Paddy Chayefsky is one of a handful of American screenwriters who first achieved fame during the golden age of television, producing some of his best work for the live dramatic anthology programs. At the time Chayefsky was honing his craft on the Philco-Goodyear Playhouse, the movies were concentrating on visual gimmicks such as Cinemascope and Cinerama to lure the public away from television. And yet, there was far more intimacy and human truth in any one of Chayefsky's scripts for television than in most of the widescreen spectaculars combined. For these dramas Chayefsky drew upon his upbringing in New York: a world of garment workers, cabdrivers, cantors, print-shop compositors, butchers, and callous Casanovas looking for "tomatoes" at Waverly Ballrooms. The characters in his plays were never larger-than-life; they were life--mundane people whose problems were universal and who, therefore, touched a deep nerve with the viewing public. The characters...