My Goals for the New Year

So, combining two goals into one, here's my first post:

Here’s my first book of 2024: Budd Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run?

Schulberg published it in 1941, and it has gone through several print runs since. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though the “hero” of the book is a completely unscrupulous and amoral character. The narrator, Al Manheim, writes a theater column for a New York City newspaper, and one day a “ferret-faced” copy boy shows up in the office – Sammy Glick. Before Manheim knows what’s happened, Glick has taken over some of his column space to write his own column on radio entertainment. What Manheim quickly realizes, though, is that Glick doesn’t have a creative bone in his body – he plagiarizes half of his material.

What follows is Manheim’s half-admiring, half-revolted account of Glick’s rapid ascent in the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s. Schulberg manages to make the backstabbing, casually cruel Glick a sympathetic character. I won’t give any spoilers, but the novel is at times very funny, and at other times painful. For example, Sammy’s first girlfriend, Rosie Goldbaum, idolizes him while he writes for the New York paper. He takes a radio script that a colleague asks him to read, takes credit for it, and parlays it into a job in Hollywood. Before he leaves, he promises to send Rosie money for her to follow him. She gets rid of all her nonessential possessions and quits her job. You can guess what happens next.

What makes the novel such fun is Schulberg’s first-hand knowledge of how Hollywood works (he wrote the screenplay for On The Waterfront). I love old movies from the 1930s and 40s, so I was able to recognize a lot of the names of stars and directors from that era that Schulberg throws into the mix. However, even if you aren’t familiar with Irving Thalberg, Ronald Colman, or Rita Hayworth, you’ll still enjoy this tale. Apparently, the Hollywood movers and shakers were enraged when Schulberg published his distinctly unflattering portrait of their industry, and he was effectively blacklisted from ever working there again.

What’s interesting is the Afterword Schulberg wrote for the 1989 edition. He laments the fact that in the 1940s, people were repelled by Sammy Glick and his utter self-centeredness. By the late 1980s, says Schulberg, he had young men telling him they regarded Glick as a role model for how to be successful in America. I’d say the situation is even worse in the 2020s.

I had never heard of What Makes Sammy Run?, but it has deservedly remained in print for 80 years now. I would say it is on a par with The Great Gatsby as a clear-eyed account of a young outsider completely committed to achieving “success” in 20th century America, no matter the cost. It definitely doesn’t pull any punches when it describes how woman are treated – decades before #MeToo! Interestingly, the most admirable character is a woman screenwriter, Kit Sargent, who maintains her dignity and integrity, but only through erecting emotional barriers that prevent her from having any true relationship. She even dresses in a very masculine style, but that doesn’t prevent Al Manheim from recognizing her beauty and strength.

I highly recommend What Makes Sammy Run? if you enjoy F. Scott Fitzgerald or Dorothy Parker (both of whom contributed promotional blurbs). It’s somewhat sad that it remains as relevant a critique of the American entertainment industry today as it was in 1941. I wonder if Rob Long is familiar with this book - I could imagine him writing something like it.