My Father, Sammy Glick By Max Glick
By Auburn Red
A What Makes Sammy Run? Fanfic
Disclaimer: I created Max Glick, Chris Glick, Emily Manheim, The Count Stefan Von Hossenburgh and his children, and anyone else you don't recognize. The other characters belong to Budd Schulberg and possibly to themselves.
Author's Note: Every story has another side to tell. While I think that Sammy Glick is a contemptible little worm, I thought that I would have his story told from another perspective because there is more than one way to look at someone. Because I have read a lot of books about Hollywood for a recent blog, I thought it would be interesting to do it in the style of a faux-Hollywood bio just to make things interesting. Oh and to let you know only the prologue introduction is written in script format, the rest is in regular first person. It makes sense that Max having grown up in Hollywood would begin by writing a screenplay.
My Father Sammy Glick: Confessions From The Son of A Hollywood Heel
By Max Glick
Acknowledgements:
I could not write this biography without the assistance of many:
To the people at Hollywood Publishing, thank you for allowing me to write the story and to my editor, Sarah Armstrong for her valuable incomparable assistance and for convincing me not to title the book, Son of a Glick.
To the staff of Worldwide Pictures, thank you for allowing me access to my father's production notes, paperwork and information about my father's career and thank you to Lawrence Ross for deciding that my father needed "a vacation." No doubt he enjoyed it.
To my mother and stepfather, Laurette and Stefan, Countess and Count Von Hossenburgh, thank you for the vacations to your home in Lichtenstein and through Europe and allowing me time to write this. To my stepbrothers, Christian and Adrien thank you for introducing me to the joy of having older brothers. Especially to my half-sister, Liesel thank you for always making me feel welcome at my mother's house and being a real friend.
To my younger brother, Chris Glick, thanks for sharing the tough road with us and turning out as well as you did. No matter what, you are my brother and our father's son.
To my Uncle Israel, Aunt Rosalie, and my cousins for filling in the blanks of my father's childhood in Rivington Street and telling me things that I never knew about him. To my Grandma and Grandpa Glickstein, I wish I had known them.
To Rosa Gutierrez, thank you for caring me for the first few years of my life and introducing me to the softer side of my father that I never knew and Enid Golowicz for being my partner in caring for the house.
To Al and Kit Sargent-Manheim, thank you for your support and encouragement and never standing in my way even when I countered Al's version. Despite everything, Al, thank you for being my father's friend.
To my wife, Emily Manheim-Glick, thank you for always being the love and support of my life ever since we were kids and for the occasional use of the typewriter. For our little boy, Sammy-Al Manheim-Glick thank you for giving me a new life and for reminding me that sometimes we get a second chance. To our dog, Meshuggenah, our little "Shuggah" and our cat, Diva, thank you for occasionally giving me time to write between walkies and cleaning the litter box.
Above all thank you to my father, Sammy Glick for encouraging me to run not walk forward and to fight those who stand in my way even when it was you. For being equal parts inspiration and exasperation to me. Above all for always reminding me to be myself.
Dedication:
To my father, Sammy Glick
(1910-1960)
"The child is the father to the man"
~ William Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold"
"And God told Abraham take your son, your only son Isaac whom you love and go to the lands of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will tell you~ Genesis 22
Prologue
Forest Lawn
(Scene: Forest Lawn Cemetery. Day. January, 1965. A young man, 25, enters. He is tall, lanky; many would describe him as awkward and gangly looking. Many of those are his relatives. His dark hair is somewhat long, down to his neck and in front of his eyes. He is dressed in a clean black suit and tie. He looks down at his shoes, especially bought for the occasion. The young man could see his face in the shine through them and gives a slight grin knowing his father would approve. He is carrying a small bag in his hand.
The young man casually limps with a cane towards a certain grave. The limp is slight and he is used to it since he had it for most of his life.
He looks around always wary and nervous, expecting to see cameras or a crowd. Sighing with relief, that for once he is alone, the man continues stepping past graves mostly of famous Hollywood people, and people once admired now names on marble and cement. He finds the grave that he is searching for and reads)
Samuel Glick
1910-1960
He finally stopped running
(The young man kneels down to get a closer look)
Max Glick: Hiya, Pop
(Max Glick opens the bag. Instead of a bouquet of flowers, he pulls out a pair of new shoes and lays them on his father's grave.)
Max: I bet you're running things up there telling God how it should be done. Emily sends her love. She's got a new play coming out. It may be a movie. I'd like to see her direct it.
Chris sends his love too. He's doing great, much better than he was. He might be going to Berkley, if you can believe it, to study Production Design. They think they can get him on an outpatient basis up there while he goes to school.
I know that after you-well I vowed I would never come back, and things are great in New York. But you were such a huge part of my life, I can't just unwrite it and pretend like the last things we said to each other were the only things we ever said. I miss you and I'm sorry-But they are still talking about you and "The Book." That's all they see. They already put you on television and now they're making a musical. Next will be a movie, I'm sure. I hate that's all they know about you. I hate that only I know differently.
V.O. (a familiar voice comes up from behind Max): Then why don't ya do something about it, Kiddo?
(Max turns around and sees his father looking younger than he ever knew him. Sammy Glick, in the prime of life, the young man in his early twenties ready to take on Hollywood, dressed to the nines in his fancy green suit, flower in his lapel, yellow scarf, and wrap around camel hair coat. Sammy Glick, before failure, scandal, booze, smoking, too many pills and hookers turned him into a shell of his former self. He points at his son with a cigar that he took out of his mouth)
Max (indicating his cigar and says more out of habit as though Sammy was still alive and they were arguing in the living room): Don't you know what that can do to you?
Sammy (shrugs): I'm dead. What more can they do to me? Still boozing and take the pills too (He says this in the manner of an impish child trying to get his parent's goat).
Max (rolls his eyes): Still acting like an overgrown child.
Sammy: Anyway kid what I always tell ya, all publicity is good publicity. I said that when "The Book" was published remember? They see me as a cold bastard, let them.
Max: That's not what you said and that's not what you did later. We were with you that night and the next morning at the hospital remember?
Sammy (turns his back on his son): That was a moment of weakness, Max, an aggravated ulcer brought on by stress.
Max: You and I both know it wasn't an ulcer, Dad.
Sammy: Why are you remembering it like that? That I was a sobbing crybaby weakling that tried to take the easy way out?
Max: No, we remember you as a human being, you were contradictions and all anyone remembers about you is that you were selfish glory hogging monster, the worst in Hollywood.
Sammy: No different than anyone else in Hollywood.
Max: Yeah, but nobody else in Hollywood is my father. There were a lot of people who after you died, that were dancing in the streets. You know what someone said at a memorial, "I would love to tell you that Sammy Glick was a wonderful person and he will be missed, but he wasn't and he won't be."
Sammy: That was probably your mother.
Max (rolled his eyes): You loved her, Dad don't deny it.
Sammy: I'm not denying anything. Marrying Laurette Harrington was good for business and nothing else. Well I mean good for something else (He points at Max) She gave me the son I wanted.
Max (sighs. He heard this before): All I know is after your divorce, Mom married again and you never did.
Sammy: Why go through that crap again? Are you joining the Sammy Glick Hate Parade too now?
Max: Of course not. Since when is it hate to speak the truth about someone?
Why do you think I chose to stay with you rather than Mom? Even though no one could believe that I would do it? They had images that you would beat me like Joan or Bing supposedly did to their kids.
Sammy: I don't know you were going to school here, you had friends?
Max: Dad, I didn't have any friends except Emily. You always told me I was too shy for my own good. I didn't want to leave you alone and you didn't want me to either.
Sammy: So that's what you want to remember about me? Why? So everyone can feel sorry for me? You think that will make me Mr. Likeable? That I could be half the man I was?
Max: No, you made your choice. But as usual, I have to clean up after it. I want to save the reputation you have to make people see my father for the real person that he is.
Sammy (almost wistfully): You and Chris always were the good clean parts of me, Kiddo, especially you. I mean Chris is a great kid but he was messed up for a while, I know that now. I couldn't handle that, but you could. But you were different. You pulled us through. You were the kid maybe I would have been if I hadn't spent so much time running. I kept you from Hollywood as much as possible for that reason, maybe not always that great at it but I didn't want it to change you like it did-(He can't finish that thought. Even dead, Sammy refuses to bend, compromise, put on that human face). But why bother? Go, live your own life. One thing I taught ya always run ahead not back.
Max: I can't. There's this Sammy Glick shaped block in my way that I can't seem to shake. Everywhere I go, I hear your voice or see your face. As much as I loved you, sometimes you could be a real ass about some things. You've been dead for five years and I'm still living in your shadow, apologizing for you, cleaning up after you, defending you. And Chris my God-you remember what happened to him! I'm still solving your problems. I want to put that ghost to rest. I don't want there to be anything more between us.
Sammy: So you're a Glick after all. You are thinking of yourself. Why don't you write about me yourself? There are two sides to every story, give me mine. Tell my story, kid. You have my permission. You're a good writer, so maybe you aren't my son after all.
You didn't have to steal your first script, you actually wrote it.
Max: You mean tell your story so people can read it and hear it and make it public again?
Sammy: No our story. Tell about me as your father and you as my son. Stick your head out of your turtle shell and enjoy the public you spent most of your life hiding from.
Max: You spent most of your life in front of people did it make you happy?
Sammy: Sometimes, but hiding from them isn't going to make them go away and it isn't going to make "Sammy The Monster" or "The Book" go away. Let "The Monster" rest.
Max: I am going to have to reveal some things.
Sammy: Go ahead. I was never one to hide from a bad story.
Max: It may not make you come across any better than Al's version.
Sammy: It can't make me worse. Al has me as a composite of Satan and Hitler; the only worse way you can write me as a composite of Satan and Satan. With Satan thrown in.
Max (lowering his head): I was such a jerk to you in the end and I did the one thing that I swore I would never do. I left you alone. You died alone because of me.
Sammy: Then put your own ghost to sleep, kid. I have always told you to run and to fight and now is the time for you to do both. Don't hide, Max.
Max (stands up determined): You know what, you're right. I will tell our story. If no one believes it then the hell with them.
Sammy: You always were a good boy, Max. There ain't anyone better.
(Smiles break across both the faces of father and son. Max is about to turn around and leave but not before he faces his father one last time)
Max: Hey Pop.
Sammy: Yeah, Max.
Max: Don't say 'ain't.' (The two laugh and Max returns to begin this book).
Auburn Red's Notes:
While unintentional when I began this, I later found that there are lots of parallels in the relationship between Sammy and Max Glick and the relationship between What Makes Sammy Run? Author Budd Schulberg and his father, Hollywood producer, B.P. Schulberg including how in later years the elder Schulberg had fallen in Hollywood and that his son had to financially support him. As I said, I did not know this but it does make the story even more interesting. I based the relationship between Sammy Max, and Chris out of a composite of different celebrity parent/child relationships like John Drew and Drew Barrymore, Keith and Marlon Richards, John, Michelle, Mackenzie, Chynna, and Bijou Phillips, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, and Lorna and Joey Luft, Jennifer Jones, David O. Selznick and Mary Jennifer Selznick, Jack Warner and Jack Warner Jr. among others. I guess fame brings that toxic relationship of an emotionally immature parent, the parentified older child, and the troubled younger child.
While I could have written this from Sammy's point of view, to do it in the style that I wanted to like a Hollywood autobiography would be too confessional from him. (Admitting that he had a vulnerable, suffering, desperate side is something he would never do.) I felt that he needed another buffer to speak for him like Al originally and since I love exploring parent-child relationships, I thought that I would give Sammy Glick a son to speak for him because he would be able to see the side that no one else sees behind closed doors (A second wife would make her too much of a Mary Sue, I thought. Besides I wanted to explore what married life would be like for the Glicks, what their toxic relationship would do to their kids, and the possibilities imagining Sammy Glick as a single father.)
For those that don't know Forest Lawn is a real cemetery in Hollywood. Many celebrities are buried there.
The shoes that Max lay on his father's grave is a reference to the book when the first thing Sammy buys for himself is a new pair of fine shoes after he scalps a co-worker for Broadway tickets. He tells Al "that's what happens when you're the kid brother and all you get are the hand-me-downs." The musical even goes so far as to include a song, called "A New Pair of Shoes." In the next chapter, Max explains that his father would order a new pair of shoes for his son every day.
They actually have put What Makes Sammy Run? on television twice. Once in 1949 and another time as a two-part film in 1959. The 1959 version starred Larry Blyden and John Forsythe and is available on DVD (Youtube has some clips including the final confrontation between Sammy and his wife, Laurette one of the best scenes in the book.) It has also been a long-running Broadway musical that has been revived a few times. But it has yet to become a movie. On his deathbed in 2009 Schulberg suspected it was too "Anti-Hollywood." (Personally I don't think it's any more so than Sunset Boulevard or The Player. Well if it can't be a theatre film, maybe AMC or HBO, Netflix even could pick it up as a mini-series in the style of Mad Men. Are you listening producers? :D )
My idea of writing the introduction in script format was based on Mary Tyler Moore's autobiography After All in which she begins her book with a conversation between herself and Mary Richards. ("When people talked about how much they wanted to be like you, what they didn't know was so did I.") Katharine Hepburn's autobiography, Me, also begins with a dialogue between herself and "The Character" she often played in her movies.
Max's references to "Joan" and "Bing" beating their kids were based on later accounts from the children of Joan Crawford and Bing Crosby which described their parents as abusive. While the accounts are anachronistic, it does make sense that Max would worry about people would imply that about Sammy.
Sammy's frequent description of Max being "the good clean part of me" comes from The Twilight Zone episode "In Praise of Pip" in which a bookmaker, Max Phillips (Jack Klugman-my favorite episode with him in it) describes his son that way.
The dialogue where Max corrects his father by telling him not to say "ain't." is a reference to What Makes Sammy Run? It was the first dialogue between Al and Sammy.
