Sammy Stops Running

Ari Gold, as everyone knows, is copying from the playbook of Ari Emanuel. But Ari Emanuel,and pretty much everybody like him, is imitating, intentionally or otherwise, Sammy Glick. Glick, the poor Lower East Side kid who screws over everyone in his efforts to make it as a Hollywood hotshot, is the protagonist of What Makes Sammy Run, the classic of both American and Jewish literature whose author,Budd Schulberg, just died. It was the book that Schulberg, whose father B.P, was production chief at Paramount, was literally born to write. He was no one hit wonder, and he continued to write important novels and screenplays, including the boxing exposeThe Harder They Fall(later made into a film starring Humphrey Bogart), and of course, On the Waterfront. Schulberg’s life was not without controversy, and during the 1940’s, he named names before HUAC. While the traditional leftie account of things makes that period one of readily identifiable good guys and bad guys, naming names was not as clear cut as Seinfeld makes it out to be. While there were any number of good reasons why an idealistic young man, like Schulberg himself, would join the party in the ’30’s, there are equally compelling reasons why a disillusioned middle-aged one would turn against it many years and millions of victims of Stalin later. And while HUAC certainly abused its authority, the Party itself had long imposed censorship and squashed dissent among its members (and used their influence against its enemies). Ultimately, though, Schulberg should be judged by the standard of all great writers–not by what he said, but by what he wrote.

What do you think?

About The Author

jewdar

The Tel Aviv-born, Milwaukee-bred Jewdar has a bachelors' from the University of Wisconsin, a Masters from NYU, and an Honorable Discharge from the US Army, where he spent two years as an infantryman in the 101st Airborne Division. He's the co-author of "The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies", the Humor Editor of Heeb Magazine, and a watcher of TV. Smarter than most funny people, funnier than most smart people, he lives on the Lower East Side with his wife and two sons.

16 Responses

  1. mrnhghts

    While there were any number of good reasons why an idealistic young man, like Schulberg himself, would join the party in the ’30’s

    Not really, oh cryptic one. In fact, very “good reasons” not to join THE COMMIES were well understood in the Jew

    Reply
  2. jewdar
    jewdar

    If you were antiracist in the 1930’s, the Party seemed a good choice.
    If you were antifascist in the 1930’s, the party seemed a very good choice–Schulberg joined in ’37, when the Party seemed (and I stress, seemed) to be on the frontlines against fascis

    Reply
  3. mrnhghts

    If you were antiracist in the 1930’s, the Party seemed a good choice.
    If you were antifascist in the 1930’s, the party seemed a very good choice

    The far-Left of today also seems like a “good choice” if one is to focus solely on such issues. An

    Reply
  4. jewdar
    jewdar

    Please note, I didn’t say that it was the right choice to make, only that there were good reasons to do so. And there is also a difference between Old Left and New. Anti-fascism in the 1930’s had a very different meaning in 1937 than in 1967. So did an

    Reply
  5. mrnhghts

    If it makes you feel better about my consistency regarding tyranny, I’m fine with saying that there were “good reasons” to support the Nazis in 1932.

    Ok. That’s kind of strange, but it is consistent.

    As for Social Democrats, the Forwar

    Reply
  6. jewdar
    jewdar

    Obviously some people saw it as despotic, and some people saw it as anti Jewish. You didn’t need to quote Cahan to prove that (though, to be honest, your quote doesn’t demonstrate that he thought it was anti-Jewish, only that it was despotic). I simply

    Reply
  7. mrnhghts

    Puck, we’re not. Just when they get too radical, they get too much like the far-right.

    Reply
  8. jewdar
    jewdar

    My comment wasn’t meant to get in anyone’s grill; I just meant that rather than arguing with me, who actually agrees with him about the USSR and the delusions that many Jews had about it, his real issues are with the kinds of people who still think the Ro

    Reply
  9. Puck

    In my experiene people don’t generally pick a political party due to a single issue, but rather a broader raft of ideological compatability. Certainly there are going to be extremists on the left of right that are also Jewish, but no doubt there are many

    Reply
  10. jewdar
    jewdar

    Correction, mrnghts–wear that “Roy Cohn was right” t-shirt to Puck’s house.

    Reply

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