50 Years Haven’t Slowed Ever-Running Sammy Glick

After 50 years of betraying friends, stabbing strangers in the back and discovering new ways to claw his way to the top, Sammy Glick is still running.

“What Makes Sammy Run,” America’s classic novel of the amoral hustler, has just been issued in a 50th anniversary edition and is soon to be made into a movie. And its creator, Budd Schulberg, said he plans to write another novel about the man no one likes.

Schulberg, 75, has big dreams for his latest adventures with Sammy, the nervy newspaper copy boy who steals someone else’s work and sells it--and himself--to Hollywood where he becomes a human shark swallowing anything in his way.

The author hopes to line up Hollywood’s hottest star, Tom Cruise, to play Sammy and get Sidney Lumet, a specialist in the darker sides of life, to direct.

“Cruise is interested and is considering it. He’s awfully impressive, almost another Brando,” said Schulberg, who wrote one of Brando’s greatest films, “On the Waterfront.”

The filming of “What Makes Sammy Run” is supposed to start in the summer, and then Schulberg wants to update Sammy’s life, taking him from the 1940s to the 1960s and hone some of his rough edges, teach him to appreciate art and talk a little nicer. Sammy may even go to a psychiatrist, or two, or three.

But Schulberg has no plans to turn Sammy into a choir boy.

The heel remains a heel, and Sammy, still running and reaching, may even eye taking over one of the conglomerates that now control Hollywood.