Budd Schulberg 1914-2009

Posted on Thursday August 6, 2009, 12:02 by Ian Freer in Off The Wire

The sad news of Budd Schulberg’s passing (click here for the obit) marks the end of of an era for a certain kind of Hollywood screenwriter. Schulberg’s debut novel What Makes Sammy Run?, a scathing attack on Hollywood, provoked so much ire that Louis B. Mayer suggested that Schulberg be deported (ironic given that Schulberg was actually from Hollywood, a film industry rarity) and saw John Wayne challenge Schulberg to a fist fight, the actor getting the writer into a headlock . In a supremely colourful life, Schulberg sparred with Muhammad Ali, nearly came to blows with Ernest Hemingway and accompanied Robert Kennedy to the kitchen at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of his assassination. You can imagine any of this happening to any of today’s screenwriters, drafting yet another Fast And Furious sequel on a MacBook sipping on frappuccino.

But why Schulberg is that rare breed — especially compared to today’s writers — is that his work was about something. Schulberg’s decision to spill the beans on 17 Hollywood members of the communist party to the House Of Un-American Activities Committee may seem dubious, but, at the very least, this sense of principles was parlayed into his work that never failed to explore complex issues in an intelligent manner; Face In The Crowd is a pulverising, prescient attack on the cult of celebrity and, of course, On The Waterfront, with its story of Brando’s longshoreman tackling the vicious mob controlling the dockworkers union, plays on the very issues of conscience that informed Schulberg’s own life.

But the sad thing is that Schulberg’s legacy is only really felt in mainstream Hollywood during the months of November and December when studios are jockeying for Awards glory. These days, it is practically impossible for the mid-range social conscience film to be a regular part of the movie-going diet— the kind of thing that Elia Kazan and Stanley Kramer used to do — unless George Clooney has agreed to do another Ocean’s flick to bankroll it. And that’s a sad state of affairs, isn’t it?