"Sunday Showcase" What Makes Sammy Run?: Part 1 (1959)

Director:

Delbert Mann

Writers:

Budd Schulberg (writer)
Stuart Schulberg (writer)

TV Series:

"Sunday Showcase" (1959)

Original Air Date:

27 September 1959 (Season 1, Episode 2)

Genre:

Biography | Comedy | Drama | Music | Romance

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Beautiful Woman | Male Female Relationship | Anthology

Cast

  (Episode Credited cast)

Sidney Blackmer	...	H.L. Harrington
Larry Blyden	...	Sammy Glick
Norman Fell	...	Sammy's Brother
John Forsythe	...	Al Manheim
Jay Lawrence	...	Sheik Romero
Horace McMahon	...	Mike Crowley (as Horace MacMahon)
Dina Merrill	...	Laurette Harrington
Nelson Olmsted	...	Ben Osborne
David Opatoshu	...	Sidney Fineman
William Post Jr.	...	Lucky Westover
Barbara Rush	...	Kit Sargent
Milton Selzer	...	Julian Blumberg
Monique van Vooren	...	Zizi Molnari
Earl Wilson	...	Himself

Trivia:

Around 1956, Eddie Fisher and his agent Lew Wasserman were discussing roles for Fisher's acting debut. A project being discussed at the time was "What Makes Sammy Run?" by Budd Schulberg and Stuart Schulberg. Fisher wanted to play aggressive producer Sammy Glick, "the ultimate Jewish hustler. I knew a lot of real Sammy Glicks and I felt confident that was a character I could play." Lew Wasserman decided that the character was too much of a classic negative Jewish stereotype and that it would be bad for Fisher to play it. So Fisher went in the complete opposite direction (in retrospect, perhaps too far) with then-wife Debbie Reynolds in the squeaky clean comedy that Fisher hated, Bundle of Joy (1956), a film made to capitalize on the birth of their daughter, future Star Wars (1977) "Princess Leia" Carrie Fisher. The Schulberg project "What Makes Sammy Run?" was eventually produced in 2 parts for this show, episodes #1.2 and #1.3.