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THE DVD SHELF: "What Makes Sammy Run?," "Mary Poppins," "Rent" and "Yentl"
By Steven Suskin
22 Feb 2009
We view the 1959 TV version of Budd Schulberg's "What Makes Sammy Run?"; the reissue of "Mary Poppins," with bonuses for theatregoers; the high def filming of the final days of Rent; and the "Director's Extended Edition" of Streisand's "Yentl."
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We have recently alluded to the recently released "Studio One Anthology" which contains a selection of dramas and musicals from the days of live television. Koch has followed this fascinating box with a single DVD of Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? This was not part of the CBS "Studio One" series, as it came from NBC. It is not technically live TV, either; the two-hour program (which comes to about 105 minutes without commercials) was telecast in two installments on Sept. 27 and Oct. 4, 1959. Sammy was actually aired in color, but the original has long since disappeared. A (black & white) kinescope of the first part has long been preserved, but the second was thought to have vanished. It reappeared in 2005 — it was safely in the collection of the Library of Congress, but mislabeled — and thanks to the Archive of American Television and Koch Vision it is now finally available for watching on your DVD player.
Schulberg's most famous novel was published in 1941, an instantaneous success offering an insider's view of the seamy goings-on within Hollywood. Schulberg came of age in Tinseltown, where his father, B.P., was one-time Paramount production chief; while writing the short story version of "Sammy," which was published in 1937, Schulberg was working as a script doctor for David O. Selznick (who can be seen as model for the grasping anti-hero). A pretty picture it isn't, which might explain why the novel never made it to the big screen. There were two television versions, though; a long-lost and not especially successful 1948 effort starring Jose Ferrer, and the 1959 NBC Sunday Showcase version. Which, it turns out, is very, very good.
Director-producer Delbert Mann, who had won an Oscar for "Marty" (derived from a television play he had earlier directed), does a fine job of keeping up with the fast-paced script by Schulberg and his brother Stuart. What keeps things crackling, though, is the cast. John Forsythe is extremely good in the central and top-billed role of Al Manheim, the theatre critic whom copyboy Sammy Glick latches onto. Barbara Rush plays screenwriter Kit Sargent, and Dina Merrill is Laurette, the daughter of the studio owner. All three are as good as I recall ever seeing them. Supporting players are strong as well, especially David Opatoshu as Sidney Feinman (the producer who Sammy stabs in the back); Milton Selzer as Julian Blumberg (the screenwriter who Sammy stabs in the back); and Norman Fell in a brief scene as Sammy's brother from the slums.
The focal point of the thing is Sammy, and he is played here by Larry Blyden (who the announcer notes is participating "by arrangement with Rodgers & Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song). I saw Blyden (1925-1975) on numerous occasions over the years, in such shows as The Apple Tree, the 1972 revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (for which his Hysterium won a Tony Award), Absurd Person Singular, and the original production of Stephen Sondheim's Frogs in the swimming pool at Yale. None of which prepared me for Blyden's performance here. He is creepy, ferocious, and dangerous, which makes for a fascinating "What Makes Sammy Run?"
By the time this version was filmed in 1959, Schulberg was already quite a personage; he had followed up his ground-breaking early novel with screenplays for "On the Waterfront" (which won him a deserved Oscar) and "A Face in the Crowd." The success of the TV Sammy resulted in a Broadway musical version in 1964, with Budd and Stuart Schulberg collaborating with Abe Burrows and composer/lyricist Ervin Drake. Steve Lawrence starred in the rather rocky enterprise, which lasted over a year but closed in a sea of recriminations and red ink. Watching the 1959 TV version, we can almost smell a musical; Drake, a somewhat popular writer from the popular song field, wasn't quite able to make "Sammy" sing, though. Continued...
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