What Makes Sammy Run?

Budd Schulberg, who would go on to write the novel Waterfront & the screenplay from it On The Waterfront, shocked Hollywood in 1941 with this novel. It concerns the rise and rise of unscrupulous, out-for-himself Sammy Glick as he makes his way from copy-boy at a New York newspaper, clambering over bodies, to become a big-shot Hollywood producer. The pithy prose & vivid characters, along with a rolicking plot, make this novel a "read it all on one go" book.

The New York Times named it "best first-novel of the year". Schulberg's father, the legendary producer B.P. Schulberg, told him "You'll never work in this town again. How will you live?". He was fired by a purple-with-rage Sam Goldwyn, Hedda Hopper accosted him to harrumph "How dare you", and Louis Mayer wanted to "deport" him. He was attacked simultaneously by the Communist Party and John Wayne. In fact, even in the mid-sixties, Wayne tried to strangle Schulberg at a party, then challenged him to a duel.

Of great interest, though sobering, is Schulberg's Afterword, written in 1989. He laments "The book I had written as an attack on antisocial behavior has become a how-to book on Looking Out for Number 1."