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Son of producer and publicist B.P. Schulberg who began his career with Paramount, working as a publicist from the age of 17 and a screenwriter two years later. He was dismissed from the studio in 1939 after the failure of WINTER CARNIVAL, on which he collaborated with an ailing F. Scott Fitzgerald. In 1941 Schulberg penned the controversial roman à clef, What Makes Sammy Run?, a classic satire of Hollywood power, corruption and pretention. He joined John Ford's documentary unit during WW II and "named names" before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951 (an experience that he obliquely examined in his screenplay for Elia Kazan's gripping 1954 social drama, ON THE WATERFRONT). In his testimony he identified these people, among others, as Communists: Herbert J. Biberman, John Bright (writer), Paul Jarrico, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Waldo Salt and Robert Trasker.1
Schulberg also wrote the cynical boxing novel The Harder They Fall (1947), which provided the basis for the 1956 film of the same name; he again collaborated with Kazan on his blistering exposé of media demagoguery, A FACE IN THE CROWD (1957).
In the wake of the Los Angeles riots in the mid-60s, Schulberg helped found the Watts Writers Workshop. He also co-founded, in 1971, the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center in New York City.
His autobiography, Moving Pictures: Memories of a Hollywood Prince (2003), weaves his personal story through that of the pioneer film world into which he was born.
A lifelong fight fan (the only non-boxer ever honored as a Living Legend of Boxing by the World Boxing Association), he published a collection of his boxing pieces, Sparring With Hemingway (1995), and a second collection, Ringside: A Treasury of Boxing Reportage, was published in paperback in 2007. He also wrote a screenplay for director Spike Lee based on the Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fights that were seen as a symbol of the clash of Democratic America with Nazi Germany. His new play version of On The Waterfront was performed at the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe arts festival.
Husband of actresses Virginia Ray (1936-42), Virginia Anderson (1943-64) and Geraldine Brooks (1964-77).
1 nomination, 1 Award 1 Vaughn, Robert: Only Victims p. 301 |