SCHULBERG, BUDD WILSON

SCHULBERG, BUDD WILSON (1914– ), U.S. author. Born in New York, Schulberg was for some time, like his father, a Hollywood screenwriter. His first and best-known novel, What Makes Sammy Run? (1941), is largely a description of a ruthless Jewish success-hunter in Hollywood during the 1930s, with a sentimental portrayal of Sammy's East Side family. From 1943 to 1946 he served in the U.S. Navy, in the Office of Strategic Services, and was decorated for collecting the photographic evidence used at the Nuremberg Trial (1945–46). Schulberg's subsequent works include The Harder They Fall (1947); The Disenchanted (1950); Some Faces in the Crowd (1953); and the script of the prize-winning film, On the Waterfront (1954), which Schulberg turned into a novel, Waterfront (1955). During the hearings of the House Un-American Activities, Schulberg was identified as a member of the Communist Party. In 1951, in a telegram to huac, as well as in subsequent testimony, Schulberg stated that he had a Communist affiliation from 1937 to 1940 but pointed out that his "opposition to communists and Soviet dictatorship is a matter of record." Among his later works are From the Ashes: Voices of Watts, edited by him and published in 1967, and The Four Seasons of Success (1972), his understanding of what several writers made of their success and/or failure. His autobiography, Moving Pictures: Memories of a Hollywood Prince, was published in 1981.

add. bibliography:

N. Beck, Budd Schulberg: A Bio-Bibliography (2001); E. Bentley, Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938–1968 (1971).