Paddy Chayefsky

PADDY CHAYEFSKY d1981. American playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for writing both adapted and original screenplays. He was one of the most renowned dramatists of the Golden Age of Television. His intimate, realistic scripts provided a naturalistic style of television drama for the 1950s, dramatizing the lives of ordinary Americans. Following his critically acclaimed teleplays, he became a noted playwright and novelist. As a screenwriter, he received three Academy Awards for ; Marty (1955) / The Hospital (1971) and Network (1976). His screenplay for Network is often regarded as his masterpiece and has been hailed as "the kind of literate, darkly funny and breathtakingly prescient material that prompts many to claim it as the greatest screenplay of the 20th century". He died of cancer in New York aged 58 on August 1st 1981