Trivia for
Marty (1955)

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• A Moscow screening of the film during a 1959 cultural-exchange program made it the first U.S. feature seen in the U.S.S.R. since World War II.
  
  
• This is the remake of a 1953 TV movie of the same name, with Rod Steiger in the title role.
  
  
• At 91 minutes long, this has the shortest running time of any film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
  
  

• The first American film to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
  
  
• Delbert Mann became the first director to win the Best Director Oscar with his debut. This record stood until 1983 when James L. Brooks repeated the feat with Terms of Endearment (1983).
  
  
• The only time in film history that the producers spent more on a film's award campaign ($400,000) than they did on making the movie ($343,000).
  
  
• Rod Steiger, who had originated the role of Marty in the eponymous TV production, said that he turned down the role in the movie because the Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions contract would have bound him for years. Harold Hecht and Burt Lancaster, on the other hand, said that they did not want to cast Steiger as they felt the public would not go for the same actor that they had seen for free on TV.
  
  
• It was rumored that producers Harold Hecht and Burt Lancaster financed the movie as a tax-write off, believing the picture would lose money.
  
  
• The film, which cost only $340,000 to make and generated rentals of $3,000,000 at the domestic box office, reportedly was one of the most profitable movies ever made.
  
  
• First Best Picture Oscar winner to have been based on a TV program ("Goodyear Television Playhouse" (1951) episode)
  
  
• Burt Lancaster doesn't appear in the film, but he is in the theatrical trailer as the co-producer who introduces the movie to the audience.
  
  
• Future actress Joi Lansing (then a pin-up model) can be seen on cover of "Girls & Gags," a girlie magazine Marty's pals oogle at least twice during movie.
  
  
• Delbert Mann had no idea who to cast in the lead role, so asked his friend Robert Aldrich. Aldrich immediately suggested Ernest Borgnine. Mann was skeptical, as Borgnine was only known for playing heavies, but Aldrich convinced him. Borgnine regularly says that he owes his career to Robert Aldrich.
  
  
• Washington lawyer Edward Bennett Williams was offered a 10% ownership in the movie in lieu of a fee for legal work he had done. He turned down the stake and took his fee, thus losing a considerable amount of money.
  
  
• Cameo: [Paddy Chayefsky] The character of Leo, who appears in the back of the car when Marty is approached by his friends to make up the pair for the "odd squirrel" they have with them. According to Delbert Mann, Chayefsky (who was once a moderately renowned stage actor) was recruited for the very visually obscured part solely to save the time and money of hiring an extra. According to Chayefsky, for his three lines he was required to rejoin the actor's union, which required dues of $140. He recalled the role as paying about $67.
  
  
• Paddy Chayefsky wrote the play (which originally appeared on television) as a starring vehicle for his friend, actor/director Martin Ritt, even naming the lead character after him. But Ritt had been blacklisted during the McCarthy "Red Scare" era and the network wouldn't allow him to be hired, and the role eventually went to Rod Steiger.
  
  

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