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On the Waterfront Writer Schulberg Dead at 95
By Rob Quinn
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Posted Aug 6, 09 4:00 AM CDT
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(Newser)
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Legendary Hollywood screenwriter Budd Schulberg has died, the New York Times reports. He was 95. Schulberg, who won an Oscar for On the Waterfront in 1955, was the son of a movie mogul and grew up as a Hollywood insider. His 1941 novel What Makes Sammy Run?, a scathing look at the workings of Hollywood, earned him the wrath of Tinseltown and a round of fisticuffs with John Wayne.
Schulberg again angered Hollywood by naming names to the House Un-American Activities Committee during its early '50s probe of the Communist Party's influence in the film industry, a decision he defended as an effort to tackle the party's stifling of free speech. The lifelong boxing fan kept writing until the end: He was working with Spike Lee to get a screenplay on the 1938 Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fight made into a movie.