The Bronx, NYC, 1955

In the decade after World War II ended, the Bronx was just like every place else in the States: trying to put itself together after a hard go of it. Marty himself had spent the last years leaving behind his postwar grief and depression to become a pretty successful butcher (and doting son).

A Bit of History

The Bronx, the northernmost of NYC's five boroughs, began the 20th century as farmland that slowly changed as a result of waves of immigration and industrialization. There were significant communities of Jews, Italians, Irish, Poles, and African-Americans, each of whom lived in areas that were more or less segregated from one another.

After WWI, the subway and elevated trains had extended upwards from Manhattan, and the Bronx became less isolated from the rest of the city. By the post-WWII era, black and Latino communities had moved north from Manhattan after the closing of housing developments. Just after the mid-1950s, work would begin on New York throughways, cutting across the borough and changing the nature of it forever. (Source)

The End of an Era

While it's hard to detect all of the big borough changes in this little movie, Marty's, Clara's, and Aunt Catherine's upheavals and transitions seem to act out these changes on a more personal scale.

When Tommy tells Marty that buying the butcher shop from his boss is a bad idea, it isn't just because it'll tie him down with debt. It's also because the nature of retail is changing. "Do you think my wife goes to an Italian butcher to buy Italian meat," Tommy asks Marty. Nope. "She goes to the A&P, picks up some lamb chops wrapped in cellophane, opens up a canna peas, and that's dinner, boy."

Such a shift bears down on tradition, what a neighborhood looks like, and how a mother takes care of her family. The stakes aren't just steaks, if you know what we mean.

Community/Gossip Folks

While Clara entertains leaving the city to take a departmental head position in Port Chester, an hour by bus and train out of the city, we don't get the feeling that Marty wants to move from the neighborhood anytime soon. As stale and nosy as the community can seem, it's his community. Even as his customers needle him, you can see the pride Marty takes in serving them, doing a good job, and being a part of the group.

For Marty, being a part of a family, a neighborhood, and a borough helps him define for himself who he is in relationship to the big wide world beyond. (Let's remember, the only time he left was to fight in WWII.)

So is Marty the most famous Bronxite? Not by a long shot. His borough-buddies include Jennifer Lopez, Edgar Allan Poe, Calvin Klein, Colin Powell, and JFK. And let's not forget the screenwriter of Marty: Paddy Chayefsky, whose early work was dominated by memories of his childhood home.

Marty's House

Space for Everybody

When the film opens, Marty is explaining to a butcher shop customer that his kid brother got married the weekend before, leaving him and his mother once and for all alone in their huge house.

And this house is huge: It once accommodated his mother and father, himself, and his two sisters and two brothers. There's a large dining room, a parlor, a vestibule, and a front porch that's good for sitting. "Take any room you like," he tells his Aunt Catherine later on: There's a wide selection on the second floor. (Too much of a selection, if you ask Marty.)

Marty himself has the room off the kitchen, separated from his mother's at the top of the stairs. We wonder if this has always been his place, or if he moved down there in order to be respectably removed, a grown man living on a different floor from his parent… if not in a different house.

Leaving Home

When Marty suggests to his ma that they sell the big old house and move into a nicer, smaller apartment in a more respectable neighborhood, he's probably angling for the postwar construction happening up north toward Yonkers.

This is a micro-look at a bigger trend going on: European immigrants and first- and second-generation Americans heading to Yonkers, Brooklyn, Queens, or further out. As Catherine says goodbye to her family home, the entire community is beginning to slowly break apart from their roots in the Bronx.