Year: 1959
Director: Delbert Mann
Starring: Fredric March, Kim Novak, Glenda Farrell
Middle of the Night is a story of a May/December romance. Written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Delbert Mann. Mann directed three films written by Cheyefsky, Marty, his first film which won Best Picture of the Year and he won the Best Director award, followed by The Bachelor Party and Middle of the Night. Later on Cheyefsky would write the screenplays for Network and The Hospital. Middle of the Night started out as a TV episode on the anthology series “The Philco Television Playhouse” and starred E.G. Marshall and Eva Marie Saint. In 1956, Cheyefsky turned it into a play and it opened on Broadway with Edward G. Robinson as the older man and Gena Rowlands as the young woman. In this 1959 movie Fredric March and Kim Novak have the roles.
Jerry (March), a 56 year old lonely widower, is a successful businessman in the garment district in New York and 24 year old Betty is working there as a receptionist and part time model. Betty is newly divorced and uncertain about her future. The story centers on their romance and decision to marry, the ups and downs of relationships in general and specifically about one with a wide age difference. There’s an uncomfortable meeting where Jerry meets Betty’s mother who’s about the same age as he is and an even more painful confrontation with his family, which includes his daughter, a year younger than Betty, and his single over protective nagging sister. Everyone seems to have an opinion though the one thing everyone is in agreement on is that they are against the marriage. Then there are their own insecurities, Jerry’s jealousy when she talks to younger men or will she leave him in a few years? Betty anxieties are over her newly divorced husband, a mostly unemployed musician who wants her back and a father fixation. At the end, despite all the objections from family and their own uncertainties they love each other and maybe they have a chance.
Fredric March is excellent as Jerry who at 56 feels that life has passed him by. Family and friends tell him that he should relax in his old age and take it easy. Jerry feels like everyone is ready to put him out to pasture until he starts dating Betty who makes him feel alive again. He tells everyone he’ll have enough time to take it easy when he’s dead! You totally believe March in this role, the struggles and fears that he is facing at this particular junction in his life. Kim Novak also does a fine job as the young and insecure Betty whose father dumped his family when she was young. Conflicted about the breakup of her marriage she finds comfort and security with Jerry. She brings a nice vulnerability to Betty that makes her real. Through out her career Novak has been underrated as an actress. She holds her own here with a magnificent cast that includes Lee Grant, Martin Balsam, Albert Dekker and Glenda Farrell. There are also some nice location scenes of New York’s garment district and other areas circa the late 1950’s.
One aspect that I found interesting is how old the actors look considering the age they are portraying. Fredric March who was 62 at the time portrays a man who is 56. Albert Dekker’s character was 59 ( he was 54 in real life), however both men look closer to being in their late 60’s maybe even in their 70’s. Compared to some of today’s actors equivalent in age like Dennis Quaid (54) or Jeff Bridges (58) or Harrison Ford (65) they looked much older than the ages they are portraying. Lifestyle? Healthier living? Whatever it is, people do look a lot young today than their counterparts of forty or fifty years ago..
Delbert Mann began his career during the Golden Age of Television drama. When people discussed directors from the Golden Age of Television who came to film in the late 50’s and early 60’s the names usually consist of John Frankenheimer, Sidney Lumet and Arthur Penn.. Delbert Mann is rarely mentioned yet his resume in those early years is pretty impressive. His debut film was Marty, which as previously mentioned won a few Oscars. That was followed by The Bachelor Party in 1957, Desire Under the Elms, Separate Tables, Middle of the Night and Dark at the Top of the Stairs. All of these were adaptations of stage plays except for Marty and The Bachelor Party. In the 1960’s Mann had success with two Doris Day comedies, That Touch of Mink and Lover Come Back. He made a few more films including Mister Buddwing and The Pink Jungle before going back to television in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Mann was a solid actor’s director and always told a good story.
Middle of the Night had a rare showing on TCM recently. Today this film is almost forgotten and it does not deserve this fate. It has never been released in any home video format.
By John Greco
Obscure Classics 
June 27, 2008 at 11:12 am
Thank you for the review of Middle of the Night. I saw the stage version with Edward G. Robinson and Mona Freeman in San Francisco, around 1960. Robinson’s protrayal of Jerry was so poignant that it left me in tears.
Three other obscure films (all foreign), which you might want to consider for revue are Calle Mayor (Spain, 1956), Clair de Femme (France/Italy, 1978) and Sostiene Pereira (Italy, 1956)
June 29, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Thanks for the comment. Robinson was a terrifc actor who I alway enjoyed watching. I would of love to have had the opportunity to see him on stage.
August 16, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Thank you, John Greco, for a good review of “The Middle of the Night” (1959). Saw the film recently on TCM and was stunned by its sophistication and wonderful cast (all at the height of their acting talents), superb script by Paddy Chayefsky, along with cinematography (in black and white) that matched the emotional moods of the film which are among the most complex I’ve ever seen on screen.
This film says so much about Chayefsky (his deep insight into human nature, his frankness, his realistic dialogue and his never hesitating to show the awkward moment); Frederick March (an actor I have not often liked, one who seemed weak in many of his roles but here that “weakness” was translated by Chayefsky’s script – and March’s performance — into a phenomenal range of emotions, ending up with an affirmation of life the likes of which I’m not sure I’ve seen portrayed in the character of an older man outside of King Lear — just a magnificent performance by March. Let’s not leave out Lee Grant and other excellent character actors, including Martin Balsam, the March son-in-law, in a subplot relationship with his wife, March’s daughter, which reveals Chayefsky’s sympathy with the plight of the man cut off in his sentences, ignored, disregarded, marginalized and virtually “killed off” verbally by his wife at every turn until he finally turns around and speaks up for himself, all adding a dimension of appreciation for the life of a man bursting through at two stages, in the character of the younger man Balsam and in the character of older of the older March. This theme of going toward life resonates across the film and this is brilliant narrative construction by Chayefsky.
And finally Kim Novak who, as many others have commented, was a far more dimensional actress than she was given credit for in her era (“Of Human Bondage” another example).
Kim Novak is one of those actresses about whom it can be said that her beauty is a distraction. For director Delbert Mann and writer Paddy Chayefsky to have combined to bring to life a character like Betty and have that character be performed by Kim Novak with this degree of depth in contrast to her stunning beauty is a magnificent accomplishment, made all the more nuanced and gut-wrenching by the family conflicts that are brought directly in between the two characters of the young girl and the old man.
I’ve always liked Kim Novak partly because I’ve viewed her beauty as a signal to deep intelligence and capability of emotional nuance – potentially — and in this film, “The Middle of the Night,” she delivers her gift.
As to the story here, much depends on Betty’s capability to accept the situation in its totality and agree to go on with March. She is the one who has youth in her hands and a potential future in her arms in the form of her ex-husband who shows up at the last moment like a final “test” of her convictions in her love for March, even letting her ex-husband make love to her signifying (in retrospect as she tells March about her ex-husband’s return) that it’s not all just sex to her — and she decides to stay, she decides to go on with March. Without the “test” of her ex-husband’s return to tempt her, her return to March would have been hollow.
The arc of the story with its optimistic ending (who knows how it will turn out?) allows Novak’s character to fulfill itself, fulfill the arc of hope in the story – and resonate back through the entire film that was always going toward her decision to stay with him. It all depends on her. It would’ve been easy to have written it differently. All the internal signals of the film were against the relationship between the old man and this young girl, so it is a triumph that Chayefsky chose to follow through on this theme of a young beauty – the quintessential symbol for a man’s hope for life — who herself is making a choice almost completely alien to her experience. Yet, for various credible reasons in her upbringing like her abandonment by her father, she grabs hold of the first rung with March, so hesitantly and he is painfully hesitant too, then grabs the second rung, then keeps on climbing until she climbs into a mature embrace of an old man for emotional reasons far more interesting than those of simply being abandoned. She learns to appreciate March as a man (not just as a father figure) and to love him in a process we see unfold in painful steps on the screen moment by moment, doubt by doubt, as he displays his worst self at nearly every turn and she keeps coming forward with him. It’s a fight to the finish against all conventional doubts and all the conventional fears to come to a point of saying, “Let’s try.”
I was very moved watching “The Middle of the Night” and fortunately I recorded it on DVD to share with friends who will be, I’m sure, as astounded as I was.
August 17, 2008 at 1:14 am
There was something I was trying to say about beauty in the 4th paragraph of my comment above.
In this story Novak’s beauty in the character of Betty is the visual inspiration for the aliveness of Jerry. Her beauty causes him to bring himself forward toward life. This is more genuine and useful than the uses put to beauty in Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” in which beauty seems to be valued more for its appearance (so much so that the Stewart character tries to replicate the Novak character, right down to the suit she wears) and not the substance of the person. Stewart is studiously uninterested in the content of Novak’s character in “Vertigo.” Obversely, in “Middle of the Night” Novak’s Betty, as she develops in her love for Jerry, evolves through the obstacles of the film to show us the substance of herself which outshines her physical beauty. An amazing feat given the beauty were talking about in Kim Novak. In the last scene at the door, Novak’s face is without makeup, scrubbed, just herself, vulnerable yet never lovelier for her aliveness in her open embrace to accept the rediscovered aliveness of Jerry.
This might be one distinction between Chayefsky and Hitchcock, at least in these two films featuring the same beauty.
August 17, 2008 at 4:38 am
“. . . to bring to life a character like Betty and have that character be performed by Kim Novak with this degree of depth in contrast with her beauty is a magnificent accomplishment . . .”
Should read “in consonance with her beauty . . .”
August 17, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Jane thanks for your comments.
Paddy Chayefsky was a great writer of real depth and wit, something really lacking today. As you mention he did not hesitate to show the awkward moments, which I actually found to be some of the most interesting and realistic. Chayefsky wrote two of my many favorite films, Network, and The Americanization of Emily. The former an original work and the later based on a novel by William Bradford Huie.
Good point about how Novak’s beauty, both exterior and interior, is used to rejuvenate and inspire Jerry as opposed to Vertigo where James Stewart’s character is really interested in only the surface.
Kim’s talent really came into it own in the late 1950’s with Vertigo, Bell, Book and Candle, Middle of the Night and Strangers When We Meet.
You may be interested in a recent article I wrote on Kim Novak. It is on my blog http://twentyfourframes.wordpress.com/
March 14, 2009 at 10:34 am
I have been looking for a long time for this movie, really hoping it goes back on t.v. I would love to find out how i can obtain a copy to add to my collection.
September 27, 2009 at 5:10 pm
I wish I had seen the Edward G. Robertson and Gena Rowlands 1956 version on Broadway. Why, oh why, didn’t they put on tape hit stage plays during the Golden Age of the Theatre? There are two things I chiefly found distracting about the Frederick Marsh film. 1) March LOOKS and ACTS closer to 70–then age 54. Contrast that to Charlie Chaplin who was 54 when he married 18 year old Oona O’Neill in 1941–and looked great.) 2) In the stage play the needy and lonely Betty persued March’s character, not so much the other way around. In the film a desperate & grasping elderly looking March was virtually stalking Betty in some of the scenes, which gave the story a slightly “dirty old man” feel which was absent from the play. This script reversal may have been done to put the focus of the film on the elder statesman of the film Frederick March. Add to this, one of the most touching & revealing scenes in the play after Betty and Jerry had spent their first night together was unwisely deleted from the revised film script. Loved story. Wish the “Middle Of The Night” could be filmed again. There does exist the original 1954 script TV version starring E.G. Marshall and Eva Marie Saint produced by Philco Playhouse. It has yet to make it to DVD on the “Golden Age Of TV” series. Here’s hoping.
November 22, 2009 at 4:02 pm
The shots of New York city in the winter are what made me want to continue watching. And the noirish lighting. Certainly not the prospect of watching “ordinary people” in a domestic drama. Even less the prospect of Kim Novak and Frederic March as romantic leads(!).
How differently actors “read” to different people. Kim Novak comes across as wooden to me. She always manages to convey THAT she’s acting, connecting the dots through gestures that resemble what other actresses have done, rather than embodying the inner life of her character. Novak is too placid to convincingly channel volatility, and her attempt at tortured furtiveness here is, well, torture. She seems so concentrated on getting her lines out that she can’t work off her fellow thespians. It’s not her beauty that gets in the way of our appreciation of her supposed talent, it’s her self-consciousness. She seems to be sitting in judgment on her self. It’s impossible not to adopt the critical viewpoint of her own divided consciousness. It’s distracting and ultimately the reason why she is not an actress in the league of, say, Joanne Woodward, Piper Laurie, or Shirley Knight.
Can an actress be beautiful on the outside only? Novak helps us realize the impossibility of this. Too much self-consciousness makes for inner ugliness. It’s hard to act around it.
Frederic March is another actor I don’t “get.” Talk about ordinary. He looks like the butcher. Severe, guarded and miffed.
At least there’s Martin Balsam to enjoy. Guy was the genuine article. And those lips!
By the time our May-Decemberists have their spat the sense of “is that all there is?” becomes oppressive. Even the location shooting and real weather can’t quite make up for the sense of…well, ordinariness, while the final hug in the hallway concludes the proceedings on a note of “to-be-continued.”
Middle of the Night is an actor’s movie in which everyone is trying to hit their marks. It never quite shakes off the conventions of the stage and live-television. Everything is a little too pronounced and typical. Too “show-case performance.”
Speaking of live-television, I wonder what Sidney Lumet would have made of it. Mann may have been able to configure characters, but Lumet could plumb the depths of human personality. Though I’m not sure just how deep he would have gotten into Novak. He probably would have done us all a favor and not cast her in the first place. Middle of the Night needed a real actress at its center. As it is, that point of convergence is occupied by a distinct hollowness.