Donald Tokowitz, better known by his taken name Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers from 1981 and until sometime in 2014, bears remarkable resemblance to the mostly forgotten fictional character Sammy Glick. In a ten year sprint, Sammy Glick rises from Jewish ghetto to Hollywood studio mogul. What makes Sammy Run? Budd Schulberg's 1941 best seller asks.
Budd Schulberg's Father headed a Hollywood movie studio head. On the Waterfront is Schulberg’s most famous screenplay. This insider’s view of Hollywood makes What makes Sammy Run? memorable: it's filled with stories of Hollywood and the pressures besetting writers, directors, stars and starlettes. Why not make the bestseller into a movie? After all, On the Waterfront was slightly successful. An industry insider explained What makes Sammy Run? scripts have bounced around Hollywood for years. However, the economics for such a movie are tough: most are not interested in movies about making movies. But the book is really about people, and specifically about one type of person: Sammy Glick.
What makes Sammy Run? opens in New York. Schulberg’s narrator is somewhat talented nice guy Al Mannheim, an established columnist who watches Sammy rise. The novel opens:
“The first time I saw him he couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old, a little ferret of a kid, sharp and quick, Sammy Glick. Used to run copy for me. Always ran. Always ran thirsty.”
Sammy rises from copy boy to columnist by buttering Mannheim up and then doing a little office back stab. Glick writes a play, then uses that to bluff his way into a job as a Hollywood screenwriter. Mannheim ends up in Hollywood as well. He watches Sammy Glick quickly rise from copy boy, to columnist, to screenwriter, up the ranks of screenwriters, and then, by a cunning marriage to a beautiful scion of old money, to head a Hollywood studio. The competition at each stage is fierce. Sammy succeeds through a combination of brash lies, clever self-promotion, and shameless self-serving moves.
Schulberg provides examples of how Sammy thinks, manipulates and maneuvers. Without much writing talent himself, Sammy finds Julian Blumberg, a nebbish fellow, who has some real creative talent and writing skills. Blumberg writes; Sammy takes the credit and the money. Turns out Blumberg actually wrote the play that got Sammy into a plush Hollywood job. Blumberg writes the screenplays for Sammy's stories. He explains:
“[Sammy] spends two hours [in the studio commissary] each day,” Julian said, “This is really where he goes to work. He’s the commissary genius. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed our screen credits or not but they always say—Story by Sammy Glick—screenplay by Sammy Glick and Julian Blumberg. You know where he got all those story credits? Right here in the commissary.”
Money. For those interested in labor/money dynamics,
What makes Sammy Run? has an insider’s view of how the Hollywood unions rose. People like Sammy were driving too hard a bargain, with themselves skimming the profits. Finally the workers needed a union to negotiate themselves more palatable deals. Sammy uses the dispute. He plays both sides and leverages his contacts to obtain for himself a job in studio management. The union leaders—but of course--get screwed.
Meanwhile, Julian and his wife are barely getting. They come to Mannheim and beg for help. Mannheim does. Using some union connections, he forces a bitter, whining, complaining Sammy Glick to cut Julian a better deal: 25% of what Sammy makes on Julian’s work. Mannheim laments the deal and we get one of the world’s great mostly forgotten lines:
“If the ratio of talent to bombast is only one to four, talent is coming up in the world.”
“What makes Sammy run? Look to the childhood,” Mannheim is advised by the successful female WASP.
Mannheim, once a reporter, decides to investigate. He learns that Sammy Glick, like Mr. Sterling who was born Donald Topolski, took another name. He was born Shmelka Glickstein to some honest if poor Jewish parents and grew up in a slum. “What’s your name? Smellya?” other children taunt. And Sammy rises out.
As a boy, Sammy was beaten daily by a neighborhood bully called the Shiekh; when he gets to Hollywood and rises high enough, Glick hires that same bully as his paid sycophant. And the Shiekh makes a few bucks too using Sammy and Sammy’s connections. Glick is tough, loud, brash. Inside, though, he is needy and scared. He has to run, he has to win, or else he’ll die. That’s how he sees the world.
At novel’s end, our narrator Mannheim is shocked to find Sammy Glick considers him Glick's best, perhaps only, friend. Glick is in the throes of something soul shattering. To the outside world, he looks like a grand success. But in all things, in marriage, in friendships, in his personal affairs, most would consider Sammy Glick a miserable failure. Things are really horrible. Glick lives in a mansion so huge it mostly emphasizes how alone he really is. But the only way Glick can get out requires he give up his position as studio head, his over-sized mansion, his prized WASP trophy wife: Glick would become a Hollywood laughing stock. Glick also realizes that the only people who want anything to do with him are those like the Shiekh. And they are only with Glick to the extent they can use him. Glick has no friends. Only people Glick can buy or, at best, acquaintances like Mannheim, who partly marvel at but mostly despise Glick and his actions.
Donald Sterling? Very similar tale to Sammy Glick: poor Jewish boy, changes his name to sound more successful and culturally dominate, super successful, swirling tales of sharp business dealings surround him, always touting his charitable giving and supposed adulation. An 80 year old, Sterling brought his 20-30 something year old gorgeous mistress to basketball games. Sterling sat his mistress courtside. This is the same place his wife of many years often sits. Gall and show-off both.
Here in Los Angeles, stories of Sterling’s purportedly sharp dealings have circulated for years. Some of them have made the papers. I’ve heard others dating back to when the world still knew Sterling as Tokowitz. In order to become so rich as Sterling, unless one invents or write something marvelous and even then one has to stick up for one’s self, a person must be fairly ruthless. To be so rich, it seems to me to usually require a mind-set which believes that other people’s rights are not worth near so much as your own. You know, really selfish with near to a con man’s heart. I’m not endorsing such views, just observing. For men like Sterling or Schulberg’s fictional Sammy Glick, they believe everyone is trying to cheat them and that everyone besides themselves deserves to be fleeced. That includes family and erstwhile friends.
Sterling, like Sammy Glick, wants to be loved. He always has ads running about some charity he is supposedly sponsoring. I always wondered. Sterling seems like the sort who spends more advertising the fact he supposedly donated than he spent on the actual donation itself. A recent story explains how UCLA rejected a Sterling donation after Sterling gave only part of the gift then ran ads in the LA Times which misrepresented what he did and how he did it; other stories detail how Sterling made grand promises, advertised the final result, then never got around to making the actual donation.
Recently, Sterling was caught on tape providing his views on the people who worked for him. Seems to me Sterling was mostly jealous of the famous, wealthy beloved Magic Johnson who he didn’t want hanging around his girlfriend. Of course, Sterling also proved himself scornful of the African Americans who work for him. That group should be disgusted but not too much: I’m sure Sterling feels the same way about everyone who works for him, feels that way about everyone in the world really, including his wife, his family, high school classmates who elected him President, neighbors, other Jews.
In What makes Sammy Run? Sammy complains bitterly at having to pay his ghost writer 25% of his take; Sammy much prefers the way it was previously, when he would steal the story and pay the other writer close to nothing. Many years ago, a story ran how Sterling would slow pay Tom Chambers, a white guy, and how depressing Chambers found that little slight. Back in the day, a story ran about how Sterling would complain the Clipper players always needed new socks. “Can’t the players wash their own socks?” I recall Sterling reportedly complained.
Sterling bought the Clippers for $12.5 million in 1981. Now Forbes estimates it worth $575 million. Even taking into account the bills for buying or washing socks, the Clippers would not be worth so much unless Sterling made a profit each year. But take cheer! When Sterling sells the team, under current law, he’ll get a tax break.
Sterling has had a remarkable run as Clipper’s owner. That team has been so bad for so many years. Just based on averages, it takes the opposite of real talent to be so bad for so long. One player left the Clippers and opined it felt like getting out of jail. In the short run, a cheat for me guy can have success. But over the long run, he spends a lot of energy finding new marks. As What makes Sammy Run? sort of explains, people are not all good or all bad, and some of these over-competitive types are, if you know the inside story, people to be somehow pitied. More important, however, when dealing with the Sammy Glick's of this world is this lesson: After you shake their hand, remember to count your fingers.