What Makes Sammy Run?

I’m pretty sure my parents had this on their many bookshelves, but it’s not one of the few volumes I preserved from their stash.

I did, however, buy a copy for pennies at an estate sale a few weeks ago. A couple of days ago, I decided it was time to read it.

I am not sure what I expected. After the first few pages, I wasn’t even sure I’d finish it. It’s not that I hated it, it’s just that after those few pages, I thought I got it. Okay, okay. Slimy young guy uses and abuses on his way to the top, wisecracks abound. Do I really need to go any farther?

Well, I did, and it was absolutely worth it. So much so that I immediately searched out another Schulberg novel, The Disenchanted, which he wrote, based in part on his experience working with F. Scott Fitzgerald.

It’s a Hollywood story, yes, but it’s also an American story. Almost an “only in America” story, as a matter of fact.

Written and published eighty years ago, it’s still timely, for if you look around, you can see plenty of Sammy Glicks, even if you don’t know a soul in Hollywood.

You can still see people who are clawing their way to the top of whatever field they’ve chosen as their domain, and have succeeded, not because they’re uniquely gifted, but because they’re uniquely ambitious and, well, talented in exploiting the moment and, more often than not, exploiting other people.

It’s a great book, and not just because of the character of Sammy Glick, but because, first of all, because of the knowing, spot-on observations of Schulberg, who grew up in Hollywood and knows whereof he speaks, intimately.

But the other thing that lifts What Makes Sammy Run to another level is Schulberg’s perfect narrative voice.

It’s tempting to compare this novel to The Great Gatsby: narrator observes the rise and fall of a shyster of sorts. And as much as I adore Gatsby, I have to hand it to Schulberg here in the unique perspective his narrator, Al Manheim, brings to the tale.

It’s one thing to observe an operator in action. That’s entertaining and grimly instructive. But here we enter another level – a more humane level – when the eyes through which we observe this operator have something at stake as well. And we’ve got this in Al Manheim, who is far more of a factor in this novel than Nick Carraway is in Gatsby – but in an amazingly balanced way.

For the question of the title, isn’t just an abstract, objective one. It’s a question that drives our narrator, who’s been bypassed and used by Sammy Glick, and who has his own issues and is driven, incessantly to ask this question, over and over – what makes Sammy run? What enables him to use people, to shatter other people’s dreams with apparently no qualms of conscience, to just go and go and go? What’s his goal?

And what’s holding me back from that same road? Why can’t I run like Sammy? And am I glad about that or sorry?

Much of the backstory of this novel is interesting, too. Schulberg, as was typical at the time, had his sympathies with Communism, and some of the narrative of the novel grapples with the unionization of film writers – apparently, big honchos of the American Communist party tried to get Schulberg to change aspects of the novel they deemed less than sympathetic to the Red Cause (I am guessing, after reading, that’s because Schulberg actually gave a nuanced account of the benefits – and costs – of unionization), he refused, and at that point cut his ties with the party – and an few years later ended up writing the screenplay for On the Waterfront and testifying against the Party before the House Un-American Activities Committee – On the Waterfront being directed by Elia Kazan, who did the same, and was blackballed by Hollywood elites for years afterwards because of it.

Also – What Makes Sammy Run, despite having a crackerjack story and great characters, has never been made into a film. There was a television adaptation, which you can find online, and what seems like a mostly terrible Broadway musical (1964, revived 2006) – but Schulberg himself is reported as saying that the book is so anti-Hollywood, no one wanted to film it.

Why is it anti-Hollywood?

Because the basic takeaway is that most “creators” in the industry are opportunistic hacks who make their fortunes by, at best, recycling, and at worst, stealing ideas, I suppose – but is that really news? Don’t we already know that?

A couple more notes. I was a little surprised by the sexual frankness of the novel, but perhaps I just need to get out more, 1941-style.

Finally, this novel has a fantastic female character, in the person of Kit Sargeant, another screenwriter. Oh my, she’s wonderful – completely three-dimensional, complex, even a little sexually ambiguous. She’s unapologetically committed to her job and her craft and valued by other characters because of it. An absolute joy to read. Schulberg has no scenes in which Kit’s role as a professional woman who loves what she does and has big plans for herself, with complete confidence, is questioned or agonized over. It’s just who she is – a writer with talent and ambition, no apologies.

Mother wanted me to go to law school. She had it all planned. I’d go into my father’s old firm and we’d live together and she’d take care of me. To be very ruthless about it—what she really wanted to do was turn me into my father, so she would have a place again. Well, I decided I had to be ruthless about it. I was already started on my book and I wanted to be away from her—on my own. I couldn’t see why the hell men should have a monopoly on independence any more. I made up my mind to stay out of sidecars. Have you ever thought of the difference between the two words spinster and bachelor? It seems pretty significant that spinster has a thought association of loneliness, frustration and bitterness. Bachelorhood is something glamorous—doesn’t the sound of the word give you a sense of adventure and freedom? So I decided I’d be a bachelor.