What Makes Sammy Run?

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1941

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Character Analysis

Themes

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Background

Historical Context: The Studio System and the Rise of Organized Labor

The novel is set in 1930s Hollywood, at the peak of the studio system—an era in which a few large conglomerates, including MGM, Paramount, Warner Brothers, and RKO Pictures, controlled both production and distribution of the vast majority of films. Schulberg satirizes the gritty behind the scenes world of power-hungry producers, writers, and actors. Contemporary politics also play a significant role, with frequent references to the rise of Hitler in Germany and American political scandals of the day. The book skewers Hollywood’s reluctance to engage with politics, as producers worry that taking an antifascist stance would alienate the European market.

Studios in this era were so powerful that they could exert significant political pressure on their employees. Even leading actors had severely limited autonomy, as they were under contract with studios that could decide which projects they worked on or whether they worked at all. Studios pushed their employees to vote in the way that the studio shareholders wanted, and they used their power to silence their contractors’ political speech. The rise of union organizing in the 1930s became a major source of tension within this system. As the book explores, studios would often use underhanded tactics to make unions seem unviable and disorganized, sending in scabs to affect union votes and pressuring people to disavow the union or lose their jobs.

Authorial Context: Budd Schulberg

Budd Schulberg was born in 1914 to B. P. Schulberg and Adeline Jaffe. Both of his parents worked in Hollywood—his father as a producer at Paramount, and his mother as a talent agent. They were also both of Eastern European Jewish descent. Both were involved with some of the biggest stars of the early 20th century, from Clara Bow to Marlene Deitrich. His father was involved in the United Artists incident in 1919, in which he helped convince the major stars of the time (D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks) to start up their own production company instead of depending on the studios.

He faced much backlash for his publication of What Makes Sammy Run?, largely for his portrayal of Sammy. Some Jewish critics felt that the depiction of Sammy as a scheming, power hungry figure reflected antisemitic stereotypes, particularly as the book was published in 1941, as WWII raged on. Schulberg argued against this criticism, pointing out that most of his characters were Jewish, and that significantly most of Sammy’s victims were Jewish. The novel also faced backlash from major Hollywood figures who were concerned about its portrayal of the industry. The son of a powerful producer, Schulberg drew from real life in his creation of the novel’s portrayal of Hollywood, and he has said that his father was a major inspiration for the character of Sammy. Finally, the book also faced backlash from the Communist Party, of which Schulberg was a member. They tried to force changes in the book, which Schulberg refused.

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Schulberg later worked for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) during the war, gathering evidence for the Nuremberg trials. He went on to write the screenplay for On the Waterfront (1954) starring Marlon Brando, for which Schulberg won an Oscar. More controversially, Schulberg also acted as an informant for the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) as he was still upset at the leaders of the Communist Party for attempting to interfere with the publication of What Makes Sammy Run?. Schulberg died in 2009 at his home in New York.