Budd schulberg

He was the son of one of the great Hollywood moguls: BP Schulberg, Paramount boss. He was born on March 27, 1914 in New York, surrounded by an atmosphere of luxury and ostentation, with stars from the world of cinema always swarming around him. Budd Schulberg knew how to describe that unrepeatable and decadent atmosphere in some formidable memoirs, “De Cine. Memoirs of a Hollywood Prince”, where he explains, for example, the immediate rejection caused by his father’s affair with the actress Sylvia Sidney . His own family life was quite eventful, as he went through four marriages, the last to actress and writer Betsy Ann Langman.

It was surely the action-reaction effect that led Budd to travel to the Soviet Union. In 1934 he had joined the communist party in the United States, spurred on by the injustice of the depression years, and the contrast of a certain luxury that repelled him. But, again to and fro, not only would he leave communism six years later, but he would testify before the Committee on Un-American Activities, where he gave eight names, two of them Herbert Biberman and Ring Lardner Jr. Without a doubt, all experience led him to create the plot ofThe law of silence (1954), on the actions of the New York port mafias, and the need to denounce them. The film directed by Elia Kazan – another who testified before the Committee – would win 8 Oscars, including the one for best film, and the one for Schulberg’s script. The writer became close friends with clergyman John M. Corridan, his inspiration for Father Barry played by Karl Malden , who curiously passed away just over a month ago.

But before writing this screenplay, he had quaintly worked as an interviewer for movie stars, as well as writing the novel “What Makes Sammy Run?”, a rather harrowing look behind the scenes of Hollywood. In the 1940s he worked for the War Department’s film office, producing essential documentary work such asOn December 7, John Ford , about the Normandy landings, andThe Nazi Plan by George Stevens , which showed the world the horror of the concentration camps, a subject that affected him personally, due to his Jewish origins. He also came to work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, when the great novelist had to ‘sell’ himself to Hollywood to pay for his wife Zelda’s psychiatric treatment, but their efforts were fruitless.

With Kazan I would work again inA face in the crowd (1957), a bold critic of television and of the gullible and manipulable masses. A year earlier his great novel about the world of boxing with the same title had been taken to the cinema,The harder the fall will be .

Troubled was the production ofDeath on the Fens (1958), an ecological plot directed by Nicholas Ray . There was a confrontation between Schulberg –producer and screenwriter– and Ray because of the editing, but be that as it may, the result is of great force, an adventure in defense of nature that anticipated many films that call themselves ecological, according to the butchered Florida birds for their feathers in hats and mattresses.

Schulberg would go on to write books, work on television and theatre, and become involved in charity work. And even in 2001, around the age of 90, he began collaborating with Spike Lee on a script for a film about the confrontation between boxers Joe Louis, black, and German boxer Max Schmeling, a story that seemed to fit him like a glove. . Who knows, maybe one day we will see him in a posthumous credit title in said film.