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What Makes Sammy Run?
What Makes Sammy Run?
Everyone of us knows someone who runs. He is one of the symp-toms of our times—from the little man who shoves you out of the way on the street to the go-getter who shoves you out of a job in the office to the Fuehrer who shoves you out of the world. And all of us have stopped to wonder, at some time or another, what it is that makes these people tick. What makes them run?
This is the question Schulberg has asked himself, and the answer is the first novel written with the indignation that only a young writer with talent and ideals could concentrate into a manuscript. It is the story of Sammy Glick, the man with a positive genius for being a heel, who runs through New York’s East Side, through newspaper ranks and finally through Hollywood, leaving in his wake the wrecked careers of his associates; for this is his tragedy and his chief characteristic—his congenital incapacity for friendship.
An older and more experienced novelist might have tempered his story and, in so doing, destroyed one of its outstanding qualities. Compromise would mar the portrait of Sammy Glick. Schulberg has etched it in pure vitriol, and dissected his victim with a precision that is almost frightening.
When a fragment of this book appeared as a short story in a national magazine, Schulberg was surprised at the number of letters he received from people convinced they knew Sammy Glick’s real name. But speculation as to his real identity would be utterly fruitless, for Sammy is a composite picture of a loud and spectacular minority bitterly resented by the many decent and sincere artists who are trying honestly to realize the measureless potentialities of motion pictures. To this group belongs Schulberg himself, who has not only worked as a screen writer since his graduation from Dartmouth College in 1936, but has spent his life, literally, in the heart of the motion-picture colony. In the course of finding out what makes Sammy run (an operation in which the reader is spared none of the grue-some details) Schulberg has poured out everything he has felt about that place. The result is a book which the publishers not only believe to be the most honest ever written about Hollywood, but a penetrating study of one kind of twentieth-century success that is peculiar to no single race of people or walk of life.
Everyone of us knows someone who runs. He is one of the symp-toms of our times—from the little man who shoves you out of the way on the street to the go-getter who shoves you out of a job in the office to the Fuehrer who shoves you out of the world. And all of us have stopped to wonder, at some time or another, what it is that makes these people tick. What makes them run?
This is the question Schulberg has asked himself, and the answer is the first novel written with the indignation that only a young writer with talent and ideals could concentrate into a manuscript. It is the story of Sammy Glick, the man with a positive genius for being a heel, who runs through New York’s East Side, through newspaper ranks and finally through Hollywood, leaving in his wake the wrecked careers of his associates; for this is his tragedy and his chief characteristic—his congenital incapacity for friendship.
An older and more experienced novelist might have tempered his story and, in so doing, destroyed one of its outstanding qualities. Compromise would mar the portrait of Sammy Glick. Schulberg has etched it in pure vitriol, and dissected his victim with a precision that is almost frightening.
When a fragment of this book appeared as a short story in a national magazine, Schulberg was surprised at the number of letters he received from people convinced they knew Sammy Glick’s real name. But speculation as to his real identity would be utterly fruitless, for Sammy is a composite picture of a loud and spectacular minority bitterly resented by the many decent and sincere artists who are trying honestly to realize the measureless potentialities of motion pictures. To this group belongs Schulberg himself, who has not only worked as a screen writer since his graduation from Dartmouth College in 1936, but has spent his life, literally, in the heart of the motion-picture colony. In the course of finding out what makes Sammy run (an operation in which the reader is spared none of the grue-some details) Schulberg has poured out everything he has felt about that place. The result is a book which the publishers not only believe to be the most honest ever written about Hollywood, but a penetrating study of one kind of twentieth-century success that is peculiar to no single race of people or walk of life.
303 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1941
About the author
Budd Schulberg
76 books110 followersBudd Schulberg (1914–2009) was a screenwriter, novelist, and journalist who is best remembered for the classic novels What Makes Sammy Run?, The Harder They Fall, and the story On the Waterfront, which he adapted as a novel, play, and an Academy Award–winning film script. Born in New York City, Schulberg grew up in Hollywood, where his father, B. P. Schulberg, was head of production at Paramount, among other studios. Throughout his career, Schulberg worked as a journalist and essayist, often writing about boxing, a lifelong passion. Many of his writings on the sport are collected in Sparring with Hemingway (1995). Other highlights from Schulberg’s nonfiction career include Moving Pictures (1981), an account of his upbringing in Hollywood, and Writers in America (1973), a glimpse of some of the famous novelists he met early in his career. He died in 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 382 reviews
February 18, 2013
Book Circle Reads 82
Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Everyone of us knows someone who runs. He is one of the symptoms of our times—from the little man who shoves you out of the way on the street to the go-getter who shoves you out of a job in the office to the Fuehrer who shoves you out of the world. And all of us have stopped to wonder, at some time or another, what it is that makes these people tick. What makes them run?
This is the question Schulberg has asked himself, and the answer is the first novel written with the indignation that only a young writer with talent and ideals could concentrate into a manuscript. It is the story of Sammy Glick, the man with a positive genius for being a heel, who runs through New York’s East Side, through newspaper ranks and finally through Hollywood, leaving in his wake the wrecked careers of his associates; for this is his tragedy and his chief characteristic—his congenital incapacity for friendship.
An older and more experienced novelist might have tempered his story and, in so doing, destroyed one of its outstanding qualities. Compromise would mar the portrait of Sammy Glick. Schulberg has etched it in pure vitriol, and dissected his victim with a precision that is almost frightening.
When a fragment of this book appeared as a short story in a national magazine, Schulberg was surprised at the number of letters he received from people convinced they knew Sammy Glick’s real name. But speculation as to his real identity would be utterly fruitless, for Sammy is a composite picture of a loud and spectacular minority bitterly resented by the many decent and sincere artists who are trying honestly to realize the measureless potentialities of motion pictures. To this group belongs Schulberg himself, who has not only worked as a screen writer since his graduation from Dartmouth College in 1936, but has spent his life, literally, in the heart of the motion-picture colony. In the course of finding out what makes Sammy run (an operation in which the reader is spared none of the grue-some details) Schulberg has poured out everything he has felt about that place. The result is a book which the publishers not only believe to be the most honest ever written about Hollywood, but a penetrating study of one kind of twentieth-century success that is peculiar to no single race of people or walk of life.
My Review: Budd Schulberg got a lot of grief for writing this "anti-Semitic" shriek of outrage at the backstabbing, grasping, greedy, hollow culture of Hollywood. Well, how else could he tell the story? The moguls of the time were almost all Jewish, and they weren't nice little yeshiva boys but street toughs with chips on their shoulders hell bent for leather to make it to the top.
Today it is a lot less true of Hollywood's power elite. Not the behavior, the Jewishness. The behavior is intact! Of this I assure you from personal experience. And people of both genders and all religious and cultural affiliations enact it there. Awful place. As one would expect from any place where there is that much money floating around. *Breathtaking* amounts of money. The greed of these people is utterly beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. "Enough" is what you say to the chauffeur you're firing who complains it's unjust.
Reading this book was a bitter and painful reliving of my education in how "no good deed goes unpunished" and I will never re-read it for that reason. But dayum! What a glorious excoriation of the moral midgets who make our movies, TV shows, and music! I am in *awe* that Schulberg got away with writing it and stayed in Hollywood! Steven Spielberg, that maker of iconically positive movies, said the book should never be made into a movie because it's too anti-movie-biz.
Guess what: It never has been. Even Ben Stiller, who wanted to star and direct, couldn't get it done when he was at his peak of fame and power.
Shows you just how true it was, is, and will remain. *shudder*
Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Everyone of us knows someone who runs. He is one of the symptoms of our times—from the little man who shoves you out of the way on the street to the go-getter who shoves you out of a job in the office to the Fuehrer who shoves you out of the world. And all of us have stopped to wonder, at some time or another, what it is that makes these people tick. What makes them run?
This is the question Schulberg has asked himself, and the answer is the first novel written with the indignation that only a young writer with talent and ideals could concentrate into a manuscript. It is the story of Sammy Glick, the man with a positive genius for being a heel, who runs through New York’s East Side, through newspaper ranks and finally through Hollywood, leaving in his wake the wrecked careers of his associates; for this is his tragedy and his chief characteristic—his congenital incapacity for friendship.
An older and more experienced novelist might have tempered his story and, in so doing, destroyed one of its outstanding qualities. Compromise would mar the portrait of Sammy Glick. Schulberg has etched it in pure vitriol, and dissected his victim with a precision that is almost frightening.
When a fragment of this book appeared as a short story in a national magazine, Schulberg was surprised at the number of letters he received from people convinced they knew Sammy Glick’s real name. But speculation as to his real identity would be utterly fruitless, for Sammy is a composite picture of a loud and spectacular minority bitterly resented by the many decent and sincere artists who are trying honestly to realize the measureless potentialities of motion pictures. To this group belongs Schulberg himself, who has not only worked as a screen writer since his graduation from Dartmouth College in 1936, but has spent his life, literally, in the heart of the motion-picture colony. In the course of finding out what makes Sammy run (an operation in which the reader is spared none of the grue-some details) Schulberg has poured out everything he has felt about that place. The result is a book which the publishers not only believe to be the most honest ever written about Hollywood, but a penetrating study of one kind of twentieth-century success that is peculiar to no single race of people or walk of life.
My Review: Budd Schulberg got a lot of grief for writing this "anti-Semitic" shriek of outrage at the backstabbing, grasping, greedy, hollow culture of Hollywood. Well, how else could he tell the story? The moguls of the time were almost all Jewish, and they weren't nice little yeshiva boys but street toughs with chips on their shoulders hell bent for leather to make it to the top.
Today it is a lot less true of Hollywood's power elite. Not the behavior, the Jewishness. The behavior is intact! Of this I assure you from personal experience. And people of both genders and all religious and cultural affiliations enact it there. Awful place. As one would expect from any place where there is that much money floating around. *Breathtaking* amounts of money. The greed of these people is utterly beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. "Enough" is what you say to the chauffeur you're firing who complains it's unjust.
Reading this book was a bitter and painful reliving of my education in how "no good deed goes unpunished" and I will never re-read it for that reason. But dayum! What a glorious excoriation of the moral midgets who make our movies, TV shows, and music! I am in *awe* that Schulberg got away with writing it and stayed in Hollywood! Steven Spielberg, that maker of iconically positive movies, said the book should never be made into a movie because it's too anti-movie-biz.
Guess what: It never has been. Even Ben Stiller, who wanted to star and direct, couldn't get it done when he was at his peak of fame and power.
Shows you just how true it was, is, and will remain. *shudder*
December 6, 2022
“Ir por la vida con conciencia es como conducir un coche con el freno de mano puesto.”Había oído que esta novela era una de las mejores que se habían escrito sobre los sucios entresijos del mercado del cine Hollywoodiense.
“Los tres principales productos que fabrica esta ciudad son películas, ambición y miedo.”
Había oído que el autor creó con esta novela un personaje que, como Yossarian o Holden Caulfield, acabó dando nombre a un típico tipo norteamericano, Glick, un hombre individualista y hecho a sí mismo, el trepa sin escrúpulos que va dejando un reguero de cadáveres en su camino al poder y al dinero. Había oído incluso que tal personaje tenía cierto aire de familia con Charles Foster Kane o Jay Gatsby.
“Trabaja mucho, y si no puedes trabajar mucho, sé listo; y si no puedes ser listo, llama la atención.”
Había oído hablar de la maestría de sus diálogos.
- Henry, ¿sabes lo que he estado haciendo durante las dos últimas horas
- Sí, poniéndose como una cuba.
- No, elaborando una teoría que acabará con el odio en el mundo.
- Eso es lo mismo.
Había oído que tenía frases gloriosas, de esas tan típicas del cine negro de la época.
“A mí me gusta bailar con bailarines pasables. No sé por qué pero suelen ser mejores tipos.”
Había oído hablar maravillas de otra de sus obras, El desencantado, y había oído hablar con algo menos de entusiasmo de esta otra, aunque personalmente me ha parecido una novela interesante y divertida que me hacía difícil separarme de ella.
Todo esto es cierto, pero nadie me había hablado acerca de la debilidad de su planteamiento: un buen hombre, Al Manheim, inteligente, comprometido social y políticamente, competente en su trabajo como periodista y guionista, que no puede estar más en las antípodas de Sammy Glick y de todo lo que él representa, cae en una fascinación tal con el odioso personaje que ambos llegan a hacerse amigos o algo que se le parece mucho. De esta debilidad es consciente el autor, tanto que gasta un buen puñado de páginas a lo largo de toda la novela para justificar esta extraña relación que, además, es la que hace posible que sea Manheim quién pueda contarnos la historia de Sammy y ser aquel que continuamente se hace la pregunta que da título a la novela, ¿por qué corre Sammy?, duda que le empuja a mantenerse a su lado hasta encontrar la respuesta que, desde su punto de vista, sería “la respuesta a todo”.
“Me pregunto si lo que hace que Sammy nos parezca tan fascinante es que él es el «id»… el centro de nuestros instintos básicos, que el superego viste con la ropa de la respetabilidad para mostrarlos al mundo exterior”
Sí había oído que el personaje llegó a ser tomado como modelo de conducta a seguir por su desfachatez y ambición desmedida, eran los yuppies de los 80. De hecho, no sé si buscado o no por el autor, la fascinación que ejerce el protagonista sobre su narrador y su novia, examante de Sammy, no puede ser solo fruto de la curiosidad, también hay mucho de admiración y hasta de envida, aunque se intente disfrazar de desprecio.
“…cuando él aparece modifica el aire que una respira, lo intensifica… sentía un deseo irracional de saber qué sentiría al tener dentro de mí esa imparable ambición, frenesí y violencia.”
Pero tampoco me dijo nadie que la moraleja de la historia era traspasar la culpabilidad del individuo a la sociedad, aunque no se explique por qué su hermano o amigos del individuo, criados en el mismo ambiente y enfrentados a los mismos problemas, tomaron caminos opuestos.
“Creo que no tuviste elección. En tu caso se trataba de escoger entre ser un buen tipo y un fracasado o tal como eres ahora. No, supongo que ni siquiera pudiste escoger. El mundo decidió por ti.”
Tampoco me habló nadie de que el autor delató durante "la caza de brujas" a 17 de sus antiguos compañeros de partido.
Y yo, que soy muy sensible a las conclusiones erróneas y, aunque me pese, a este tipo de datos biográficos, no puedo evitar quitarle una estrellita que quizás mereciera.
October 3, 2026
"Good morning, Mr. Mannheim," he said to me, the first time we met, "I'm the new office boy, but I ain't going to be an office boy long."
"Don't say ain't," I said, "or you'll be an office boy forever."
Going in, I knew nothing about this novel. I'd just been intrigued by the F. Scott Fitzgerald blurb on the front cover ("A grand book, utterly fearless and with a great deal of beauty side by side with the most bitter satire.")(I suppose this means cover blurbs work)(it's cheating, though; he and Fitzgerald were friends). I'd just reread Gatsby for a post I was writing on novel structure and I was feeling wistful for some sly, careful writing.
What I found was an L.A. Great Gatsby, a bombastic, slick, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny West Coast mirror image Gatsby. If one wanted to teach a class on American coastal culture, one could grab these two novels and go to town. Or go to city, really. This novel was published in 1941, but structurally, it does not feel even a bit dated, it's unbelievably pacey; it still manages to deftly map LA's cultural DNA in a way that is still recognizable today. So recognizable, in fact, that this novel caused a stir on publication, and continues to. Schulberg, a card-carrying communist Jew in Hollywood, was accused of betraying communists, Jews, and Hollywood (Spielberg supposedly said the book would never become a film since it was so anti-movie-biz) with his portrayal of the slick, restless Sammy Glick. In fact, my edition began with an author's note where Schulberg takes great pains to point out that the sympathetic narrator is also a Jew in Hollywood, and that all the people Sammy wrongs are also Jews. He says "It is true that the principal character in this book is about as unpalatable a character a character as ever came down the pike. It is true that I have made this Sammy Glick a Jew. But as Dorothy Parker said in her review, 'Those who hail us Jews as brothers must allow us to have our villains, the same, alas, as any other race.'."
And the narrator's quest in the final third of the novel reveals why Schulberg had to make Sammy a Jew, if the narrator is also one—Schulberg has something to say about how we become the people we are, and what we owe people with good explanations for their bad behavior.
But the novel has many charms beyond Schulberg's messaging. There's a deftly-described reluctant friendship of a sort I've never seen so accurately depicted in fiction—when it came out, everyone was trying to guess who Sammy Glick was based on; 80 years later, I'm just thinking about the Sammy Glicks I myself have known. The dialog crackles. There's a whole host of women characters representing all sorts of people, including one whose conscious bucking of gender stereotypes makes the novel at once very readable in '26 but also a little depressing to read in '26 (is this all the further we've come?). There is a genuinely honest little love story in there. Schulberg's soft-hearted, and the novel feels kindly because of it.
Many reviews here on GR have more and better to say on the novel, so check out a copy and have a good time prowling around through them. And send me an invite if you ever end up teaching that Gatsby-Sammy class on America's coasts.
"Don't say ain't," I said, "or you'll be an office boy forever."
Going in, I knew nothing about this novel. I'd just been intrigued by the F. Scott Fitzgerald blurb on the front cover ("A grand book, utterly fearless and with a great deal of beauty side by side with the most bitter satire.")(I suppose this means cover blurbs work)(it's cheating, though; he and Fitzgerald were friends). I'd just reread Gatsby for a post I was writing on novel structure and I was feeling wistful for some sly, careful writing.
What I found was an L.A. Great Gatsby, a bombastic, slick, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny West Coast mirror image Gatsby. If one wanted to teach a class on American coastal culture, one could grab these two novels and go to town. Or go to city, really. This novel was published in 1941, but structurally, it does not feel even a bit dated, it's unbelievably pacey; it still manages to deftly map LA's cultural DNA in a way that is still recognizable today. So recognizable, in fact, that this novel caused a stir on publication, and continues to. Schulberg, a card-carrying communist Jew in Hollywood, was accused of betraying communists, Jews, and Hollywood (Spielberg supposedly said the book would never become a film since it was so anti-movie-biz) with his portrayal of the slick, restless Sammy Glick. In fact, my edition began with an author's note where Schulberg takes great pains to point out that the sympathetic narrator is also a Jew in Hollywood, and that all the people Sammy wrongs are also Jews. He says "It is true that the principal character in this book is about as unpalatable a character a character as ever came down the pike. It is true that I have made this Sammy Glick a Jew. But as Dorothy Parker said in her review, 'Those who hail us Jews as brothers must allow us to have our villains, the same, alas, as any other race.'."
And the narrator's quest in the final third of the novel reveals why Schulberg had to make Sammy a Jew, if the narrator is also one—Schulberg has something to say about how we become the people we are, and what we owe people with good explanations for their bad behavior.
But the novel has many charms beyond Schulberg's messaging. There's a deftly-described reluctant friendship of a sort I've never seen so accurately depicted in fiction—when it came out, everyone was trying to guess who Sammy Glick was based on; 80 years later, I'm just thinking about the Sammy Glicks I myself have known. The dialog crackles. There's a whole host of women characters representing all sorts of people, including one whose conscious bucking of gender stereotypes makes the novel at once very readable in '26 but also a little depressing to read in '26 (is this all the further we've come?). There is a genuinely honest little love story in there. Schulberg's soft-hearted, and the novel feels kindly because of it.
Many reviews here on GR have more and better to say on the novel, so check out a copy and have a good time prowling around through them. And send me an invite if you ever end up teaching that Gatsby-Sammy class on America's coasts.
February 20, 2013
I am about to eat serious crow. When "Sammy" was selected for my book club read, I wondered (aloud) why we should be reading an old book that could not possibly be relevant today. Oh how wrong I was!
Aside from being splendidly written, fast paced and absorbing ... the story, the quest, the always fragile success ... are totally relevant to life in America today.
Who do we know who, like Sammy Glick, is so completely absorbed in himself, who lies constantly and without remorse, and who destroys everyone and every good thing he touches? Who has built the slick facade of his unearned success on a foundation of swirling slime? Who do we know who is never happy, and never will be?
I could go on, but you get the point. Read the book. Turn on the news. It's the same story.
Aside from being splendidly written, fast paced and absorbing ... the story, the quest, the always fragile success ... are totally relevant to life in America today.
Who do we know who, like Sammy Glick, is so completely absorbed in himself, who lies constantly and without remorse, and who destroys everyone and every good thing he touches? Who has built the slick facade of his unearned success on a foundation of swirling slime? Who do we know who is never happy, and never will be?
I could go on, but you get the point. Read the book. Turn on the news. It's the same story.
December 23, 2014
You might think a book written in 1941 about Hollywood would be too dated to be of interest to anyone but Hollywood historians. Wrong, baby, wrong! This modern classic is a must-read for anyone who is fascinated by Hollywood, or interested in character studies of incredibly compelling anti-heroes. In the 21st century, What Makes Sammy Run? is essentially a historical novel, but it's still a damn fine character-driven story, and let's face it, Hollywood is still crawling with Sammy Glicks.
The novel's eponymous question, "What makes Sammy run?" is asked by the narrator, Al Manheim, a reporter at a New York City paper who first meets Sammy as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed 15-year-old copy boy.
Sammy runs, runs, runs, and Al Manheim is as obsessed as he is horrified as he watches Sammy shamelessly lie, cheat, and steal (ideas) and promote himself with the unselfaware genius of the truly narcissistic. He stabs his "patron," Al, to get a newspaper column of his own, and when a young writer comes to him with a story idea, Sammy calls up a big-name Hollywood agent, having no idea just how ridiculous the thing he is doing is, and soon is saying goodbye to the Big Apple and hello to Hollywood, leaving behind his friends, his family, his cast off fiancee, and the guy who wrote the story he's now launching his career with.
Al manages to get snagged into the Hollywood writing gig himself a little later, and soon he's also making more money than he ever did as a reporter, but watching Sammy outstrip everyone. When Sammy becomes a $500-a-week writer (big money in the 30s!), he's seething with dissatisfaction because he knows some writers are making $2500 a week. When he becomes a $2500/week writer, he wants to join the inner circle of $5000/week writers. And when he joins them... well, who wants to be a mere writer, at the bottom of the Hollywood totem pole, when the big money and power comes from being a supervisor, a producer, a studio head...
Sammy keeps running, and Al is there to witness it. Sammy Glick never writes a word himself or has a single original idea, yet he manages to keep rocketing up into the big time. Al trails behind him, modestly successful, held back by his own basic decency, a trait for which Sammy mocks him contemptuously and yet makes him Sammy's confidant and the closest thing he has to a friend, since whenever Sammy does something lowdown and dirty, Al is the only one he can confide in.
Sammy's rise is the epic journey of an anti-hero. He's a louse, he's a creep, he's despicable! And as horrifically entertaining as watching the Grinch drive a lawn tractor over Smurfs.
Al's obsessive quest to find out what makes Sammy run eventually leads him back to the Jewish New York ghetto where Samuel Glickstein grew up, and then back to Hollywood after being temporarily exiled for his participation in the struggle of the Writers' Guild against the big studios, where he witnesses Sammy's final triumph: marriage to the heiress of one of the Wall Street men who finances the studio, elevation to studio head, being feted and brown-nosed by all, and still, of course, running.
Almost as interesting as the story is the historical background behind the novel and the author. Budd Schulberg was a "Hollywood prince," son of B.P. Schulberg, a founding member of the AMPA and a producer for the big Hollywood studios. Budd Schulberg grew up among a Who's Who of Hollywood in the 30s and 40s, so when he wrote What Makes Sammy Run?... it made a splash. A big ugly splash. Louis B. Mayer himself called for Schulberg's exile from Hollywood, and Schulberg heard from his own father those immortal words: "You'll never work in this town again."
Much of the acrimony was over the character of Sammy Glick, whom Schulberg insisted was not based on any one person but a composite of Hollywood personalities and anecdotes he had heard over the years, yet apparently most of Hollywood thought they knew who Sammy "really" was.
However, perhaps the real grievance was what's just a subplot in the novel, the attempted unionization of the Hollywood writers' guild. Schulberg was called a Red because of his sympathetic portrayal of an event that was still remembered bitterly by the major studios decades later.
The edition of the book I read included an afterword by the author, written in 1989, 50 years after the original publication of his novel. Besides containing more amusing anecdotes and name-dropping (apparently John Wayne himself was one of those who never forgave Schulberg for siding with the unions, and the two of them nearly had a fistfight in Mexico), Schulberg observes that when the novel first came out, and over the next couple of decades, Sammy was viewed with fear and loathing, a sleazy anti-hero who is the personification of Hollywood's id. Yet in the 80s, young film and writing students started coming up to him and praising Sammy as an inspiration, a role model for ambitious career advancement! Schulberg, still a liberal after all these years, was appalled.
And thus Sammy Glick is not only a fascinating anti-hero, a brilliant portrayal of a rags-to-riches narcissist, but also a textbook case of an author's creation who runs out of control, taking on a meaning and significance his creator never intended.
Highly recommended!
The novel's eponymous question, "What makes Sammy run?" is asked by the narrator, Al Manheim, a reporter at a New York City paper who first meets Sammy as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed 15-year-old copy boy.
"I'll keep my ear to the ground for you, kid. Maybe in a couple of years I'll have a chance to slip you in as a cub reporter."
That was the first time he ever scared me. Here I was going out of my way to be nice to him and he answered me with a look that was almost contemptuous.
"Thanks, Mr. Manheim," he said, "but don't do me any favors. I know this newspaper racket. Couple of years at cub reporter? Twenty bucks. Then another stretch as district man. Thirty-five. And finally you're a great big reporter and get forty-five for the rest of your life. No, thanks."
I just stood there looking at him, staggered. Then...
"Hey, boy!" And he's off again, breaking the indoor record for the hundred-yard dash.
Sammy runs, runs, runs, and Al Manheim is as obsessed as he is horrified as he watches Sammy shamelessly lie, cheat, and steal (ideas) and promote himself with the unselfaware genius of the truly narcissistic. He stabs his "patron," Al, to get a newspaper column of his own, and when a young writer comes to him with a story idea, Sammy calls up a big-name Hollywood agent, having no idea just how ridiculous the thing he is doing is, and soon is saying goodbye to the Big Apple and hello to Hollywood, leaving behind his friends, his family, his cast off fiancee, and the guy who wrote the story he's now launching his career with.
Al manages to get snagged into the Hollywood writing gig himself a little later, and soon he's also making more money than he ever did as a reporter, but watching Sammy outstrip everyone. When Sammy becomes a $500-a-week writer (big money in the 30s!), he's seething with dissatisfaction because he knows some writers are making $2500 a week. When he becomes a $2500/week writer, he wants to join the inner circle of $5000/week writers. And when he joins them... well, who wants to be a mere writer, at the bottom of the Hollywood totem pole, when the big money and power comes from being a supervisor, a producer, a studio head...
Sammy keeps running, and Al is there to witness it. Sammy Glick never writes a word himself or has a single original idea, yet he manages to keep rocketing up into the big time. Al trails behind him, modestly successful, held back by his own basic decency, a trait for which Sammy mocks him contemptuously and yet makes him Sammy's confidant and the closest thing he has to a friend, since whenever Sammy does something lowdown and dirty, Al is the only one he can confide in.
Sammy's rise is the epic journey of an anti-hero. He's a louse, he's a creep, he's despicable! And as horrifically entertaining as watching the Grinch drive a lawn tractor over Smurfs.
Al's obsessive quest to find out what makes Sammy run eventually leads him back to the Jewish New York ghetto where Samuel Glickstein grew up, and then back to Hollywood after being temporarily exiled for his participation in the struggle of the Writers' Guild against the big studios, where he witnesses Sammy's final triumph: marriage to the heiress of one of the Wall Street men who finances the studio, elevation to studio head, being feted and brown-nosed by all, and still, of course, running.
I thought of all the things I might have told him. You never had the first idea of give-and-take, the social intercourse. It had to be you, all the way. You had to make individualism the most frightening ism of all. You act as if the world is just a blindfold free-for-all. Only the first time you get it in the belly you holler brotherhood. But you can't have your brothers and eat them too. You're all alone, pal, all alone. That's the way you wanted it, that's the way you learned it. Sing it, Sammy, sing it deep and sad, all alone and feeling blue, all alone in crowded theaters, company conventions, all alone with twenty of Gladys's girls tying themselves into lewd knots for you. All alone in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, with power and with Harringtons till death parts you from your only friend, your worst enemy, yourself.
Almost as interesting as the story is the historical background behind the novel and the author. Budd Schulberg was a "Hollywood prince," son of B.P. Schulberg, a founding member of the AMPA and a producer for the big Hollywood studios. Budd Schulberg grew up among a Who's Who of Hollywood in the 30s and 40s, so when he wrote What Makes Sammy Run?... it made a splash. A big ugly splash. Louis B. Mayer himself called for Schulberg's exile from Hollywood, and Schulberg heard from his own father those immortal words: "You'll never work in this town again."
Much of the acrimony was over the character of Sammy Glick, whom Schulberg insisted was not based on any one person but a composite of Hollywood personalities and anecdotes he had heard over the years, yet apparently most of Hollywood thought they knew who Sammy "really" was.
However, perhaps the real grievance was what's just a subplot in the novel, the attempted unionization of the Hollywood writers' guild. Schulberg was called a Red because of his sympathetic portrayal of an event that was still remembered bitterly by the major studios decades later.
The edition of the book I read included an afterword by the author, written in 1989, 50 years after the original publication of his novel. Besides containing more amusing anecdotes and name-dropping (apparently John Wayne himself was one of those who never forgave Schulberg for siding with the unions, and the two of them nearly had a fistfight in Mexico), Schulberg observes that when the novel first came out, and over the next couple of decades, Sammy was viewed with fear and loathing, a sleazy anti-hero who is the personification of Hollywood's id. Yet in the 80s, young film and writing students started coming up to him and praising Sammy as an inspiration, a role model for ambitious career advancement! Schulberg, still a liberal after all these years, was appalled.
And thus Sammy Glick is not only a fascinating anti-hero, a brilliant portrayal of a rags-to-riches narcissist, but also a textbook case of an author's creation who runs out of control, taking on a meaning and significance his creator never intended.
Highly recommended!
June 29, 2008
a book about an asshole, narrated by a dickhead.
October 15, 2023
What Makes Sammy Run? (1941) is a novel about the dirty underside of Hollywood and also about the dog-eat-dog world of climbing the ladder to success that some people find themselves doing? As a psychological study, it is fascinating. Sammy Glick starts out as a poor teenager from the lower east side of Manhattan, but from the very first time that Al Manheim meets Sammy, he realizes he met someone different, someone who in the battle for survival of the fittest is the fittest and will climb over whoever he needs to just to get where he is going. This includes stealing articles and ideas, taking credit for someone else's work, talking to the boss behind his supervisor's back. At every stage, seemingly without a conscience, Sammy has the world by the balls with utter confidence that he will rise to the top and the fools he passes by in the slow lane of life are not to be pitied. The action eventually moves to Hollywood where (and this was published in 1941 at the height of Hollywood glamour) the dog eat dog world becomes even more evident and how, in the end, no one has anyone else's back.
December 14, 2025
He leído ¿Por qué corre Sammy? con la sensación de tener entre las manos no tanto una novela como un guión cinematográfico dominado por la voz en off del protagonista.
Un guion escrito con el dinamismo y la chispa característicos del Hollywood dorado de los años 30-40. Un guion que puede hermanarse fácilmente con una famosa película de su mismo año, Ciudadano Kane, y que anticipa retratos mordaces del mundo del cine como Eva al desnudo y Cautivos del mal, pero centrando la atención en un departamento que no siempre recibe el reconocimiento que merece: los guionistas.
Aunque tropieza un poco cuando se pone trascendental, la mayor parte del tiempo va como un tiro.
Una de esas obras que demuestran que hubo un tiempo en que Norteamérica tenía la fórmula (o una fórmula, al menos).
Un guion escrito con el dinamismo y la chispa característicos del Hollywood dorado de los años 30-40. Un guion que puede hermanarse fácilmente con una famosa película de su mismo año, Ciudadano Kane, y que anticipa retratos mordaces del mundo del cine como Eva al desnudo y Cautivos del mal, pero centrando la atención en un departamento que no siempre recibe el reconocimiento que merece: los guionistas.
Aunque tropieza un poco cuando se pone trascendental, la mayor parte del tiempo va como un tiro.
Una de esas obras que demuestran que hubo un tiempo en que Norteamérica tenía la fórmula (o una fórmula, al menos).
April 16, 2016
I know this guy.
December 18, 2010
Plans to film “What Makes Sammy Run?” have been bandied around for decades, but the movie has already been made more or less via another Budd Schulberg story, “A Face In The Crowd”, i.e. boy-meets-girl as casualties of an arrogant, greedy media climbing monster. Anyone who has enjoyed films like “The Player”, “The Bad And The Beautiful” or “Barton Fink” will have a great time reading this, and Schulberg never runs out of great dialogue.
January 10, 2017
Tight, succinct writing. Schulberg is a master storyteller who doesn't waste a word. He knows how to stick to a theme. This moral cautionary tale about a Hollywood writer consumed by his ambition should be a textbook for good writing.
March 14, 2025
I’m giving 4 stars to the book about Hollywood’s heel. Sammy Glick is a pushy social climbing jerk who aspires to rule the silver screen’s producing elite during the Golden Age. He uses anyone he can to get what he wants. The story is told from the point of view of a writer who witnesses his rise from being a copy boy to successful mogul.
If you have an interest in the Golden Age of Hollywood, this book is worth reading, for sure. Sometimes this book is lumped into a category with Updike’s Rabbit series, probably because Rabbit is something of a jerk, too. But Schulberg just doesn’t have the writing chops that Updike has, and Rabbit has more redeeming qualities than Sammy.
A few interesting factoids. The author, Bud Schulberg, was contemporary of F. Scott Fitzgerald. He wrote the screenplay for On the Waterfront. He was married to Geraldine Brooks, a Pulitzer Prize author, who wrote March and Horse. I have read and reviewed Horse.
The edition I read had a couple of short story alternative versions of the start and the finish of the novel. By the time I got to them, I was tired of Sammy.
If you have an interest in the Golden Age of Hollywood, this book is worth reading, for sure. Sometimes this book is lumped into a category with Updike’s Rabbit series, probably because Rabbit is something of a jerk, too. But Schulberg just doesn’t have the writing chops that Updike has, and Rabbit has more redeeming qualities than Sammy.
A few interesting factoids. The author, Bud Schulberg, was contemporary of F. Scott Fitzgerald. He wrote the screenplay for On the Waterfront. He was married to Geraldine Brooks, a Pulitzer Prize author, who wrote March and Horse. I have read and reviewed Horse.
The edition I read had a couple of short story alternative versions of the start and the finish of the novel. By the time I got to them, I was tired of Sammy.
December 2, 2023
Published in 1941, at the ripe old age of 27, with Bennett Cerf (whom Schulberg had gotten to know and had impressed walls still at Dartmouth), this book is a brilliant, dissection and anatomy of the American dream, as the corruption has spread throughout it like a cancer by the end of the Depression. It all already shows the influence of the postwar realism, and of the techniques of method acting which had already emerged in certain circles as early as Lee Strasberg’s Group Theater, founded in 1931. The first two chapters, on Sammy’s youth, are still a little stiff. But once the book gets going, it is unputdownable. A great American novel.
January 20, 2014
A criticism not only of Hollywood moguls but also of ruthless ambition, What Makes Sammy Run? is a landmark work from the 40s that turned out to be hauntingly prescient. Sammy's stab you in the back to ahead mentality represents America, and this book makes for an interesting Hollywood story that is relatable in every aspect of modern day business. You may even have a Sammy Glick in your life, which is scary to say the very least.
The story centers on the aforementioned Glick, and it's told from the perspective of somebody Glick walks over to get ahead, which paints an interesting story unlike the naive narrator from The Great Gatsby. In this book, the protagonist, Al Manheim, knows Sammy is slime and you get to see his outlook on the ambitious character. It makes for fascinating narration. In his climb to the top, Sammy screws over anybody and everybody (But they're all Jewish people like himself, which the author, Budd Schulberg, made sure of), making him a pretty repugnant character. That said, he's not one-dimensional, and you even start to feel sorry for him since he can't help himself. Some might even see him as a non-violent sociopath, taking his licks and accepting them if it means it will further his barreling career.
If I have only one complaint with the book, it's that the ending comes rather abruptly for my taste. That said, the book is enjoyable and has well thought out characters and excellent pacing. If you love movies, and more importantly, the story behind making movies, then you should definitely read this book. Maybe you'll uncover for yourself just what makes Sammy run.
The story centers on the aforementioned Glick, and it's told from the perspective of somebody Glick walks over to get ahead, which paints an interesting story unlike the naive narrator from The Great Gatsby. In this book, the protagonist, Al Manheim, knows Sammy is slime and you get to see his outlook on the ambitious character. It makes for fascinating narration. In his climb to the top, Sammy screws over anybody and everybody (But they're all Jewish people like himself, which the author, Budd Schulberg, made sure of), making him a pretty repugnant character. That said, he's not one-dimensional, and you even start to feel sorry for him since he can't help himself. Some might even see him as a non-violent sociopath, taking his licks and accepting them if it means it will further his barreling career.
If I have only one complaint with the book, it's that the ending comes rather abruptly for my taste. That said, the book is enjoyable and has well thought out characters and excellent pacing. If you love movies, and more importantly, the story behind making movies, then you should definitely read this book. Maybe you'll uncover for yourself just what makes Sammy run.
March 1, 2014
He knows whereof he speaks. It's remarkable that he had the perspective to write this book as a young man, having grown up at the center of power in Hollywood. A smart and empathetic assessment of the state of the business he was steeped in from birth. Movies aren't the center of the culture, as they were then, before television, much less the web. If the Sammy Glicks of the world are now hustling Apps, only the details have changed.
August 6, 2014
Sammy is the little guy, the one you miss seeing, who you forget about. But he is ruthless. And he is running. Always running. Schulberg provides us a chilling portrait of fairyland - where the movies aremade. A very, very good read.
October 3, 2024
We all know a few Sammys. The unscrupulous shady dealers who seem to come from nowhere and reach dizzying heights. This is a hard-hitting if slightly dated perspective on early Hollywood around the Depression era and how one man, Sammy Glick stopped at nothing to get what he wanted. Betrayal, plagiarism, muckraking, confidence tricks... he used everything he knew and more.
The writing is crisp and attention-grabbing, but the protagonist is not exactly the most interesting guy. After a while, the rinse and repeat of Sammy winning the day using yet another trick of his wore me down. A good read but not ground-breaking in today's times.
The writing is crisp and attention-grabbing, but the protagonist is not exactly the most interesting guy. After a while, the rinse and repeat of Sammy winning the day using yet another trick of his wore me down. A good read but not ground-breaking in today's times.
December 26, 2022
Mr. know-it-all unscrupulous Sammy is going places and seems to have it all with only making ruses! An opportunistic parasite hustler who's only after money even at the price of destroying others' lives. Why kindness? Why legitimacy when you can make money easily without much effort? Sammy believes legitimate ways of making money are unnecessary when others can do it for us, why bothering ourselves?
"I wonder what emotions he did have", he doesn't care about others' emotions as long as he's making money out of it.
"I wonder what emotions he did have", he doesn't care about others' emotions as long as he's making money out of it.
May 20, 2021
A wonderful satire and critique of the American dream, and the category of 'hustlers' that are willing to destroy all their social ties in reward for monetary success. Still super relevant, especially with the weird millennial grind culture of today. The prose runs fluidly between fast plot and thoughtful reflection. I especially liked the Al - Kit dynamic, and how that was used as a way to show us how we are secretly all fascinated with the Sammy Glicks of the world. A top recommend for book club by Maz!
July 13, 2018
Hollywood is a very different place today than it was in the 1930s. Back then, the studio system was in full force, stars were essentially slaves to their studios, and a few major movie moguls ran Hollywood. Budd Schulberg’s father, B.P. Schulberg, was the head of Paramount, so the author had a lot to draw from when he wrote his 1941 debut "What Makes Sammy Run?"
"What Makes Sammy Run?" is narrated by newspaper columnist-turned-screenwriter Al Manheim, who is working for a newspaper in New York when he meets a young whippersnapper named Sammy Glick. Eager, ambitious, and ruthless, Manheim quickly develops an admiration and disgust for the young man. Over the following years, Manheim (and the reader) witness Sammy Glick lying, double-crossing, and steamrolling over almost everyone who comes his way in order to reach the top of the Hollywood food chain. While Sammy is unappealing, sociopathic, and downright cruel to his friends and loved ones—his rise to prominence is darned entertaining to read. He isn’t known as “the all-American heel” for nothing.
It’s no surprise that Schulberg, who would go on to write the screenplay for On the Waterfront, writes dialogue that crackles with wit, elegance, and intensity. While reading it, it’s almost like watching a screwball comedy from the 1930s with fast-paced dialogue and clever repartee. But underneath the sparkling writing, there is a touch of the philosophical. The title comes from Al Manhein’s constant questioning of “what makes Sammy run?” As we learn more about Sammy’s life, we gradually learn what he was running away from all those years, and the result is perhaps more universal than we’d like to acknowledge.
There are a few politically incorrect epithets used throughout the book owing to the date of its publication. But for anyone who wants to dive into a world that doesn’t exist anymore, or who wants a great portrayal of Old Hollywood, "What Makes Sammy Run?" is highly recommended.
"What Makes Sammy Run?" is narrated by newspaper columnist-turned-screenwriter Al Manheim, who is working for a newspaper in New York when he meets a young whippersnapper named Sammy Glick. Eager, ambitious, and ruthless, Manheim quickly develops an admiration and disgust for the young man. Over the following years, Manheim (and the reader) witness Sammy Glick lying, double-crossing, and steamrolling over almost everyone who comes his way in order to reach the top of the Hollywood food chain. While Sammy is unappealing, sociopathic, and downright cruel to his friends and loved ones—his rise to prominence is darned entertaining to read. He isn’t known as “the all-American heel” for nothing.
It’s no surprise that Schulberg, who would go on to write the screenplay for On the Waterfront, writes dialogue that crackles with wit, elegance, and intensity. While reading it, it’s almost like watching a screwball comedy from the 1930s with fast-paced dialogue and clever repartee. But underneath the sparkling writing, there is a touch of the philosophical. The title comes from Al Manhein’s constant questioning of “what makes Sammy run?” As we learn more about Sammy’s life, we gradually learn what he was running away from all those years, and the result is perhaps more universal than we’d like to acknowledge.
There are a few politically incorrect epithets used throughout the book owing to the date of its publication. But for anyone who wants to dive into a world that doesn’t exist anymore, or who wants a great portrayal of Old Hollywood, "What Makes Sammy Run?" is highly recommended.
April 14, 2014
What Makes Sammy Run tells the story of Sammy Glick, a man with boundless ambition and no morals to stand in his way. It is told from the point of view of Al Manheim, who watches Sammy's meteoric rise with anger, jealousy and awe. It has come to be one of the classic "Hollywood Novels" portraying Hollywood at its worst and most truthful, and as someone who works and lives in Hollywood, a lot of what Schulberg was trying to convey still remains true to this day. The book got a lot of criticism for being anti-semitic, but I don't see it that way. Sammy is a money hungry, story spinner who happens to be Jewish. There are a lot of Jewish characters in the book, and they are not all greedy "Shylocks", but a whole range of personalities, as is the case in life.
I think I liked this book because I could relate to its setting, although not necessarily to its characters. It moves at a brisk pace, with biting dialogue and straightforward prose. It reads like an insightful character study of the unscrupulously ambitious Hollywood executive. However, the story doesn't really seem to sustain itself. Eventually the narrator's obsession with the question "what makes Sammy run?" reads more as a desperate fixation than an interesting story point. Most people who have read this have said "we all know a few Sammy Glicks", and I agree with that, which means that we shouldn't find Sammy's behavior all that shocking, or even novel. I found the book to be enjoyable, but when compared with other Hollywood classics like The Player and The Day of the Locusts, I would definitely put it at the bottom of the pile.
I think I liked this book because I could relate to its setting, although not necessarily to its characters. It moves at a brisk pace, with biting dialogue and straightforward prose. It reads like an insightful character study of the unscrupulously ambitious Hollywood executive. However, the story doesn't really seem to sustain itself. Eventually the narrator's obsession with the question "what makes Sammy run?" reads more as a desperate fixation than an interesting story point. Most people who have read this have said "we all know a few Sammy Glicks", and I agree with that, which means that we shouldn't find Sammy's behavior all that shocking, or even novel. I found the book to be enjoyable, but when compared with other Hollywood classics like The Player and The Day of the Locusts, I would definitely put it at the bottom of the pile.
February 11, 2009
Schulberg hits on something really archetypal here. He chronicles the rise of fictional film mogul who's part C. F. Kane and part Howard Hughes, from the perspective of a narrator who's part Salieri and part Nick Carraway. And it's pretty amazing, actually. On one level, it's a sharp dissection of a 40s insider Hollywood: a takedown of what was wrong with the studio system. But then it becomes more: a portrait of Jewish angst and hardship at the turn of the century. But really, it's an absorbing read simply because the characters are so fascinating. Sammy Glick might seem like a cliche, but he feels real. And the whole thing shines with the crackling dialogue of a great period screenplay. No surprise-- Schulberg went on to write "On the Waterfront" and "A Face in the Crowd."
May 18, 2014
Having followed Ryan Holiday's work over the years, this book was mentioned quite favorably many times. I can't believe it took me this long to get around to reading it. I devoured the book in one sitting.
It's a fantastic story and an incredibly insightful peek into the ambitious mind. I found myself thinking that the tactics Glick used can be applied without screwing people over while still getting ahead. I also found myself being reminded of Robert Greene's 48 Laws, for this book illustrated many of those laws perfectly. A case can be made for this book as being similar to Great Gatsby since it's all about the American dream, but I found this a far more compelling tale.
I will read this one again, and next time with a pen and sticky tabs.
It's a fantastic story and an incredibly insightful peek into the ambitious mind. I found myself thinking that the tactics Glick used can be applied without screwing people over while still getting ahead. I also found myself being reminded of Robert Greene's 48 Laws, for this book illustrated many of those laws perfectly. A case can be made for this book as being similar to Great Gatsby since it's all about the American dream, but I found this a far more compelling tale.
I will read this one again, and next time with a pen and sticky tabs.
August 15, 2008
"A grand book, utterly fearless and with a great deal of beauty side by side with the most bitter satire." Right on, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
August 29, 2021
Ο Μπαντ Σούλμπεργκ ήταν από τους Οσκαρικούς σεναριογράφους του κλασικού Χόλιγουντ και ένας πολύ καλός συγγραφέας. Το "Τι κυνηγάει τον Σάμι;" είναι με διαφορά το πιο γνωστό και πολυδιαβασμένο βιβλίο του, το οποίο είναι και από τα κλασικότερα και καλύτερα μυθιστορήματα που έχουν να κάνουν με τον απατηλό κόσμο του Χόλιγουντ. Ο συγγραφέας αποτυπώνει με τον πιο ρεαλιστικό και έντονο τρόπο το Χόλιγουντ της δεκαετίας του '30, δείχνοντας στους αναγνώστες την αληθινή του πλευρά, η οποία δεν είναι και τόσο όμορφη και φωτεινή. Αφηγητής της ιστορίας είναι ο Αλ Μάνχαϊμ, ένας αρθρογράφος και μετέπειτα συγγραφέας και σεναριογράφος, που μας εξιστορεί την άνοδο του Σάμι Γκλικ, ενός εβραιόπουλου, που από τα κατώτερα στρώματα της ζωής βρέθηκε στο ρετιρέ του Χόλιγουντ, όντας ένας ξεδιάντροπος αριβίστας και οπορτουνιστής, που εκμεταλλεύτηκε κάθε ευκαιρία και κάθε αφελή φουκαρά και που μπορεί να πει κανείς ότι πάτησε επί πτωμάτων για να βρεθεί εκεί που βρέθηκε. Ο Σάμι Γκλικ είναι ο ορισμός του αντιήρωα, είναι ένας τύπος που μισείς αλλά που ενδόμυχα θαυμάζεις για τους τρόπους που βρίσκει ώστε να φτάσει στην κορυφή. Αν μη τι άλλο, υπήρχαν, υπάρχουν και θα υπάρχουν πολλοί Σάμι Γκλικ εκεί έξω, όχι μόνο στον κόσμο του θεάματος, αλλά παντού. Όσον αφορά τη γραφή, είναι πολύ καλή, οξυδερκής και αρκετά κυνική, με λιτές περιγραφές σκηνικών και καταστάσεων, καθώς και με ιδιαίτερα φυσικούς διαλόγους. Ναι, το βιβλίο μου άρεσε πάρα πολύ, το βρήκα εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρον και με τον τρόπο του συναρπαστικό, αλλά εγώ είμαι από αυτούς που απολαμβάνουν τις κλασικές αμερικάνικες ιστορίες, όπως και τις ρεαλιστικές και ολίγον τι σκοτεινές ιστορίες που έχουν να κάνουν με το παλιό Χόλιγουντ, οπότε δεν ξέρω αν ταιριάζει με όλα τα αναγνωστικά γούστα. Όσον αφορά το μέλλον μου με το έργο του συγγραφέα, άμεσα θα προμηθευτώ το μοναδικό άλλο βιβλίο του που έχει μεταφραστεί στα ελληνικά (το αυτοβιογραφικό "Κινούμενες εικόνες"), όντας βέβαια απογοητευμένος από το γεγονός ότι δεν έχουν μεταφραστεί άλλα μυθιστορήματά του, όπως τα κλασικά "The Disenchanted" και "The Harder They Fall" (αυτό έχει γίνει και ταινία).
March 26, 2021
I'm not sure that "run" is the right word to describe what Sammy does. He is a shover, a pusher, a person who steps on the man in behind him as the climbs over the person in front. He uses and discards people, he takes credit that isn't his, he manipulates and backstabs. He is a terrible human being and a fascinating character. I've known a Sammy or two in my life, although none of them were quite and perfectly Sammy as the fictional one.
Budd Schulberg grew up in Hollywood. His father was one of the founders of the movie industry in America and Shulberg (who insisted that Sammy is not modeled after any one person) was able to study the Sammy-like sleazebags who infested Hollywood back then, and presumably today as well. I recently read Schulberg's memoir of his early life, and it was fun to see how he repurposed his actual experiences to create this story. (Not that reading anything else by the author is necessary to enjoy this novel.)
What Makes Sammy Run has a tight plot, authentic Hollywood atmosphere, a lot to say about subjects like greed and ambition, and a memorable antihero at it's heart. It's a good read.
Budd Schulberg grew up in Hollywood. His father was one of the founders of the movie industry in America and Shulberg (who insisted that Sammy is not modeled after any one person) was able to study the Sammy-like sleazebags who infested Hollywood back then, and presumably today as well. I recently read Schulberg's memoir of his early life, and it was fun to see how he repurposed his actual experiences to create this story. (Not that reading anything else by the author is necessary to enjoy this novel.)
What Makes Sammy Run has a tight plot, authentic Hollywood atmosphere, a lot to say about subjects like greed and ambition, and a memorable antihero at it's heart. It's a good read.
April 13, 2021
Didn't know what to expect from this. This is a story of a guy(Sammy) who is so engrossed in making it big in life, that he fails to acknowledge how his actions are affecting those around him. The story is told from the perspective of his friend(Al) whose life takes a big blow upon Sammy's entry, and his quest to decipher Sammy begins. Cannot believe this was written in the 1940s, set in Hollywood, and how most of the mindset and scenarios remain true to this day.
July 18, 2023
The Great Gatsby… but instead of New York it’s Hollywood, and instead of being WASPy it’s Jewish, and Sammy is chasing more than just a woman…
It’s partly about the foundations of the screen writer’s union, so a super relevant read for right now with the strike!!!
5 stars for excellent storytelling, but more importantly a strong woman character.
It’s partly about the foundations of the screen writer’s union, so a super relevant read for right now with the strike!!!
5 stars for excellent storytelling, but more importantly a strong woman character.
January 11, 2022
Absolutely fabulous look at humanity. There are Glicks everywhere - But often, you have to dig deep enough to understand how they became who they are.
February 18, 2025
I just couldn't get into this. The first page immediately grabbed me, but then it started to become more and more annoying. The protagonist came across as whiney and "whoa is me". Glick was unlikeable (shocker). In short, it just wasn't that compelling of a story.
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