About the book
Al Manheim, who reviews drama for The New York Record, narrates Budd Schulberg's novel about Sammy Glick, whom he first meets as a 16-year-old copyboy at the paper. Sammy, a boy from New York's Lower East Side, decided early in life to escape the ghetto and climb by deception and betrayal. Both awed and disturbed by him, Manheim becomes his chief observer and, in Sammy's own telling, his best friend as the young man pushes into the screenwriting trade in 1930s Hollywood. Schulberg, screenwriter of On the Waterfront, took his inspiration from the life of his own father, the early Hollywood mogul B. P. Schulberg. The story later became a Broadway musical in 1965.
Ryan Holiday put it on his Books to Base Your Life On reading list, describing Sammy Glick as Ari Gold before Ari Gold existed and noting that the character was purportedly based on Samuel Goldwyn and Darryl Zanuck.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Ryan Holiday (Founder/Brass Check)
Budd Schulberg’s (who wrote the screenplay for On the Waterfront) whole trilogy is amazing and each captures a different historical era. His first, What Makes Sammy Run? is Ari Gold before Ari Gold existed–purportedly based on Samuel Goldwyn (of MGM) and Darryl Zanuck. His next book, The Harder They Fall is about boxing and loosely based on the Primo Carnera scandal. All you need to know about Schulberg’s writing is captured in this quote from his obituary: “It’s the writer’s responsibility to stand up against that power. The writers are really almost the only ones, except for very honest politicians, who can make any dent on that system. I tried to do that. And that’s affected me my whole life.” Fiction can do that, and sometimes it does it even better than non-fiction.
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