Remember, Men Have Feelings, Too", he told Mann he thought there was a play possibility about a young woman in that type of setting.

At that point, Chayefsky was partway through act 2, and thought he could have it finished in a few weeks, but after talking with Coe he agreed to turn around material in only a few days.

Tony Schwartz reviewed the television production in The New York Times: It's the stark, simple portrait of a gentle, lonely man, played by Rod Steiger, who lives with his mother, works as a butcher and longs for a loving relationship as he heads toward middle age.

After despairing about how to spend it, and then suffering another humiliating rejection when he calls a girl to ask her out, Marty finally decides to attend a lonely hearts social at the Waverly Ballroom.

There he meets a girl (Nancy Marchand) who has just been ditched by her blind date—a slick fellow who offers Marty "five bucks if you take this dog home for me".

The original 1953 telecast is commercially available as part of a three-DVD set, "The Golden Age of Television" (Criterion Collection), a series which aired on PBS in 1981 with Eva Marie Saint as the host of Marty.

Only Esther Minciotti, Augusta Ciolli and Joe Mantell repeated their 1953 TV drama roles in the 1955 film adaptation.