Elia Kazan’s breathtaking “On the Waterfront” is a transcendent work of cinema that cuts to the core of the human condition — it also features perhaps Marlon Brando’s greatest performance.  But it wouldn’t have been possible if not for brilliant screenwriter Budd Shulberg, who passed away Wednesday of natural causes.  He was 95.

Below is an excerpt from the report in Variety. Read the full article here.

Iconoclastic writer Budd Schulberg, who penned the controversial Hollywood novels “What Makes Sammy Run?” and “The Disenchanted” and who won an Oscar for his original screenplay “On the Waterfront,” died of natural causes Wednesday at his home in Westhampton Beach, on Long Island, according to his wife Betsy. He was 95.

Schulberg’s influence over Hollywood was strong. The Sammy Glick character from “What Makes Sammy Run” is the paradigm of power-driven, amoral studio executives.

Although “What Makes Sammy Run” was never made into a film — it reached Broadway as a musical in the 1960s, and Schulberg himself directed a 1959 TV adaptation — works as varied as “The Player” and “Sweet Smell of Success” owe a debt to Schulberg’s tale.  His novel “The Disenchanted,” another bitter tale of Hollywood, also cast a long shadow over the public’s perception of the fate of such literary figures as F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner and the time they spent in Los Angeles as screenwriters…