What Makes Sammy Run?

Kit manages to get Al a well-paid job at World Wide Studio. Al is hired to write a biopic of Tomas Masaryk, the recently deceased former president of former Czechoslovakia. Sidney Fineman is particularly excited about the project, encouraging Al in his work. Al is inspired by Fineman, heartened by his artistic and technical approach to movie making. He thinks about how, for all his success, Sammy doesn’t get to experience the joy of craft.

Sammy shows up at Al’s office to take him to lunch in the studio commissary, getting him to agree by telling him Julian Blumberg will be there. Julian is doing much better, appearing healthier and telling Al that he and Blanche are expecting a baby. He has even been able to almost finish a novel. As they talk, they both get distracted by Sammy’s manipulation of others in the cafeteria. Sammy pitches the same plot hook to various people, making it appear that everyone is talking about the idea. He chooses people he knows will cling on to his hook, and he makes sure his own name is attached. Through multiple short conversations, Sammy manages to put together a story from other people’s ideas, which he pitches to the producer.

Julian tells Al that after Sammy has done this, he goes to Julian and has him write the screenplay. Julian seems more in awe of Sammy’s audacity than upset at having to do all the work for their dual screenwriting credits. A few days later, Sammy sells his play to World Wide Studios for $80,000 and is signed on as a producer at $1,250 a week. This isn’t enough for Sammy—he wanted to be making $2,000 a week.

Meanwhile, tensions are rising between the producers and the Writers Guild. The Guild is asking that all screenwriters refuse to sign contracts that bind them for two years, so that they can go on strike if needed. Sammy joins an opposition group within the Guild, made up of the well-paid writers who don’t want to strike. Kit and Al go on a walk together, and Kit worries over the opposition group. She believes it is a 50-50 chance whether the Guild will survive.

A few days later, Julian approaches Al and invites him and Kit to his house. There, he tells them that he has been offered a seven-year contract by the studio, which if he accepted would break the Guild’s provision not to sign contracts over two years in length. Though all recognize it as a technique the studio is using to get writers to scab, the contract would be extremely helpful for Julian and Blanche as they start their family. Kit urges Julian not to break with the Guild, but both Kit and Al worry over what’s to come.

Kit and Al go to an isolated cove together after leaving Julian’s house. They both feel sympathy for Julian, but Kit stands by her conviction that the writers need to stick together to make any long-term difference. Kit also confesses that she believes Sammy and the other four members of the opposition are about to leave the Guild, but Al has hopes that everyone will stick together.

At the next Guild meeting, Sammy argues that the writers should vote with the studios. He tells Al not to stick his neck out. Kit says that the only vote they should have that day is whether to join the Authors League, to which the opposition agrees. Julian goes on stage, having refused the seven-year contract, and urges everyone to agree not to accept any contracts over two years in length. Shockingly, Sammy seconds the motion.

The meeting ends with all the screenwriters appearing to be happy and on the same page. A few days later, however, the opposition group walks out and renounces the Guild. Only one member of the opposition group remains in the Guild. With the writers no longer a united front, the studios take the opportunity to demand that writers renounce their memberships. Al asks Kit for advice, and she says that she isn’t signing but won’t blame Al if he does, as his job is less secure. Al decides to sign. Sammy tells him that Julian isn’t signing, and that Al’s Masaryk biopic, which he was passionately working on, is being shelved for less political films as, in Sammy’s words, “That anti-fascist stuff hasn’t got a prayer” (202). When Sammy leaves, Al shreds his resignation from the Guild.

Al is then fired and banned from any future work for the studios. Sammy offers to get him back into the good graces of the studios by letting him join the new “Association of Photo-dramatists.” It is made up of the small opposition group of well-paid writers. Disgusted, Al refuses Sammy’s offer. He attends the final meeting of the Screenwriters Guild along with Julian, where Kit gives a rousing farewell speech. The three then go out for a drink. Julian reveals that he has also been fired, and that Sammy double crossed one of the other members of the opposition group to get a spot as producer.

Al accepts that he has to move back to New York. On his last night in Los Angeles, he and Kit share dinner. Sammy happens to be at the same restaurant, and the two reflect on the “Sammy Glick-ness” of many people in Hollywood. They go back to Kit’s house, where Al confesses his attraction to her. Kit says that she worries they won’t be able to leave each other alone if they have sex, but kisses Al anyway. They have sex, and despite resolving that it would be a goodbye, Al briefly invites Kit to come along with him before agreeing that it’s a bad idea. They agree that they will miss each other. The next day, while waiting for his train, Al hears that Sammy has been given a new contract at $2,000 a week. As he leaves Los Angeles, he thinks over and over, “What makes Sammy run?” (216).

Al returns to his newspaper work in New York, somewhat relieved to be away from Hollywood and Sammy Glick. He and the other men at the paper reminisce about Glick and decide to look up his employee file. Al finds out Sammy’s real name is Glickstein, and that he comes from a Jewish tenement on Rivington Street.

The next Sunday, Al finds himself going to the street Sammy is from. As he observes the poverty around him, he reflects on the ridiculousness of the fascist claims of Jewish people hoarding wealth. He finds the apartment where Sammy’s mother and brother live and rings the bell. Sammy’s mother is overjoyed to have a friend of Sammy’s come by, saying she hasn’t heard from him since he went to Hollywood except for the checks he occasionally sends. Al is struck by how different Sammy’s brother Israel seems from him in personality.

Mrs. Glickstein serves tea and excitedly talks about Sammy. Al notices that Israel says almost nothing. Al offers to join Israel in praying at the synagogue next door. Afterward, they sit at a café to talk. Israel admits that his work at the Settlement house is hardly holding the neighborhood together, but he questions who would look after the people if he gave up. He tells Al that his and Sammy’s late father was similarly devoted to the neighborhood, always feeding anyone who went hungry, and that everyone called for him when there was a problem.

Israel tells Al the story of his and Sammy’s childhood. Al then begins to walk home, but he stops outside the school, where he sees young boys fighting. He goes in to talk to Sammy’s old teacher, and then finds one of Sammy’s old schoolmates and asks him about Sammy’s childhood. Having obtained three versions of the story, Al writes out the narrative of Sammy Glick.

His parents were first-generation immigrants, his father a diamond cutter forced to work with glass in America. When Sammy was born, he was so sickly it seemed like he would die, but he managed to survive. As a child, he quickly changed his Jewish first name to Sammy, wanting to avoid getting beat up. When Sammy was four, his father lost his job for supporting a strike, and the family became desperately poor.

Sammy was willing to do anything to make money, lying about headlines to sell papers and hiding his Jewish identity to get a job as a messenger. Israel was devout and honest, while Sammy was willing to lie and cheat. Their father despaired of Sammy’s rejection of the family’s values.

At school, an older Catholic boy called “the Sheik” chose Sammy as the target of his violent bullying. Though Sammy was beaten every day, he never reacted or fought back, leading to the Sheik losing interest. Sammy had sex for the first at age 11, paying a local girl who needed money desperately to have sex with him. He began leading a gang of boys from the neighborhood. At this point, the Sheik asked him to join in on a robbery, but Sammy refused. The Sheik got caught and sent to prison.

The rabbi refuses to allow Sammy to have a bar mitzvah because of his behavior, which breaks their father’s heart. While walking his pushcart the day after what would have been Sammy’s bar mitzvah, he allows himself to be hit by a truck, which kills him.

Having heard the story of Sammy’s early years, Al feels he has a better understanding of how Sammy became who he is. He tells a bartender that “We only hate the results of people. But people, Henry, aren’t just results. They’re a process” (246), blaming the poverty and desperation of Rivington Street as a contributing factor is turning Sammy into a manipulative and self-serving person.

He decides to call Kit to share what he’s learned. She tells him Sammy is now assistant to Sidney Fineman, who is once again head of World Wide Studios. Kit and Al confess that they still love each other, but that they can’t be together at the moment. After the call, Al considers his fascination with Sammy, concluding that he “had singled him out not because he had been born into the world any more selfish, ruthless and cruel than anybody else […] but because in the midst of a war that was selfish, ruthless and cruel Sammy was proving himself the fittest, the fiercest and the fastest” (249).