In 1955, Ernest Borgnine etched his rotund form and world-weary visage on American culture in his finest role as Marty, the Bronx butcher who despairs of ever finding love, given his unromantic image. As a portrait of the loneliness of the single man in urban America, Marty was devastating, although skillfully evocative of sympathy and recognition rather than pity for its hero. “What're we gonna do tonight?” Marty's pals, all aging bachelors with mass-produced fantasy lives and no imagination, chant. Marty answers the question for himself when he begins his evolution from fat mama's-boy to lover of a shy, equally plain schoolteacher (Betsy Blair). In its unadorned, slice-of-life feel, Marty was perhaps the closest Hollywood came to neorealism, a New World I Vitelloni, perhaps (the Jewish Marty of the teleplay with Rod Steiger was transformed into an Italian Marty for the screen). But what was taken then for ultra-realistic Bronx dialogue now seems an obvious Chayefsky creation with its poetry of repetition and speed.