Budd Schulberg

The son of producer and head of Paramount Pictures B.P. Schulberg, Budd Schulberg was born Seymour Wilson Schulberg and began his career with his father's studio, working as a publicist from the age of 17 and as 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 a clef, What Makes Sammy Run?, a classic satire of Hollywood power, corruption and pretension. He joined John Ford's documentary unit during WWII and "named names" before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951 - an experience that he obliquely examined in his Oscar-winning screenplay for Elia Kazan's gripping 1954 social drama, "On the Waterfront." Schulberg also wrote the cynical boxing novel The Harder They Fall (1947), which provided the basis for the 1956 film of the same name which proved to be Humphrey Bogart's final film. He again collaborated with Kazan on his blistering expose of media demagoguery, "A Face in the Crowd" (1957). In 1950, he wrote a thinly veiled account of F. Scott Fitzgerald in "The Disenchanted" (1950) which he co-adapted for the stage in 1958. In 1995, a stage adaptation of "On the Waterfront" briefly played on Broadway. He was married three times: to actresses Virginia Ray (1936-42), Virginia Anderson (1943-64) and Geraldine Brooks (1964-77). After outliving virtually everyone from the Golden Age of Hollywood, the notorious tough guy passed away of natural causes on Aug. 5, 2009 at age 95.