Budd Schulberg, who wrote a novel that defined the Hollywood hustle and later won an Oscar for the screenplay of the Marlon Brando classic “On the Waterfront,” died Aug. 5 at age 95.
Schulberg, who died of natural causes at his home in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., was first known for the novel “What Makes Sammy Run?” Published in 1941, it follows the shameless adventures of Sammy Glick (born Shmelka Glickstein) as he steals, shmoozes and backstabs his way from office boy at a New York newspaper to production chief at a major Hollywood studio.
Some Jews were concerned that Glick would reinforce negative stereotypes. But Schulberg responded that many of Glick’s victims were Jewish. Schulberg often cited a quote by writer and poet Dorothy Parker: “Those who hail us Jews as brothers must allow us to have our villains, the same, alas, as any other race.”
In later years, Schulberg was dismayed when young people cited Glick as a role model.
“I grew up hating him,” he said. “Now I’m being made to feel as if I’d written a how-to book: ‘How to Succeed in Business While Really Trying.’ ”
Schulberg’s Glick was an insider’s account, and Hollywood responded as it would to one of its own: fascinated and betrayed. Everybody from movie executives to columnist Walter Winchell was convinced he or she knew the real-life model for Glick. Schulberg later said he based the character on numerous hustlers he had encountered.
Like Glick, Schulberg had working knowledge of the movie business; he was the son of B.P. Schulberg, a Paramount studio head. And like the “On the Waterfront” hero Terry Malloy, who testifies about corruption on the docks, Schulberg informed on his peers.
“What I had, when I read through my notebook, was not a single person but a pattern of behavior,” Schulberg later wrote.
The model for countless Hollywood satires to come, Schulberg’s novel was adapted for television, Broadway (a flop musical starring Steve Lawrence), but, ironically, has waited decades to be made into a film. A planned DreamWorks production featuring Ben Stiller was “in development” in recent years.
“I have a feeling they’re not going to do it,” Schulberg said in 2006.
Schulberg also wrote the screenplay for “On the Waterfront,” directed by Elia Kazan and filmed in Hoboken, N.J. It was released in 1954 to great acclaim and won eight Academy Awards. It included one of cinema’s most famous lines: “I coulda been a contender.”
Schulberg remained active in his 90s, collaborating in 2008 on a stage version of “On the Waterfront” presented at the famous Fringe arts festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. He told the New York Times that he always felt Brando’s character should realistically have been killed in the end for testifying against organized crime. But the director of the festival play stuck with a happy ending, just as Kazan had done a half-century earlier, Schulberg said.