Sammy, Samantha on the Run

My reaction to seeing the film and reading about “Working Girl” is much different from the apparent consensus that at long last here is a positive movie about women in the work force.

The film is a kind of update on Budd Schulberg’s 48-year-old classic book “What Makes Sammy Run”--only in this version Schulberg’s Sammy is a Samantha.

The leading lady in “Working Girl,” brilliantly portrayed by Melanie Griffith, is a kind of ditzy sociopath who fights her way up the corporate ladder with lies and chicanery--and with little concern for who gets mowed down.

The film confers a cheering, positive affirmation on her criminal shenanigans at the end when the secretarial pools give her a rousing “atta way to go.”

Schulberg cogently previewed this trend in American business ethics in an article, “Sammy as a Role Model for Our Time,” in the Los Angeles Times Sept. 3, 1987. He discussed his shock about the fact that the sleazy psychopathic character of Sammy that he had created to represent the vicious side of Hollywood was now considered by many young people to be an inspiring, heroic role model.

LEWIS YABLONSKY

Professor of Criminology

Cal State Northridge