Budd Schulberg: Mostly Unknown But Still the Best of the Best
Except for dyed-in-the-wool movie buffs and multi-generational “Hollywood Brats,” the name “Schulberg” is largely forgotten or unknown. But one need not be either of the two - a dyed-in-the-wool movie buff or a Hollywood Brat - to be familiar with the films “On the Waterfront,” “The Harder They Fall,” or “A Face in the Crowd,” or the novels “The Disenchanted” or What Makes Sammy Run? the latter likely the greatest Hollywood novel ever written. Born in 1914, Seymour Wilson “Budd” Schulberg was the son of B. (Benjamin) P. (Percival) and Adeline (Adler) Schulbeg). His father, who started out as a movie publicist (he was the fellow who tagged Mary Pickford “America’s Sweetheart”) rose to become one of the most powerful men in the business in the 1920’s as head of production at Paramount Studios. He also discovered Clara Bow, perhaps the most popular movie star in the history of motion pictures. Budd’s mother, Adeline (1895-1977), who divorced his father when he left her for starlet Sylvia Sidney (Sofia Koskow [1910-1999]) went on to form one of the largest and most powerful talent agencies in Hollywood. Young Budd went to Dartmouth, where he was assigned the near-impossible task of tagging after writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, trying to keep the famous writer sober during the writing of a the film called Winter Carnival. Schulberg eventually turned that episode into one the best-selling novels of 1950, entitled The Disenchanted.
Shortly after graduating from Dartmouth, Budd Schulberg returned to Southern California, where he found employment as a “gofer” for director Cecil B. DeMille. In his time with the legendary showman, young Schulberg got a first-row knowledge of the industry into which he had been born. In 1941, the then 27-year old Budd Schulberg wrote and published a novel that is still in print nearly 80 years later: What Makes Sammy Run?” Recognized by many (myself included) as hands down, the greatest Hollywood novel ever put to paper (and to Broadway and television), What Makes Sammy Run? tells the story of Brooklyn-born Sammy Glick who, through a mixture of guile, dishonesty, naked ambition and unbridled chutzpah, works his way up from being a teen-aged copy boy for a cheap New York tabloid to the top-of-the-heap as a highly successful Hollywood producer. Along the way, he uses people like expendable sheets of Kleenex, plagiarizes the work of others and, despite making millions and remaking himself as anything but a Lower East Side Jew, can never find happiness, security or satisfaction.
Despite its huge readership and long, successful run – and numerous revivals - as a Broadway musical – What Makes Sammy Run has never been made into a movie. Yes, there have been two television versions made long, long ago:
First it was presented as a live television drama starring José Ferrer on April 10, 1949, on Philco Television Playhouse;
On September 27 and October 4, 1959, on NBC Sunday Showcase, Larry Blyden starred as Sammy Glick in a two-part television broadcast on NBC-TV Also Blyden’s costars were John Forsythe, playing Sammy’s “Bosworth” Al Manheim, Barbara Rush as Kit Sargent, one of Sammy’s writers, and Dina Merrill as Laurette Harrington, the unobtainable Blue Blood Sammy desires as a bauble for his bracelet.
Even before What Makes Sammy Run hit the bookstores in 1941, most of the major players in the film industry had read its galley proofs . . . and had concluded that it would never be turned into a film. Why? Because these moguls - most of whom were Eastern-European Jews - thought the novel would be fatal fodder for all the well-bred anti-Semites who firmly believed that these moguls were all part of a conspiracy to undermine American morals and the greater good. In Goldwyn: The Man Behind the Myth, author Arthur Marx revealed that Sam Goldwyn offered Budd Schulberg a lot of money to not have it published because Goldwyn felt that the author was "doublecrossing the Jews" and perpetuating anti-Semitism by making Sammy Glick so venal. In 2001, DreamWorks paid more than $2.5 million to acquire the rights to the novel from Warner Brothers for a proposed movie version starring and/or directed by Ben Stiller. Nothing ever came of it. When asked several years ago if he thought What Makes Sammy Run? would ever be filmed, Steven Spielberg told an interviewer that in his opinion it never would be because it was “too anti-Hollywood.
There has long been a question about who Budd Schulberg used as his model for Sammy Glick. Although no one knows for certain, and the author never said who he based Sammy on, many believe it was Brooklyn-born writer/producer Jerry Wald (1911-62), best known for producing “Mildred Pierce,” “Key Largo,” and “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” and writing “They Drive By Night,” “The Roaring Twenties” and “Brother Orchid.” According to his nephew (and my lifelong friend) Alan, whose father, screenwriter Malvin was Jerry’s younger brother, Sammy couldn’t have been based on Jerry . . . his uncle was simply too nice and, unlike the fictional Sammy, Uncle Jerry was widely respected. Sammy could never have won a Thalberg Award (given by the Academy’s Board of Governors to “creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production”), Jerry did . . . in 1948.
Like many Hollywood writers, directors and actors, Budd Schulberg was a leftist. And, like many Hollywood leftists, he found himself having run afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). In order to keep from being blacklisted, Budd Schulberg, like others in the same dire straits, decided to “name names” before the committee. What the committee was after was more an act of contrition than learning about heretofore unknown members of the so-called Communist Conspiracy. Schulberg did go before the committee, but did not reveal a single name they were unaware of. Another Hollywood lefty who did the same thing, director Elia Kazan, would find himself employable but reviled. Somehow, Budd Schulberg escaped that additional punishment; both his reputation and employability would remain intact. Ironically though, writer Schulberg and director Kazan would find themselves working together as writer and director on two of the very best films of the 1950’s: On the Waterfront (1955) for which both won Academy Awards, and 1957’s A Face in the Crowd, one of the very best political movies ever made in Hollywood.
A Face in the Crowd, is based on Schulberg’s short story Your Arkansas Traveler from his 1953 collection Some Faces in the Crowd. Starring Andy Griffith (in his first film), Patricia Neal, Lee Remick, Walter Mathau and Anthony Franciosa, tells the story of an Arkansas drifter named Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes who becomes an overnight media sensation. As he becomes drunk with fame, fortune and power, industrial tycoons and political power-brokers start flocking his way, getting him to endorse their products, school their candidates in how to come across as “just plain folks”;' within the blink of an eye, he becomes a narcissistic, ego-maniac. As he is on the verge of creating out of whole cloth the next POTUS (played by Marshall Neilan, who in real life was a famous director of the silent era) “Lonesome’s” train to glory is derailed by the woman who created him in the first place: After his weekly television show (called “A Face in the Crowd”), the woman (played by Patricia Neal) keeps the sound going during the credits. Lonesome, who has finished the show with his now famous sign-off “The family that prayers together stays together',” is unaware that everything he says can be heard by his fans and acolytes coast to coast. They hear him deriding and contemptuously mocking both Senator Fuller, the man he is molding for President, and the so-called “Fighters for Fuller” a bunch of idiots. He brags says that they are all so stupid that they actually believe whatever he says about America, morality, and religion . . . all the while swigging a bottle of booze and laughing it up with the hillbillies who make up his backup band.
In the time it takes for Lonesome to get from the studio to his penthouse where he is about to throw a black tie banquet for Senator Fuller, an entire nation has come to understand that their idol is nothing more than a fraud. He arrives home only to discover that his advertisers had left him, his fans have abandoned him, and he is about to be unemployed. Even his manager (played by Anthony Franciosa in one of his earliest roles) has sold a new crooner to the advertisers to replace the Arkansas Traveler. The film ends with Lonesome screaming out “MARCIA! MARCIA! MARCIA!” at the cab carrying the woman who created him, now traveling off into the future . . .
Many say that Budd Schulberg “borrowed” the demise of Lonesome Rhodes - the mike that remained plugged in - from the legend of “Uncle Don” Carney, a popular children’s radio show host. Don Carney broadcast 5, sometimes 6 days a week on radio station WOR in New York City from 1928-1947. His kiddie show included segments called the "Healthy Child's Club" and the "Talent Quest,” and always ended with him telling his young fans “Good night little friends . . . good night.” It was a wholesome show, to say the least. According to legend, one night at the conclusion of a broadcast Carney thought he was off the air and exclaimed, "There! That ought to hold the little bastards"—but his microphone was still live, and his comment was broadcast to his radio audience. The legend goes on to state that public outrage caused Carney's termination from radio. For years, people truly believed that Schulberg mimicked this in order to bring down Lonesome. Turns out, the Uncle Don episode was an urban legend which persists to this very day. . .
In addition to arguably written the greatest Hollywood novel of all time, Budd Schulberg may well have also written the most politically prophetic screenplays of all time. And to a great degree, What Makes Sammy Run? and A Face in the Crowd share a great deal. They both have central characters who have public personae at odds with their private selves and highly acquisitive, ego-driven personalities that push them ever higher . . . regardless of who they step on. Both works are, at best, black satires on the medial; both present dire warnings about mass media and the power it has to shape a gullible public. Ironically, during the height of Glen Beck’s on-air career, radio and sports host Keith Olbermann started calling him “Glenn ‘Lonesome Rhodes’ Beck.” While it didn’t do that much harm to Beck’s on-air success (that would take place, but be largely of Beck’s own making), it did wonders for sales of A Face in the Crowd.
Budd Schulberg would continue writing books and screenplays until age 93, his last credit being for 2007’s Nuremberg: The 60th Anniversary Director’s Cut. Budd Schulberg died two years later of natural causes at age 95. During his long life he was married 4 times (most notably to actress Geraldine Brooks) and fathered 5 children.
Budd Schulberg may be gone, but he is definitely not forgotten. Simply stated, he was is and always shall be one of the most important writers of the past 80 years.
Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone