Hollywood is the perfect place for Sammy Glick. His only talent is the ability to ruthlessly usurp the talent of others as he steps on their back to get ahead. He starts out as a copy boy for a New York newspaper and quickly learns how to game the system. While he has no scruples, his boss at the paper, Al Manheim, has a moral conscience and an obsession with figuring out "what makes Sammy run." Al both despises and is drawn to Sammy. After Sammy makes his way to Los Angeles, where he works as a writer for one of the big studios, Al ends up there as well. But Sammy, an alpha in a dog eat dog world, doesn't write - he steals the writing of a nebbishy colleague. Surrounding himself with the rich, powerful and beautiful, he has an uncanny knack for being at the right place at the right time. He soon becomes a producer. As Al starts piecing together Sammy's back story he realizes that Sammy is climbing up the ladder of success but it's a rope with no end in sight. While he strives for money, power, and prestige he never stops to see the collateral damage he causes. He doesn't care who he hurts or alienates on his way to the top because he has no regard for his fellow man. This is a powerful morality tale, an inside look at the Hollywood machine, and a timeless page-turner written in 1941.
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About the author
Ruthlessness Rules
What is it about human nature that attracts us to outrageous people? Even in our weakest moments, most of us have a code of ethics. Yet we’re fascinated, if repulsed, by those who have none. Al Manheim, the narrator of What Makes Sammy Run?, is obsessed with Sammy Glick, an ambitious copyboy at the newspaper where Al writes a theatre column. One minute Al is ordering Sammy around. The next, Sammy has published his own column using stolen material. Before Al can recover, Sammy is in Hollywood, plagiarizing his way into script writing. What drives this 1941 novel is Sammy’s brazenly relentless pace that keeps Al mesmerized and the reader turning the pages. There is no lie he won’t tell, no trick he won’t pull, no friend he won’t betray to get what he wants. His drive to power reflects the ruthless Hollywood studio system which chews up talented screenwriters while guys like Sammy prey on their ambitions to feed his own. As Al remarks to a colleague, “Sammy’s built like a boomerang. The harder you try to throw him out the faster he comes back.” Even in Hollywood there are good people like Julian Blumberg, a writer who wants only to make a decent living, and Rosalie Goldbaum, a romantic interest. Sammy steamrolls over both of them. As much as he hates Sammy, Al decides to investigate his background. The result is a disturbing vision of big-city poverty that fosters an adapt-or-die mentality. Equally disturbing is the vein of antisemitism that runs through this novel, although the author himself was Jewish. Profanity and indirect sexual references deepen one’s sense that beneath Hollywood’s glitzy veneer is a festering corruption that breeds people like Sammy and ultimately leads to their downfall.
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- col2910Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 4, 2016
The original Gordon Gekko?
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as recommended by Bette Davis
