Following his critically acclaimed teleplays, Chayefsky became a noted playwright and novelist. As a screenwriter, he received three Academy Awards for "Marty" (1955), "The Hospital" (1971) and "Network" (1976). The movie "Marty" was based on his own television drama about two lonely people finding love. "Network" was a satire of the television industry and "The Hospital" was also satiric. Film historian David Thomson called "The Hospital" "years ahead of its time. […] Few films capture the disaster of America's self-destructive idealism so well." 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."