udd Schulberg, the author of ‘What Makes Sammy Run?’,
was born into movie royalty – the son of Paramount honcho
and Hollywood pioneer BP Schulberg. The novelist was a
princeling of Paramount Studios, dabbling as a newspaperman,
sports journo and screenwriter which all ran in tandem with his
literary aspirations. He had been furnished with the raw materials
and experiences that writers thrive on – growing up surrounded by
movie stars, prizefighters and other celebrities. It would make him
a lively and often cynical observer of the movie enclave, never more
so than in his first novel.Published in 1941, ‘What Makes Sammy Run?’ is a seminally
spiky read on the bumptious rise of a young would be movie mogul
named Sammy Glick. Glick is an amoral man who cuts throats all
the way to the top, influencing depictions of Hollywood hustlersTITLE
AUTHOR
YEAR
TEXT
What Makes
Sammy Run?Schulberg, Budd
1941
Chief Archivist
Christina Newland
B
in pop culture for decades to come; one only has to look at Tim
Robbins in Robert Altman’s 1992 Hollywood satire The Player for a
descendant. A sampler of Glick’s attitude? At one point in the book,
he says, “Going through life with a conscience is like driving your
car with your brakes on.”Schulberg’s story is told from the jaundiced perspective of main
character Al Manheim, a newspaper writer who later watches as
Glick works to tear apart the unionising of writers and artists working
for the studios. This subtly pro-labour movement stance is backed
up by the knowledge that Schulberg joined the Communist Party
in 1936; and though he had left it by the time the book came out,
his sensibility is pretty clear. It was a smash hit, but it didn’t come
without a fair share of criticism.Glick’s downright nasty behaviour was intended as a reflection
on the ruthless industry Schulberg grew up in, but it also meant
he had bitten the hand that fed him; people in Hollywood were
outraged. Rumours flew that producer Samuel Goldwyn offered to
pay Schulberg not to publish the book, fearing that it would be seen
as anti-Semitic in its brutal portrayal of a Jewish character. For his
part, Schulberg insisted that all of the major characters – good, bad,
sympathetic, and otherwise – are Jewish in the novel. The LA Times
reported that John Wayne challenged Schulberg to a fistfight over
the book – and undoubtedly, his politics – at a party, and Louis B
Mayer, the head of MGM, denounced it publicly.Written with a vicious indictment of unrestrained capitalism in mind,
Schulberg later noted that, by the 1980s, readers seemed to have
more admiration for Sammy Glick than he had ever anticipated; what
was once a cautionary tale became an exemplary one to some.
Talking about a student of his that claimed to admire Sammy,
Schulberg wrote, “He put out his hand, the hand that would soon
be knifing friends and colleagues in the back. As I took it hesitantly,
I asked myself, What have I done?”030 The Uncut Gems Issue