You get kicked around long enough, you get to be a real professor of pain.
When the time came to bring Marty to the silver screen in 1955, the producers retained the services of writer Paddy Chayefsky and director Delbert Mann, figuring (quite rightly, since both received Academy Awards for their efforts) that they would know best how to open up the studio-bound drama. They even carried over some of the supporting players, but chose to recast the central roles of Marty, the bachelor butcher, and Clara, the nice girl he meets at a dance hall one lonely Saturday night and feels an instant kinship with. As much as I felt for Rod Steiger as Marty, it's abundantly clear that Ernest Borgnine was the man for the job for the film version. (The scene where he calls up a girl he met at the movies and asks her out on a date is heartbreaking.) And as Clara, Betsy Blair positively lights up the screen, especially whenever Borgnine gets her to smile.
As for the returning actors, Esther Minciotti is the quintessential Italian mother, Augusta Ciolli is perfect as her doom-saying sister, and Joe Mantell was justly nominated for Best Supporting Actor (losing to Jack Lemmon in Mister Roberts) for his role as Marty's best friend. This isn't too surprising considering how it was expanded for the film, giving him his own subplot where he's abandoned by Marty at the dance hall and searches the city for him. Another major addition is Marty entertaining the possibility of buying the butcher's shop where he works. And we get to see a lot more of his night out with Clara, which goes a long way toward explaining how they're able to make a connection so quickly. It's no surprise that both Borgnine and Blair received Oscar nominations for their performances, but only Borgnine took home a trophy that night. (I guess Blair would have to be content with her BAFTA.)