Schulberg, Budd

Schulberg, Budd (Budd Wilson Schulberg), 1914–2009, American writer, b. New York City, grad. Dartmouth (1936). Because his father was an executive at Paramount Studios, Schulberg could observe the corruption of the film industry. His novel What Makes Sammy Run? (1941) is about the rise of a ruthlessly ambitious film magnate. Among his other novels are The Harder They Fall (1947), The Disenchanted (1950, play 1958), and Sanctuary V (1969). He wrote the stories and screenplays for On the Waterfront (1954), which won him an Academy Award, and for A Face in the Crowd (1957), both directed by Elia Kazan. Schulberg also helped found the Douglass House Watts Writers Workshop in Los Angeles in the late 1960s and New York's Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center (1971).

See his autobiographical Moving Pictures (1981, repr. 2003); N. Beck, Budd Schulberg: A Bio-Bibliography (2001).

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