - Script collection, drama
Page count: 292 pages
Date(s) read: 11/13/22-11/17/22
Reading journal entry #306 in 2022
Author: Paddy Chayefsky
Year: 1983
Genre: Nonfiction - Script collection, drama
Page count: 292 pages
Date(s) read: 11/13/22-11/17/22
Reading journal entry #306 in 2022
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews