WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN?

Dina Merrill and Larry Blyden

WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN? NBC Sunday Showcase 1959. Director: Delbert Mann.

"You're intelligent but not smart." -- Sammy to Al.

"Just the opposite of you." -- Al to Sammy.

Sammy Glick (Larry Blyden) is a copy boy for a major NYC newspaper where Al Manheim (John Forsythe) is a columnist. Sammy is going places, and at first he seems admirably full of ambition and initiative. Glick manages to get his own column, then takes a screenplay written by Julian Blumberg (Milton Selzer of Blood and Lace) and sells it to Hollywood. Sammy takes both Al and Julian to LA with him, but somehow Julian's name is left off the credits for the movie. Al realizes that Sammy has a dark side, that he treats people like supernumeraries even though they are the ones with the talent. Al watches helplessly as novelist Kit Sargent (Barbara Rush), who is now writing screenplays for Sammy, falls in love with him even though he wants her for himself. But there are surprises in store for all of these characters ...

Barbara Rush and John Forsythe

What Makes Sammy Run?  is a prime example of the "golden age" of television, where there were meaty scripts and fine actors doing exemplary work, and everyone is at their best in this. Blyden, an excellent performer who died much too early at 49, is superb as Sammy, and I don't think I've ever seen John Forsythe, Dynasty be damned, to better advantage. Barbara Rush is also excellent, as is Dina Merrill [Butterfield 8] as Laurette, the amoral daughter of studio boss H. L. Harrington (an equally good Sidney Blackmer); in fact, I don't think I've ever seen Merrill better. David Opatoshu also scores as production chief Sidney Fineman, who is pushed out in favor of Sammy. Monique van Vooren [Tarzan and the She- Devil] credibly plays a movie star who loses her appeal for Sammy once her movies start slipping at the box office. And there are a host of good character actors in supporting parts as well.

Forstyhe, Monique van Vooren, Blyden, Merrill

What Makes Sammy Run? may have lost some of its edge to certain viewers because the basic themes and characters have been used and re-used many times over the years. I can't count all the times I've seen shows about bitter, self-hating associates complaining about an essential heel (in and out of show business), and backstabbing producers and others are commonplace today both on and off the screen. This was based on a novel by Budd Schulberg, who turned it into a musical (starring Steve Lawrence) co-written by Schulberg's brother, Stuart. (This TV version does not include the songs.) Neither the novel nor the musical were ever turned into a movie, mostly because people feared it would be considered anti-Semitic because Sammy was Jewish. Back in the day Schulberg argued that most of the characters, some of whom were decent guys like Al Manheim, were also Jewish; it was a true cross-section. I have never read the novel, so I don't know if Schulberg explained part of Sammy's hunger not just on his poor tenement upbringing but as a reaction to blatant anti-Semitism -- this is not delved into at all in the TV version.

The TV production makes one major change in that it offers Sammy redemption. In the original story, Sammy is all for pushing Fineman out so that he can take his place, but in the TV show he sticks up for Fineman, tells Harrington that he, Sammy, not only owes Fineman a lot but that Fineman is the best man for the job. This doesn't help Fineman but at least Sammy makes a sincere effort. One could argue that this is out of character for Sammy.

Verdict: A classic in every sense of the word. ***1/2. 

BUTTERFIELD 8

Liz Taylor and Laurence Harvey

BUTTERFIELD 8 (1960). Director: Daniel Mann.

"Every awful moment of it, I Loved!" -- Gloria.

Gloria Wandrous (Elizabeth Taylor) is a model and good-time girl who has a male best friend, Steve (Eddie Fisher), who may be in love with her, to the consternation of his girlfriend, Norma (Susan Oliver). Gloria begins an affair with an unhappily married man named Weston Liggett (Laurence Harvey of Summer and Smoke) and is convinced that her sordid liquor-and-sex past is over, that she has found true love at last. But there is still the wife, Emily (Dina Merrill) to deal with, and more than one ugly misunderstanding ...

Eddie Fisher and La Liz

Butterfield 8 is undoubtedly a sanitized, cliff notes version of John O'Hara's 1935 novel, and has apparently been updated to the late 1950's. Gloria is not an especially sympathetic character (nor Weston) until she reveals to Steve what happened to her in her childhood in a powerful sequence. Like something out of Harvey's film Room at the Top, Weston has apparently married for a good job and social position, although his wife seems to blame her own family for making things too easy for him. Taylor gives a very good performance, and won an Oscar for her portrayal. Harvey is also excellent, and there's good work from Merrill, Oliver, Kay Medford as a motel proprietor, Carmen Mathews as Emily's mother, and especially Mildred Dunnock as Gloria's mother and Betty Field as her very blunt best friend, Frances. Eddie Fisher, who was married to Taylor at the time (after leaving Debbie Reynolds for her), gives a respectable performance.

Verdict: Good performances and some good dialogue lift this a notch above the soap opera level. ***. 

TWENTY PLUS TWO

TWENTY PLUS TWO (1961). Joseph M. Newman.

When Richard Diamond, Private Detective wound up its four season run, star David Janssen played a man who looks for missing people in Twenty Plus Two. Tom Alder (Janssen) has always been interested in the case of a girl who completely vanished 12 years ago when she was 16. At the same time, movie star Leroy Dane (Brad Dexter) discovers that the woman who answered his fan mail has been murdered. Jacques Pleshette (Jacques Aubuchon) then hires Alder to look into the disappearance of his brother, Auguste. Are these cases all connected in some way? Meandering through the story are three women: former love Linda (Jeanne Crain), who sent him a "Dear John" letter; hostess turned socialite, Nicki (Dina Merrill), whom Tom met in a post-war Tokyo; and Eleanor Delaney (Agnes Moorehead), the mother of the missing girl. Twenty Plus Two is fairly unpredictable and reasonably absorbing, but it ultimately adds up to nothing. It's one of those movies in which characters spend years covering up a "murder" that was clearly self-defense and yet never bother getting a good lawyer. Janssen is fine and the other actors are okay, but the picture is stolen by Moorehead, especially in a scene with Janssen when the two look at photos of the missing 16-year-old and realize that she's already turned into a woman. An unintentionally funny scene has teenage girls screaming over Brad Dexter [99 River Street] as if he were Troy Donahue! William Demarest [The Perils of Pauline] gives a superb performance as a bitter and drunken ex-reporter, walking off with the movie in one brief sequence.

Verdict: Like an extended Richard Diamond episode in CinemaScope. **1/2.

BUTTERFIELD 8

BUTTERFIELD 8 (1960). Director: Daniel Mann.

"Let's face it -- I was the slut of all time!"

Gloria (Elizabeth Taylor) is a beautiful "model" who is chased by men and considered a complete slut by the prudish. Her best friend is Steve (Eddie Fisher), whose girlfriend Norma (Susan Oliver), is jealous of Gloria. Gloria's latest conquest -- or is it the other way around? -- is Weston Liggett (Laurence Harvey), who is married to the very wise Emily (Dina Merrill). Things threaten to come to a boil when Emily finds her mink coat missing, unaware that hubby loaned it to Gloria ... Mildred Dunnock is Gloria's concerned mother and Betty Field the mother's friend, Fanny. Kay Medford is an ex-vaudevillian motel owner who sadly remembers the glory days and Carmen Mathews has a good turn as Emily's mother. Harvey is excellent, Taylor is quite good [although perhaps not quite deserving of the Oscar she won], and Fisher -- who was then married to Taylor -- does a nice job as well, although he always tends to get knocked by critics and biographers. Taylor has an especially good scene telling Fisher about her childhood sexual abuse. The movie has the odd distinction of being somewhat "modern" and yet dated at one and the same time. The impression one gets is that the film is trying to paint Gloria as an emotionally wounded "sexaholic" yet there's also that old double-standard that men who sleep around are studs but women who do the same are whores -- and that ending!

Verdict: At least you've got Liz sauntering sexily. ***.