What Makes Sammy Run? (1941 and 1959)

After watching the 1959 "Summer Showcase" TV adaptation of Budd Schulberg's 1941 novel "What Makes Sammy Run?" I decided to go to the source material. As I almost always do when I experience media in that order, I wish I had read the book first. However, in this case, I actually liked the TV version better then the original print incarnation.

Schulberg's story of a go-getter who hustles his way up from copy boy at a New York newspaper to screenwriter in Hollywood to studio boss is a biting, sometimes bitter account of the back-stabbing world of moviemaking. It was controversial in 1941, and it's still relevant today. Even if by now we've read countless insider accounts of how people screw each other over in the Industry, especially accounts by screenwriters, "What Makes Sammy Run?" still feels potent.

Sammy Glick is an amoral, self-absorbed jerk, and Schulberg indicates that makes him a perfect candidate to get ahead--maybe not just in Hollywood, but anywhere. Trying to figure out what makes Glick tick--what makes him "run"--is Al Manheim, a decent guy who is there at the newspaper when Glick starts his rise and eventually works with him and under him as a movie writer. Manheim narrates the novel with mixed feelings of awe, envy, and hatred as he traces the saga of Glick, who considers Al his only friend because he's the only one who doesn't try to hustle him.

It's a fun book, and most of it holds up nearly 70 years later. Yet I think the TV version, with John Forsythe as Manheim and Larry Blyden as Glick, improves on it. Yes, it does water down the original quite a bit. Several key themes of the novel--the Jewishness, the sex, the communism--are pushed aside or dramatically downplayed in the 1959 teleplay. But the story moves faster and doesn't suffer. In fact, the removal (more or less) of a big Writer's Guild storyline actually boosts the narrative and makes the story smoother.

Having to condense a few hundred pages of prose into 100 minutes or so of TV leads to another solid creative decision. Late in the novel, Manheim goes to Sammy's childhood home and neighborhood to learn about his upbringing. In other words, yep, it's the dreaded "back story." Manheim learns things that don't necessarily excuse Glick's behavior and personality, but they sure go a long way towards explaining them. In and of itself, this section isn't terrible, but it does remove one from the story at an important stage.

I prefer the TV version, in which Glick's background is more mysterious. The character isn't so much explained, but more just IS, and it makes him more compelling. Although Glick isn't quite on the level of Hannibal Lecter, it's like making a movie (or writing a novel, for that matter) to explain why the man is the way he is. Sometimes it's better to just let him be without a big back story. Now, in Schulberg's case, he is making statements about Jewish and cultural identity, but the TV adaptation drops these themes and gains a tighter narrative.

Incidentally, Koch Vision did a heck of a job putting "What Makes Sammy Run?" on DVD. The show doesn't look great, but for a 50-year-old production, it's more than acceptable. Plus Koch includes cool bonuses such as an audio commentary with co-stars Barbara Rush and Dina Merrill. There's even a lengthy interview with Schulberg himself, all 94 years of him.

If I were to pick just one version of this story to experience again, I'd go to the DVD. Part of it is story-related, part of it is the riveting performances (Blyden's Glick is amazing), part of it is simply the charm the so-called Golden Age of TV has for me. However, if you're into Hollywood exposes, you'll enjoy the novel as well, and I recommend you try to read it first.