Sammy Glick

I want to thank you for giving your readers the opportunity to know Budd Schulberg better. His article on "What Makes Sammy Run" was a gem ("Schulberg's 'Sammy' as a Role Model for Our Time" by Budd Schulberg, Sept. 3). In addition to showing his prowess with words, it also laid bare the "do-it-to-him-before-he-does-it-to-me" mentality prevalent today. Incredibly, Sammy Glick is no longer a despicable character--he has become a role model for the upwardly mobile. Many years ago when we were very young indeed, I knew Budd and his family; we both grew up in Los Angeles.

The great and terrible Sammy Glick embodies everything that is wrong with Hollywood. Smart and ruthless, savvy and crude, he'll do anything to claw his way up the ladder of success in Tinseltown. Glick was the iconic creation of novelist and Oscar-winning writer Budd Schulberg ("On the Waterfront"), who died on Wednesday. Schulberg introduced the world to Glick in his 1941 novel "What Makes Sammy Run?" The controversial bestseller put the young Schulberg on the map. Over the decades, the name Sammy Glick became synonymous with coldblooded ambition -- he's a Hollywood type with offspring both fictional and real.

Most people, when they hear the word star think beautiful, glamorous, appealing, or at least macho or sexy. Not Budd Schulberg. Star , to him, brings forth visions of whores, whoremasters and all things evil. The word is like the dinner bell to Pavlov's dog. Budd salivates, gets sick to his stomach and wants to crawl under the table. Seated at the dinner table as a child, waiting for his father (B. P.

As noted in "How Sammy Still Runs" [June 5], "Sammy hasn't just survived, he thrives everywhere in showbiz." What a sad commentary. Instead of being condemned, these liars and cheaters are not only well rewarded but are also applauded by so many. Do we really want Sammy Glick or his present incarnation to be the model for today's youth? Whatever happened to the idea that character counts -- good character that is. Alvin Milder Los Angeles

After 50 years of betraying friends, stabbing strangers in the back and discovering new ways to claw his way to the top, Sammy Glick is still running. "What Makes Sammy Run," America's classic novel of the amoral hustler, has just been issued in a 50th anniversary edition and is soon to be made into a movie. And its creator, Budd Schulberg, said he plans to write another novel about the man no one likes.

Industry observers have said for years that there's no audience for movies about Hollywood. These are probably the same folks who said you couldn't sell tickets to baseball movies until "Bull Durham" or Westerns until "Dances With Wolves." Robert Altman's "The Player" could change the conventional wisdom about Hollywood movies.

The great and terrible Sammy Glick embodies everything that is wrong with Hollywood. Smart and ruthless, savvy and crude, he'll do anything to claw his way up the ladder of success in Tinseltown. Glick was the iconic creation of novelist and Oscar-winning writer Budd Schulberg ("On the Waterfront"), who died on Wednesday. Schulberg introduced the world to Glick in his 1941 novel "What Makes Sammy Run?" The controversial bestseller put the young Schulberg on the map. Over the decades, the name Sammy Glick became synonymous with coldblooded ambition -- he's a Hollywood type with offspring both fictional and real.

As noted in "How Sammy Still Runs" [June 5], "Sammy hasn't just survived, he thrives everywhere in showbiz." What a sad commentary. Instead of being condemned, these liars and cheaters are not only well rewarded but are also applauded by so many. Do we really want Sammy Glick or his present incarnation to be the model for today's youth? Whatever happened to the idea that character counts -- good character that is. Alvin Milder Los Angeles

So Brandon Tartikoff is proud of the fact that more people watched "The Trial of the Incredible Hulk" than "War and Remembrance" ("Tartikoff: Thriving in an Unsurvivable Job" by Diane Haithman, July 2)? It proves he doesn't care what schlock he shoves down the throats of the American public so NBC can remain No. 1 in the ratings. Talk about Sammy Glick! JACK KAYE Los Angeles

Writer Budd Schulberg, in his May 13 letter, is right in allowing that Hollywood's business climate is not much different from the rest of the country but wrong in limiting his observation to the United States. He seems part of that peculiarly American conceit that Americans are a different form of human species. Schulberg's notorious character Sammy Glick is not unknown in London, Paris and Rome. And there are many places in the world where his form of venality would rate as rank amateurism.

There's a piano in the living room at Budd Schulberg's old home in Hancock Park, just as there was 75 years ago when Schulberg was a boy, living there with his family, right around the corner from the Barrymores and Louis B. Mayer, his father's old business partner. The Schulbergs were Hollywood royalty back then. Budd's father, B.P. Schulberg, was head of Paramount Pictures, which meant that a cavalcade of stars often lighted up their living room, the piano getting quite a workout.

He passes off as his own scripts that were ghostwritten for him by a naive -- and hungry -- screenwriter. He does his best to sabotage the Writers Guild. He suggests to the studio's corporate owners that the present head of production is too old and out of touch with the movies' youthful core audience, then, when he succeeds to the job, cries copious tears at his predecessor's memorial service. His manservant is widely rumored to be a mobster, which lends a dark criminal glamour to his doings.

What have you done? Samuel Goldwyn, his face flushed with rage, had just ordered the young screenwriter into his office. What have you done? For a brief, naive moment, Budd Schulberg shrugged it off. Sure, most of the folks in Hollywood couldn't stand the gruff producer: Goldwyn was outrageous, tantrums were de rigueur. But Schulberg liked him just fine. At least Goldwyn seemed happy with his work.

Industry observers have said for years that there's no audience for movies about Hollywood. These are probably the same folks who said you couldn't sell tickets to baseball movies until "Bull Durham" or Westerns until "Dances With Wolves." Robert Altman's "The Player" could change the conventional wisdom about Hollywood movies.

If the fictional Sammy Glick, role model for the Gordon Geckos of our time, primo back-stabber to the stars and schlock overachiever of the '30s, should in whatever reprehensible form return to our glitzy shores, he would find it not only difficult to have lunch in this town again, but he'd have to find employment in a seemingly different Hollywood. Most likely he'd be working for a Japanese electronics giant. Or an Italian entrepreneur. Or an Australian media operator.

I read with great interest Jeffrey Hayden's pithy recounting of life among credentialed movie moguls ("Sammy Glick? Sure, Sammy and I Go way Back," Book Review, April 29). Having worked (as a film designer) with and among Jerry Wald, Buddy Adler and Dore Schary throughout my early career, I can tell you firsthand all three could be meteoric; unpredictable; maddening; sometimes insincere; very often a pain in the butt. But they were also moviemakers . Unlike the "new Hollywood," Schary, Adler and Wald cared deeply about this business of show.

I read with great interest Jeffrey Hayden's pithy recounting of life among credentialed movie moguls ("Sammy Glick? Sure, Sammy and I Go way Back," Book Review, April 29). Having worked (as a film designer) with and among Jerry Wald, Buddy Adler and Dore Schary throughout my early career, I can tell you firsthand all three could be meteoric; unpredictable; maddening; sometimes insincere; very often a pain in the butt. But they were also moviemakers . Unlike the "new Hollywood," Schary, Adler and Wald cared deeply about this business of show.

If the fictional Sammy Glick, role model for the Gordon Geckos of our time, primo back-stabber to the stars and schlock overachiever of the '30s, should in whatever reprehensible form return to our glitzy shores, he would find it not only difficult to have lunch in this town again, but he'd have to find employment in a seemingly different Hollywood. Most likely he'd be working for a Japanese electronics giant. Or an Italian entrepreneur. Or an Australian media operator.

Writer Budd Schulberg, in his May 13 letter, is right in allowing that Hollywood's business climate is not much different from the rest of the country but wrong in limiting his observation to the United States. He seems part of that peculiarly American conceit that Americans are a different form of human species. Schulberg's notorious character Sammy Glick is not unknown in London, Paris and Rome. And there are many places in the world where his form of venality would rate as rank amateurism.

Most people, when they hear the word star think beautiful, glamorous, appealing, or at least macho or sexy. Not Budd Schulberg. Star , to him, brings forth visions of whores, whoremasters and all things evil. The word is like the dinner bell to Pavlov's dog. Budd salivates, gets sick to his stomach and wants to crawl under the table. Seated at the dinner table as a child, waiting for his father (B. P.