Biography for
Budd Schulberg More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

27 March 1914, New York City, New York, USA

Date of Death

5 August 2009, Westhampton Beach, Long Island, New York, USA (natural causes)

Birth Name

Budd Wilson Schulberg

Spouse

Betsy Ann Langman	(9 June 1978 - 5 August 2009) (his death) 2 children
Geraldine Brooks	(1964 - 19 June 1977) (her death)
Virginia Anderson	(1943 - 1964) (divorced) 2 children
Virginia Ray	(1936 - 1942) (divorced) 1 child

Trivia

Son of B.P. Schulberg, who ran Paramount Pictures in the 1930s.

Fathered his second daughter Jessica Adeline (born 1982) with his fourth wife Betsy Ann Langham.

Fathered his third son Benn Stuart (born 1979) with his fourth wife Betsy Ann Langham.

Inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, 2003.

Fathered his two elder sons, Stephen (born 1944) and David (born 1946) with his second wife Virginia Anderson.

Fathered his eldest daughter Victoria (b. 1940) with his first wife Virginia Ray.

Was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame as a writer in 2003, when he was 89 years old.

Although "What Makes Sammy Run?", his scathing look at Hollywood, was twice presented on television in New York-based productions in 1949 and 1959, and appeared on Broadway in a musical version with Steve Lawrence playing Sammy that ran for 540 performances in the 1964-65 season, Hollywood itself has never made a version of the popular novel. Dreamworks acquired the rights to the novel from Warner Bros. for $2.6 million for a proposed version starring Ben Stiller, but that movie has yet to be green-lighted.

A movie industry insider, he published the damning expose of Hollywood "What Makes Sammy Run?" in 1941, creating the greatest of all Hollywood anti-heroes, Sammy Glick. The book made him persona non grata in Hollywood for years.

During the Writer's Guild of America strike in 1988, Schulberg spoke at a WGA meeting, beginning his remarks by saying he was probably the only person from the original 1937 WGA council who was still on the council.

John Wayne considered Schulberg's book "What Makes Sammy Run?" part of a Communist plot, as the book deals with the formation of the Writers Guild of America. In fact, Schulberg had been a Communist Party member in the 1930s, and the Communist Party USA also attacked his book. Disillusioned with communism and what the USSR had devolved into under Stalin, he appeared as a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951 and named names.

Louis B. Mayer told his father, B.P. Schulberg, that his son should be deported. An exasperated B.P. replied that since Budd was a U.S. citizen raised in Hollywood, "Where the hell are you gonna deport him? Catalina Island?" Recounting the incident, Budd told journalist Catherine Seipp, "My father was a very, very intelligent man, but not as smart as Louis B. Mayer. And that remark is one of the things I think helped finish my father in Hollywood.".

Brother of Stuart Schulberg.

The 1995 Broadway musical based on his screenplay for On the Waterfront (1954) was a flop, lasting only eight performances

Personal Quotes

"Young people today seem to admire Sammy. I do find it rather disconcerting. Once I was speaking at a college, and a young man came up afterwards and said, 'I just want to shake your hand. I'm a senior, and I've been worrying about how I'll make it in the real world. And now that I've read your book, I'm inspired.'"

[On his friendly testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee] "I don't feel what some people expect me to feel. What's painful is to have believed in something that sounded so right, and that turned out the way the Soviet Union turned out. It's more the disillusionment that hurts for me."

On testifying and naming names before the House Un-American Activities Committee: "I didn't especially like the [House] committee, but I didn't like the way the party was trying to take over the Screenwriters Guild - they had put four young people on the board, including me. I felt that what the party was doing secretively was very wrong - it could have been the Ku Klux Klan or the American Nazis. And nobody came out and said that Stalin was killing more people than Hitler - I resented the fact that they only defended their side."

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