What Makes Sammy Run?

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1941

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Themes

The Price of All-Consuming Ambition

The title phrase, “What makes Sammy run?” functions as a leitmotif—repeated throughout the novel to establish both Sammy’s character and the novel’s central theme: the price of all-consuming ambition. When Sammy first appears in the novel, as a young copy clerk at the paper where Al Manheim works as a theater critic, he is literally running all the time, ferrying documents from one part of the office to another. This image later becomes a visual symbol of a man driven to reach the top of the social hierarchy no matter who or what he destroys in the process. Sammy runs in the race of life, constantly trying to beat out everyone else for money, success, and power. This idea of life as a race is mentioned throughout, with Sammy’s incredible ability to “run” faster than anyone else the key to his success. Sammy’s entire life follows this model: “Sammy Glick sprinting out of his mother’s womb, turning life into a race in which the only rules are fight for the rail and elbow on the turns and the only finish line is death” (209). The race is violent. Sammy also runs people down, breaking his father’s heart, abandoning Rosalie Goldbaum, and repeatedly using Al and his other professional associates for his own ends.

Sammy also runs by abandoning causes and projects whenever it suits him. He runs from Rosalie Goldbaum once her convenient devotion is no longer convenient. He runs from the Guild when it becomes valuable to do so. And of course, he ran from Rivington Street the minute he could. This puts him in opposition to his brother Israel, who stays and works for the community on Rivington Street. It also puts him in opposition to Al, Kit, and Julian, who stand by the Guild after Sammy abandons it (and tries to kill it) to make a profit. In various ways, these other characters embody the opposite of Sammy’s “running” style of life, standing still and staying with something, even to personal detriment.

Though Al at first thinks that Sammy is one of a kind, as he spends more time in Hollywood, he realizes that isn’t the case. In Hollywood (and the world) there are many like Sammy, who value their own success and gain over the lives of others. It is just that, as Al puts it, “They were all running. Sammy was just a little bit faster, that’s all” (211). The only real way to win against Sammy is to not run—to choose a different way of living. Al declares this choice at the beginning in saying that he refuses to run, and over the course of the novel this solidifies into a genuine and reasoned rejection of Sammy’s life philosophy. By running constantly, Sammy and the others like him are left always isolated and alone, unable to trust. A race is a solitary activity, and while it allows for great personal gains, it prevents interpersonal relationships.

The Nature of Genius

What Makes Sammy Run? is set amid the power struggles of 1930s Hollywood, where the best writers and directors are often passed over for the loudest. The novel often comments both diegetically and narratively on the nature of genius, as characters question what is required to call someone a “genius.” These conversations are often set up around a distinction between the value of an artistic product and the financial success of its author. Al is the first character to use the term “genius” when he describes Julian Blumberg as “Sammy Glick’s pale young genius” (32). This image inverts the traditional image of the genius as a powerful figure. Here, the genius is kept as a kind of pet, put to work in the service of someone with real power—Sammy. Julian is the only one with artistic talent in the partnership, but it is Sammy who will reap all the profits.

In stealing Julian’s script, Sammy not only steals his profits, but also his title of genius. The papers refer to Sammy as a “BOY GENIUS” (37) because it is his name on the script. Though Sammy is not a genius in the traditional artistic sense, his talent for accruing power hints at a different kind of genius. Al recognizes that Sammy’s talent for avoiding hard topics is a kind of genius, saying that his mention of Rosalie Goldbaum “would have stopped the average heel, but not a man who had a genius for it like Sammy” (46). Sammy’s ability to manipulate his own public image is a remarkable talent. Even as he takes credit from Julian and later, his producer Sidney Fineman, he is doing it with a kind of “genius.”

This dichotomy becomes more contentious as Sammy takes on more and more creative power. When Sammy pretends to have a movie script ready, only to frenziedly improvise a cliched and half stolen plot to Al and Kit, they are drawn into this conversation on whether Sammy’s story is a work of “genius”:

‘As long as they sell South Sea pictures before they know what they’re going to be about,’ she continued, ‘the kind of ad-libbing Sammy just gave us will be a work of genius.’

‘Sammy’s story is a work of genius,’ I said, ‘like Shirley Temple is my child bride.’

‘Look up the word genius in the dictionary sometime,’ she said (83-84).

Sammy’s ability to plagiarize others’ works without being caught is just as much a part of his genius as his ability to self-narrativize. As Al later realizes, Sammy is not the only con artist in the world, but he has a talent for it that sets him far ahead of the pack. When he comes into conflict with the other, more traditional type of genius that defines Julian Blumberg and Sidney Fineman, it is easy for him to take their credit. The one thing he can’t have, however, is their artistic satisfaction.

The Collective Versus the Individual

The desires of the individual are often pitted against the needs of the collective within the novel. Each of the three main characters has their own way of managing the tensions between these conflicting needs. Al, for example, starts out relatively neutral. Not drawn to ruthless individualism, he also rejects organized community efforts. Instead, he is focused on the interpersonal. He is often the recipient of others’ tearful entreaties, as he is open to this kind of giving relationship. Al is kind, and admits that even though “In this world which is run with all the rules and restrictions of a rough-and-ready free-for-all, it is always a little embarrassing to find yourself still believing in such outmoded principles as the golden rule and brotherly love” (9), he is still an idealist. Part of the reason he receives these pleas is because he is also the person closest to Sammy who is willing to listen to the people Sammy harms. Though he starts out only focused on these smaller scale interactions, and even says, “[O]h, hell, I guess I’m an individualist” (139) to Kit when she tries to get him involved in the Guild, when pushed to consider the moral implications of such a stance, he chooses the community.

Kit is extremely community focused, to the point of causing herself harm on an individual level. Her devotion to the Guild’s cause is genuine: She believes collective bargaining is the only to make Hollywood safer for all writers. She approaches her care for others with an almost theoretical bent, aiming to improve their collective circumstances over comforting them individually. As Al puts it, “I was the one who felt sorrier for Julian. And Kit was the one who did him some good” (139). Though this can make her seem unfeeling, as when she convinces Julian to stick with the Guild, she knows it is the best for the community. Kit does not eschew tender personal feelings altogether though. When Al is faced with the choice between resigning from the Guild and being banned from working for any studio in the future, despite her earlier pressing of Julian, she tells him that circumstances have changed, and she will understand if he signs.

Lastly, Sammy fully rejects the community in favor of the individual. He repeatedly rejects community, leaving Rivington, ignoring his Jewish identity, attempting to destroy the Guild, and double crossing anyone if he can gain advantage for himself by doing so. At the end of the novel, Al recognizes Sammy’s own relentless individualism as the source of his suffering: “I thought of all the things I might have told him. You never had the first idea of give-and-take, the social intercourse. It had to be all you, all the way. You had to make individualism the most frightening ism of all” (303).