RIP: Budd Schulberg

Per the Daily Variety:

Iconoclastic writer Budd Schulberg, who penned the controversial Hollywood novels "What Makes Sammy Run?" and "The Disenchanted" and who won an Oscar for his original screenplay "On the Waterfront," died of natural causes Wednesday at his home in Westhampton Beach, on Long Island, according to his wife Betsy. He was 95.

Ironically what Schulberg may have been best known for was his book "What Makes Sammy Run," which was never made into a movie:

Schulberg's influence over Hollywood was strong. The Sammy Glick character from "What Makes Sammy Run" is the paradigm of power-driven, amoral studio executives.

Although "What Makes Sammy Run" was never made into a film -- it reached Broadway as a musical in the 1960s, and Schulberg himself directed a 1959 TV adaptation -- works as varied as "The Player" and "Sweet Smell of Success" owe a debt to Schulberg's tale. His novel "The Disenchanted," another bitter tale of Hollywood, also cast a long shadow over the public's perception of the fate of such literary figures as F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner and the time they spent in Los Angeles as screenwriters.

My favorite bit in the Daily Variety notice is this:

Schulberg continued to write in his later years, in pieces for Vanity Fair and Variety's V Life, and was at work on a number of book projects at the time of his death, including a followup to his memoirs, a novel version of "On the Waterfront," Betsy Schulberg said.

Once a writer, always a writer.

There's a three-part doc online re Budd Schulberg. It notes upfront, "The only novelist to come from Hollywood, not go to Hollywood." Unfortunately, the first two parts can't be embedded, but the links are here and here. The 3rd part can be embedded, so here it is:



Godspeed, Budd Schulberg.