Schulberg Returns to the Scene of a Changed Hollywood : The author of ‘What Makes Sammy Run?’ is in town. He attended a USC gala and is checking out the status of his screen treatment of the novel.

If the fictional Sammy Glick, role model for the Gordon Geckos of our time, primo back-stabber to the stars and schlock overachiever of the ‘30s, should in whatever reprehensible form return to our glitzy shores, he would find it not only difficult to have lunch in this town again, but he’d have to find employment in a seemingly different Hollywood. Most likely he’d be working for a Japanese electronics giant. Or an Italian entrepreneur. Or an Australian media operator. Or a Dutch record company.

And in the new international spirit of filmmaking, he might be cutting deals with:

* France’s Canal Plus for European television rights to any films he’d make.

* NHK, the big Japanese television network, for Asian home video sales.

* Granada Television for a co-production arrangement for London location shootings and distribution.

* Pepsi, Pontiac and Pepsodent for product placement.

* Time Warner to sell his films to HBO, Cinemax and pay-per-view cable.

Deals would be done at Jimmy’s or Michael’s. Forget that favored spot, Ciro’s, up there on the Sunset Strip. Gone. Transmuted into, of all ironic things, the Comedy Store.

In many respects, Sammy Glick is a measure of how things have changed in this town, and how some things have remained the same.

Glick’s creator, writer Budd Schulberg, was back in town earlier this month. One reason for the return to the Los Angeles of his childhood was a 50th-anniversary celebration at USC of the publication of “What Makes Sammy Run?,” the incisive insider’s look at the Hollywood industry Schulberg knew as the son of Paramount honcho B.P. Schulberg.

But there were other matters on Schulberg’s agenda. One was to check out the status of the movie deal he had made with Warner Bros. three years ago. After all these years, no one had come close to filming Schulberg’s portrait of cutthroat Hollywood in the golden ‘30s. NBC had produced a two-part miniseries on Schulberg’s book and later a musical version of Sammy was staged on Broadway. But Sammy never made it into a movie.

Schulberg has a 130-page first-draft script of the book, patterned closely to the novel’s characters and action.

Three years ago Warner Bros. took an option on that script.

A director was chosen. But he was unavailable.

A co-producer, Gene Kirkwood, was assigned to the film, but he still doesn’t have a date for the start of production. No cast has been chosen. Another director was mentioned but he may be working on another movie soon. “Wonderful guy, Budd Schulberg,” said Kirkwood. “He’s like a time capsule to the Hollywood of the ‘30s.”

A Warner Bros. executive said he believed the film is still in development, meaning almost anything you want it to mean.

And Schulberg? He met again with some folks at Warners and came out still feeling optimistic. “It looks good. They seem to want to make the movie,” the 77-year-old Schulberg said.

Anything firm, anything certain?

“It looks good,” Schulberg said.

In Hollywood, business is still usual.

But whatever the film’s status or lack of it, some of Schulberg’s friends held a Hollywood-style reception for him and his 50-year-old book in the rotunda of USC’s Doheny Library. Photographers fired away, well wishers crowded into the room. Two canvas director’s chairs were unsnapped, one with Schulberg’s name, the other bearing the name of the absent Sammy Glick.

The display of Schulbergiana will be at the library through March. It’s an exhibit largely put together by fight fan, former college professor, memorabilia collector Nick Beck. Lobby cards. Publicity pictures. Still photographs. Original manuscripts covering Schulberg’s writing career. A copy of the first published Sammy Glick story, this one a short, early version of the film in a 1941 Liberty magazine (reading time, 25 minutes, 27 seconds). And a sequel, “Romance comes to Sammy Glick” (reading time 24 minutes, 46 seconds).

Among the old friends greeting Schulberg were Julian (Bud) Lesser who had gone to school with the writer in Los Angeles and Jimmy Sherman and Otis O’Solomon, original members of the Watts Writers Workshop that Schulberg helped start following the riots here in 1965. It was an occasion for Sherman to remind people that the workshop, maybe not as active as it once was when Schulberg was around, was about to get busy again. USC, he said, would help bring new life to the minority writers project.

But another question still hung around. Would there be new life for Sammy?

Schulberg stared at the empty directors chair next to his. “It’s the opposite of Passover,” he said, his firm, strong hand gripping a glass of Chardonnay. “It’s the opposite of the invited guest. But it’s appropriate you set an empty chair for Sammy Glick, waiting for him to come in. He will of course.” He smiled.

“Sammy Glick will come. I have him to thank, for I couldn’t have done what I’ve done without all those Sammy Glicks surrounding me all of my life.”

Privately the next day, following the meeting at Warner Bros., Schulberg was asked what kind of Hollywood he sees today, what kind of world Sammy would find.

“The studio structure is altogether changed. There’s more free-wheeling now. Majors aren’t turning out the same kind of product they once did. They have the power but not the enormous centralized power they had in the past. But people haven’t changed that much here. It’s still a kind of golden land of opportunities. But you see it everywhere, too. On Wall Street. In the real estate market where I live in Long Island.

“But here, things can happen so suddenly. Success and failure are so magnified. It’s fascinating how fast people can rise and fall here.

“This town is really fascinating,” Sammy’s creator said.

It’s still so fascinating to him that Schulberg has outlined a sequel. Sammy Glick in middle age. A more mature Sammy. More reflective.

Just in case the subject ever comes up.