Paddy Chayefsky
Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky (January 29, 1923 – August 1, 1981), was an American playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay (the other three-time winners, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, have all shared their awards with co-writers).
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. Martin Gottfried wrote, "He was a successful writer, the most successful graduate of television's slice of life school of naturalism."
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). The movie 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 also satiric. Film historian David Thomson termed The Hospital "daring, uninhibited, and prophetic. No one else would have dreamed of doing it."
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.
Read more about Paddy Chayefsky: Early Life, Television, Writing Style, Broadway, Films, Novels, Personal Life, Filmography, Television and Stage Plays
Famous quotes by paddy chayefsky:
“It’s not greed and ambition that makes wars—it’s goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons, for liberation or manifest destiny, always against tyranny and always in the best interests of humanity. So far this war, we’ve managed to butcher some 10,000,000 people in the interest of humanity. The next war, it seems we’ll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)
“God save us from people who do the morally right thing. It’s always the rest of us who get broken in half.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)
“You don’t send a man to his death because you want a hero.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)
“In peacetime, they had all been normal decent, cowards, frightened of their wives, trembling before their bosses, terrified at the passing of the years, but war had made them gallant. They had been greedy men. Now they were self-sacrificing. They had been selfish. Now they were generous. War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best, the highest morality he is capable of.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)
“I’m afraid to look in the mirror. I’m afraid I’m going to see an old lady with white hair, just like the old ladies in the park. A little bundle in a black shawl just waiting for the coffin.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)