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What Really Did
Make Sammy Run?
ARTHUR J. MAGIDA
Special to The Jewish News
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72
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1990
737-5190
32839 Northwestern Hwy.
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e's one hell of a long
distance runner, this
Sammy. For almost
50 years now, he's been
sprinting, dashing, dodging,
never looking over his
shoulder.
Sammy lied and cheated,
betrayed his friends and two-
faced his enemies, all in the
name of a cause he con-
sidered noble — the cause of
Sammy Glick, Hollywood's
boy wonder and one of the
great creations of mid-20th
century American litera-
ture.
It's been 50 years now
since Budd Schulberg first
brought Sammy to our at-
tention. The cover flap of
Mr. Schulberg's first book,
published when he was a
mere 27 years old, asked us
to consider, What Makes
Sammy Run? Sammy was a
runt obsessed with power
and success. Starting out as
a 17-year-old copy boy at a
New York newspaper, he
quickly rose to a reviewer of
radio shows and a self-
promoted item in the gossip
columns, and then to
Hollywood as a screenwriter
after he had stolen an idea
for a script from another
reporter.
(This last incident was a
fictionalized account of what
inspired Mr. Schulberg to
write the book. At a
Hollywood cocktail party, he
answered the standard ques-
tion, "What're you working
on?" with too literal an an-
swer. A few days later, he
read in a movie column that
his idea had been sold to a
studio — by the "buddy" he
had run into at the party.)
In Hollywood, Sammy was
in his element: A master
shark in shark-infested
waters. Continuing to
purloin script ideas, he also
became the studios' golden
boy when he covertly led
their battle against a
screenwriters' union.
He let no kindnesses stand
in his way: When the Wall
Street moneybags backing
World-Wide Studios asked
him to take over as head of
the studio, he had not one
kind word for Sidney
Fineman, the studio's presi-
dent who had given Sammy
his big break in the studio's
hierarchy and who had been
making movies when
Sammy was still in knickers.
But then, Fineman was
everything Sammy was not
— literate and loyal.
What drives Sammy is a
question we have been chew-
ing for five decades, not just
about Sammy, but about
anyone who comes along
who mirrors Sammy's ego,
selfishness, ambition and
greed — phrases particular-
ly relevant in this time of
Wall Street scandals and
billionaires.
In honor of the 50th an-
niversary of Sammy's debut,
Random House is re-
publishing the book as a
hardback. It comes with a
new afterword by Mr.
Schulberg and the two
Sammy Glick stories he had
done for the old Liber-
ty magazine before turning
this nether side of Horatio
Alger into a full-scale book.
Damon Runyan, that con-
noisseur of gangsters and
scams, pegged Sammy right
when he called him the "all-
American heel." Sammy
struck terror into the hearts
of the powerful and the
meek, even into gossip czar
Hedda Hopper, who accosted
Schulberg in a Hollywood
bistro shortly after
Sammy was published and
scolded, "I read that book!
How dare you!"
L.B. Mayer, the head of
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
pounced on Mr. Schulberg's
father, then the head of
Paramount Studios, at a
meeting of the Motion Pic-
ture Producers' Association.
"How could you let your
own flesh and blood write
such a book?" yelled Mr.
Mayer. "You know what we
should do with him? We
should deport him!"
"For God's sake, Louie,"
responded B.P. Schulberg,
"he's the only novelist who
ever came from Hollywood.
Where the hell are you going
to deport him, Catalina
Island?"
A Hollywood Prince
Mr. Schulberg was never ex-
communicated to this idyllic
island 26 miles off the
California coast. But for a
while, he was, as his father
had feared he would be, a
pariah in the film colony.
Mr. Schulberg's father, a
film industry pioneer, had
headed the Mayer-Schulberg
Studio with L.B. Mayer in
the 1920s. Mr. Schulberg's
mother, Adeline, was a
leading agent. The
Schulberg house was full of
stars and glamour and many
drunken guests -- Chaplain,
Clara Bow, Maurice
Chevalier, Cary Grant. At
all-night poker games with
Zeppo Marx, the only Marx
Brother who was not funny,
B.P. would lose $22,000. At
their Malibu beach house
was that director with a
Midas touch, Frank Capra.
Mr. Schulberg was a prince of
Hollywood, born to rule, or,
at least, to be fawned over by
starlets and directors who
wanted to get to his father.
Young Schulberg was
caught between the
Hollywood of popular myth
It's been 50 years
now since Budd
Schulberg first
brought Sammy to
our attention.
and the obsessive work ethic
of his mother. When he was
10, for instance, the family
chauffeur drove him
downtown to peddle news-
papers - then back to the
family mansion. But Mr.
Schulberg kept his feet on
the ground. A crazed fan,
seeing him in the jumpseat
of the family's $18,000 lim-
ousine as it pulled up to
Grauman's Egyptian
Theater for a film premiere,
shouted, "Who are you? Who
are you? Are you a movie
star?"
"I-I'm not in the m-movies,"
stammered Mr. Schulberg.
"I'm n-nobody j-just like you."
The fan turned to the
crowd behind her and
bellowed, "He says he's
nobody! Just like us!"
That, remembers Mr.
Schulberg, "was as close as I
ever came to egalitarianism
in father's dream machine."
But all that was a long
time ago. Since then, Mr.
Schulberg, now 75, has
written such films as On the
Waterfront, The Harder
They Fall and A Face in the
Crowd. He has just finished
the screenplay for Sammy.
He has also written, Moving
Pictures, a hefty memoir
about his early days in
Hollywood and The Four
Seasons of Success, a collec-
tion of essays about how too-
quick success can corrode
the writing life. And he has