Budd Schulberg: “What Makes Sammy Run?”

Budd Schulberg died a few weeks ago at age 94. His was an eventful life: son of B.P. Schulberg, the head of Paramount Pictures in the 1930s, screenwriter (“On The Waterfront,” “A Face In The Crowd”), novelist (“What Makes Sammy Run?”, “The Disenchanted,” based on Schulberg’s friendship with F. Scott Fitzgerald), communist when young, then a cooperative witness before HUAC, boxing writer, founder of the Watts Writers Workshop after the riots in Los Angeles in 1965.
As a novelist, “What Makes Sammy Run?” remains his most famous book. Written in 1941, the novel draws a scathing profile of a character of limitless ambition and limited ethics—a character as pertinent today as when first written. Describe someone as a Sammy Glick and you need say no more (assuming that your listener has some literary knowledge and is of a certain age).
The novel has never been filmed, although the rights were optioned a few years ago for Ben Stiller. But an excellent two-part TV version aired on NBC’s Sunday Showcase in 1959 with Larry Blyden as Sammy, supported by John Forsthye, Barbara Rush, Dina Merrill and the great David Opatoshu. Directed by Delbert Mann (“Marty”).
Appearing at the end of the Golden Age of television and produced in New York, the adaptation appears to have been videotaped, a technology then new to the medium (I may be wrong on this—perhaps it was shot live, but a few swift scene shifts indicate otherwise). To deal with time constraints, the novel has been compressed (gone is a sub-plot involving the formation of a writers’ union), but little is lost in the way of Sammy’s take-no-prisoners approach to life. Blyden is quite good, convincingly playing Sammy first as a young copyboy with boundless ambitions, then a man who over the years scrambles and cheats and connives to ultimately head a movie studio.
Schulberg took much grief for his friendly witnessing before HUAC, and “On The Waterfront” clearly can be interpreted as a defense for what he—and director Elia Kazan-- did. Marlon Brando’s Terry Molloy testifies against dock boss Johnny Friendly and his cronies, receives a savage beating but struggles up to the loading dock to report for work. Interestingly, Terry is less lucky in Schulberg’s novel, “Waterfront,” published in 1955, the year after the movie debuted. Shortly after testifying, Terry disappears, and Schulberg writes: “ . . . the remains of a human being were found in a barrel of lime that had been tossed on one of the multi-acre junk heaps in the Jersey swamps. The coroner’s report after the inquest attributed death to twenty-seven stab wounds apparently inflicted by an ice pick. No next of kin came forward. The lime-mutilated corpse was never identified. But the boys along River Street, pro mob and anti, knew they had seen the last of a pretty tough kid.”
But not, perhaps, as tough as Sammy Glick.

Eric Ambler: “The Light of Day” “Dirty Story” (Books) “Topkapi” (Movie)

Along with Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene, Eric Ambler (1909-1998) helped invent the modern spy novel. He often plunges his characters into dark, politically complex worlds where relative innocence is severely tested by the harshness of reality. He is most famous for 1939’s “Mask of Dimitrios” (“A Coffin for Dimitrios” here), as well as “Journey Into Fear” (1940) and “The Light of Day” (1962), which became the 1964 caper film “Topkapi.”
Arthur Abdel Simpson, half English, half Egyptian and a total rogue, narrates “The Light of Day.” Thief, pimp, pornographer, con artist, he’s also quite observant and wry, a most entertaining character. Also a different kind of "hero" for Ambler. In “The Light of Day” he accidentally infiltrates a clever group of thieves that plans to steal jewels from the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul. He is actually in cahoots with the Turkish police, who will send him to prison if he does not cooperate. At the end, he finds himself atop the museum, barely able to retain his grasp on a rope from which dangles the most acrobatic of the thieves.
Ambler rightly enjoyed his creation enough to bring him back for a second outing, “Dirty Story’ (1967). In this one, Simpson emerges triumphant after adventures in Africa. Like Harry Flashman, Simpson is captivating not despite of his flaws but because of them—and because he so wholeheartedly embraces his vices.
Our old friend Jules Dassin (“Rififi,” “Night and the City,” “The Naked City”) adapted “The Light of Day,” somewhat softening the characters but adding one or two excellent suspense scenes. "Topkapi" benefits from Peter Ustinov’s Oscar-winning turn as Simpson, and the tenseness of the actual caper. In the book, narrated by Simpson, we are left on the roof of the museum, but in the movie we go in with one of the thieves, and see how narrowly he escapes detection.
The female lead is Melina Mercouri, who was Dassin’s wife. For me, a little bit of Mercouri goes a long way, but she is uncharacteristically restrained most of the time. Dassin is a bit too in love with his band of thieves, but the film benefits from one of Dassin’s signatures: shooting on location, in this case Greece and Turkey.
As for Eric Ambler, several of his novels remain in print, and any good library should have a few on the shelves. If you’ve read and enjoyed Alan Furst’s evocative thrillers, you’ll appreciate Ambler’s stylish, trailblazing work.