Happy birthday, Budd Schulberg

It is the birthday of writer and television producer Budd Schulberg (1914), who is remembered for his novels What Make Sammy Run? (1941) and The Harder They Fall (1947), his Oscar-winning screenplay On the Waterfront (1954) and his screenplay A Face in the Crowd (1957). His father was a Hollywood producer and his mother was a talent agent. What Makes Sammy Run? depicts the harsh reality of stardom in Hollywood. With his brother Stuart, Schulberg co-produced his film Wind Across the Everglades (1958). It was directed by Nicholas Ray.

Schulberg wrote of Hollywood, boxing

Budd Schulberg

It is the birthday of writer Budd Schulberg (1914), whose novel What Makes Sammy Run? (1941) was a best seller. It exposes the seamy side of Hollywood in the 1930s, with all the power grabbing and backstabbing and scrambling to the top of the filmmaking industry. Schulberg's father was a producer and his mother ran a talent agency. The story of the book was also produced as a Broadway musical. Schulberg's book The Disenchanted (1950) was considered to be about his encounter with a boozy F. Scott Fitzgerald while at Dartmouth College. Schulberg also wrote The Harder They Fall (1954), about corruption in the boxing game. It became a 1956 movie, with Humphrey Bogart in his last film role. For a time, Schulberg wrote for Sports Illustrated. Schulberg also wrote the screenplay for On the Waterfront (1954), which won eight Academy Awards, including best screenplay. The screenplay was based on a 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning series by Malcolm Johnson published in the New York Sun. What Schulberg wrote was changed by the time it got to the screen, so Schulberg later published a novel called Waterfront that was closer to the original screenplay.