Plot Summary for What Makes Sammy Run – Budd Schulberg

What makes Sammy Run? Budd Schulberg Plot unofficial Told in first person narrative by Al Manheim, drama critic of The sore York Record, this is the twaddle of Sammy Glick, a young uneducated boy who rises from copy boy to the tallness of the screenwriting profession in thirty-something Hollywood by backstabbingothers. Manheim recalls how he first met the 16-year-old Sammy Glick when Sammy was controling as a copy boy at Manheims newspaper. Both awed and disturbed by Sammys aggressive personality, Manheim becomes Sammys primary observer, mentor and, as Sammy asserts numerous times, his silk hat friend.Tasked with taking Manheims column d deliver to the printing room, unitary day Glick rewrites Manheims column, impressing the managing editor and gaining a column of his own. afterward he steals a piece by an aspiring young writer, Julian Blumberg, sending it under his own name to the famous Hollywood talent agent Myron Selznick. Glick sells the piece, Girl Steals Boy, for $10 ,000 and leaves the paper to go to work in Hollywood, leaving behind his girlfriend, Rosalie Goldbaum. When the film of Girl Steals Boy opens, Sammy is credited for original screenplay and Blumberg is not acknowledged.Glick rises to the top in Hollywood over the succeeding years, paying Blumberg a small salary under the control panel to be his ghost writer. He even manages to have his stageplay Live Wire performed at the Hollywood Playhouse, although the al-Quran is actually a case of plagiarism, The Front Page in flimsy disguise strangely enough, no one except Manheim seems to notice. Sammys bluffing also includes talking about books he has never read. Manheim, whose desires are much more than modest, is both fascinated and disgusted by the figure of Sammy Glick, and Manheim carefully chronicles his rise.In Hollywood, Manheim is disheartened to learn that Catherine Kit Sargent, a novelist and screenwriter he greatly admires, has fallen for Sammys charms. Although Manheim is qui te open about his feelings for Kit, she makes it clear that it is Sammy she prefers, especially in bed. When she met Sammy, she tells Manheim, she had this crazy desire to know what it felt like to have all that driving ambition and furiousness and violence inside me. Manheim also describes the Hollywood system in detail, as a money cable car oppressive to talented writers.The bosses prefer to have carte blanche when dealing with their writers, ranging from having them work on a week-to-week stern to giving them a seven-year contract. In the film industry, Manheim remarks at one point in the novel, it is the rule quite a than the exception that convictions are for sale, with people double-crossing each other whenever the slightest chance presents itself to them. Hollywood, he notices, regularly and efficiently turns out three products moving pictures, ambition, and fear.Manheim becomes an eyewitness to the birth of what was to become the Writers Guild, an organization created to protect the interests of the screenwriters. After one of the studios periodic reshufflings, Manheim finds himself out of work and goes back to New York. There, still preoccupied with Sammy Glicks rise to stardom, he investigates Sammys past. He comes to understand, at least to some degree, the machinery that turns out Sammy Glicks and the anarchy of the poor.Manheim realizes that Sammy grew up in the dog-eat-dog world of New Yorks Lower East Side (Rivington alley), much like the more sophisticated dog-eat-dog world of Hollywood. The one confederacy between Sammys childhood days and his present position seems to be Sheik, someone who went to school with him and regularly do the dishes him up. Now Sheik is working as Glicks personal servant (or almost slave)possibly some shape of belated act of revenge on Sammys part, or the victims triumph. When Manheim returns to Hollywood he becomes one of Glicks writers.There he realizes that there is also a small minority of honorable men working in pictures, especially producer Sidney Fineman, Glicks boss. Manheim teams up with Kit Sargent to write several films for Glick, who has successfully switched to production and moved into a abundant manor in Beverly Hills. Finemans position becomes compromised by a string of flops, and Manheim attempts to convince Harrington, a Wall Street banker representing the film companys financiers, that Fineman is still the right man for the job. This is the moment when Glick sees his chance to get rid of Fineman altogether and beat back his place.At a reception, Glick meets Laurette, Harringtons daughter he immediately and genuinely falls in love with this golden girl, discarding his girlfriend. He feels that he is about to kill two birds with one stone by uniting his personal ambition and his love life. Fineman, only 56, dies soon after losing his job to Sammyof a broken heart, it is rumoured. Sammys wedding is described by Manheim as a marriage-to-end-all-marriages staged in the beautiful setting of Sammys estate. Manheim and Kit Sargent, who have finally discrete to get married, slip away early to be by themselves.Sammy discovers Laurette making love in the client room to Carter Judd, an actor Sammy has just hired. Laurette is not repentant She coldbloodedly admits that she considers their marriage to be purely a craft affair. Sammy calls Manheim and asks him to come over to his place immediately. Once there, Manheim for the first time witnesses a self-conscious, desperate, and suffering Sammy Glick who cannot stand being alone in his big house. In the end, Sammy orders Sheik to get him a prostitute, while Manheim drives home.