[2] Martin Gottfried wrote in All His Jazz that Chayefsky was "the most successful graduate of television's slice of life school of naturalism.

[8] Harry Chayefsky worked for a New Jersey milk distribution company in which he eventually took a controlling interest and renamed Dellwood Dairies.

[19] Returning to the United States, Chayefsky worked in his uncle's print shop, Regal Press, an experience which provided a background for his later teleplay, Printer's Measure (1953), as well as his story for the movie As Young as You Feel (1951).

[20] But Chayefsky was discouraged by the studio system, which involved rewrites and relegated writers to inferior roles, so he quit and moved back to New York, vowing not to return.

"[22] During 1951–52, Chayefsky wrote adaptations for radio's Theater Guild on the Air: The Meanest Man in the World (with James Stewart), Cavalcade of America, Tommy (with Van Heflin and Ruth Gordon and Over 21 (with Wally Cox).

The seventh season of Philco Television Playhouse began September 19, 1954 with E. G. Marshall and Eva Marie Saint in Chayefsky's Middle of the Night, a play which relocated to Broadway theaters 15 months later; In 1956, Middle of the Night opened on Broadway with Edward G. Robinson and Gena Rowlands, and its success led to a national tour.

Marty is about a decent, hard-working Bronx butcher, pining for the company of a woman in his life but despairing of ever finding true love in a relationship.

Fate pairs him with a plain, shy schoolteacher named Clara whom he rescues from the embarrassment of being abandoned by her blind date in a local dance hall.

The production, the actors and Chayefsky's naturalistic dialogue received much critical acclaim and influenced subsequent live television dramas.

Chayefsky, still upset by his treatment years before, demanded creative control, consultation on casting, and the same director as in the TV version, Delbert Mann.

Actress Betsy Blair, playing Clara, faced difficulties because of her affiliation with left-wing causes, and United Artists demanded that she be removed.

[30] Chayefsky wrote a film adaptation of his Broadway play Middle of the Night, originally writing the female lead role for Marilyn Monroe.

[34] In 1958 Chayefsky began adapting Middle of the Night as a film, and he decided not to use the star of the Broadway version, Edward G. Robinson, with whom he had clashed, choosing instead Frederic March.

[35] The Tenth Man (1959) marked Chayefsky's second Broadway theatrical success, garnering 1960 Tony Award nominations for Best Play, Best Director (Tyrone Guthrie) and Best Scenic Design.

Chayefsky's final Broadway theatrical production, a play based on the life of Joseph Stalin, The Passion of Josef D, received unfavorable reviews and ran for only 15 performances.

[36] Although Chayefsky was an early writer for the television medium, he eventually abandoned it, "decrying the lack of interest the networks demonstrated toward quality programming".

[37] Although Chayefsky wished only to do original screenplays, he was persuaded by producer Martin Ransohoff to adapt William Bradford Huie's 1959 novel that was eventually filmed with the book's title The Americanization of Emily (1964).

[38] The novel dealt with interservice rivalries prior to the Normandy landings during World War II, with a love story at the center of the plot.

William Holden was initially cast in the male lead, but that led to conflict when he asked that Julie Andrews be replaced by his then-girlfriend, Capucine.

[41][42][43] The film opened in August 1964 to superlative reviews but was a box office failure, possibly due to its extremely controversial anti-war stance at the dawn of the Vietnam War.

"[45] The failure of Americanization of Emily and Josef D. on Broadway shook Chayefsky's confidence, and was the beginning of a what his biographer Shaun Considine calls a "fallow period."

[49] The long speeches written for Bock and other characters by Chayefsky, later praised by critics, met resistance from United Artists executives during the making of the film.

Within a week of that conversation, Chayefsky had written the rough draft of a script, centering on Howard Beale, an elderly, disillusioned anchor who announces he will commit suicide on the air.

"[60] After Network Chayefsky explored an offer from Warren Beatty to write a film based on the life of John Reed and his book Ten Days That Shook the World.

He then began a rough outline of a story in which the lead character immerses himself in an isolation tank, and with the aid of hallucinogens regresses to become a prehuman creature.

[69] Upset by the filming of his screenplay, Chayefsky withdrew from the production of Altered States and took his name off the credits, substituting the pseudonym Sidney Aaron.

Itzkoff describes Chayefsky as "intensely troubled, a huge egomaniac and control freak, dispirited about the world, wryly comic, and a both present and absent family man.

Believing that the conference was insufficiently aggressive, he founded a new activist organization in New York, Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East.

[80] In the late 1970s Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East placed full-page newspaper ads written by Chayefsky attacking the Palestine Liberation Organization for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics.

Chayefsky's personal papers are at the Wisconsin Historical Society and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division.