HAPPYTOWN – Sammy's glickism for Hollywood.

ORIGINAL STORY – The springboard for a movie – sometimes not necessarily original and sometimes not even a story.

LOCAL COLOR – a suntan.

CLASS – Nobody in Hollywood can afford to be without it.

SWITCH – Your variation on a theme by a competitor.  One of Sammy Glick's favorite indoor sports.

SWITCHEROO – What Sammy calls it after he's done it.

SWEETIE, SWEETHEART, BABY, TOOTSIE, LOVER – A producer, director or star – whatever celebrity with whom you are barely on speaking terms.

MY BEST FRIEND – Whatever celebrity happens to pass by your table at Ciro's.

SWEETEST GUY IN THE WORLD – The producer who just hired you.

GENIUS – Almost anybody.

CLEVER GENIUS – Almost anybody – only with an idea.

SCREEN WRITERS GUILD – Something like the United Mine Workers but with pens instead of picks, and credit at Romanoff's instead of lunch pails.

I LOVE YOU – Translated into ordinary English, "I can stand you."  In movies, a line of dialogue spoken between the stars when the script writer has run out of dialogue.

CYCLE – A favorite Hollywood copy-cat pattern – Civil War epics, newspaper yarns, gangster dramas.  You name it, they've done it.

WEEKEND IN TIJUANA – Move ahead 12 terms to Casting Director.

THE TEAM – The co-winners an Oscar® winner abuses all year – and then praises lavishly when he or she accepts the award.

A SMASH – Your last picture.

A TURKEY – Your rival's last picture.

PHONY – The Eastern conception of everybody in Hollywood.  Not sociologically accurate (i.e., Only half true).

IT STINKS – Suggesting faint approval.

I LOVE IT – Popular synonym for above.

A HACK – Last year's Pulitzer Prize winner, not a little short on cash.

HACK WRITING TEAM – The same Pulitzer Prize winner and his wife.

HOLLYWOOD COLUMNIST – An imposing literary figure, so eager for vital news of the community that if you don't inform her of the impending birth of your child nine months ahead of time, get ready for the "drop dead" treatment.

THAT BIG BREAK – See Casting Couch.

CASTING COUCH – See Casting Director.

CASTING DIRECTOR – See That Big Break.

BOX OFFICE VALUES – Sadistic Sex, Mother Love, Children and Dogs, Murder, and a healthy interest in statistics (38-21-36).

A SPECTACLE – The Bible starring Victor Mature and Dorothy Lamour, directed by Busby Berkeley.  Also see Super-Colossal.  Also see It Stinks.

ROUGH CUT – An early, over-long version of a film before the director's girl friend hits the cutting room floor.

EXTRA GIRL – The director's girl friend.

FRONT OFFICE – The administrative brains of the studio.  More accurately, the administrators.

LOSER – Any $300-a-week proletariat who doesn't rate a reserved parking space, bearing his name, inside the studio.

STARLET – more let than star.

SUPER-COLOSSAL – The Bible starring Victor Mature and Dorothy Lamour, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and introducing Baby Leroy as The Young Moses.

LOYALTY – Obsolete.  Not common usage in Sammy Glick's Hollywood.

PIONEER – One of Hollywood's unsuccessful founding fathers.

BUM – One of Hollywood's unsuccessful founding fathers.

MALIBU BEACH – Statue-by-the-Sea.

GROSSES – The total box-office take.  If you bombed at the Music Hall, you boast of what you took in at the Keokuk Strand.

HOUSE RECORD – And if you bombed at the Keokuk Strand, tell 'em about beating the house record at the Shanktown (Tex.) Bijou.

SHORT MEMORY – A Hollywood occupational hazard.  You're only as good as your last picture.

THE MAJOR STUDIOS – The Big Five which ruled Hollywood during the Ming – or L. B. Mayer – Dynasty.

DRAMATIC TRIUMPH – Your agent's description of your performance.

OVER BUDGET – Like Cleopatra.  (We didn't say see Cleopatra – we said "like" Cleopatra.)

THE LITTLE PEOPLE – To most people, midgets. To Sammy Glick, anyone who can't get into the executive dining room.  Go back to Losers.

THINK BIG – 40-19-38.

GHOST WRITER – After W. Somerset Maugham, Sammy Glick's favorite writer.

LAY AN EGG – When chickens do it you eat – when Turkeys do it you starve.

ADDITIONAL DIALOGUE – Associated with any great classic drama that requires improvement when brought to the screen (i.e. William Shakespeare's Hamlet – with Additional Dialogue by Sammy Glick).

WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN? – A musical based on the novel about a selfless little hero who embodies the best qualities of Tom Sawyer, Skeezix and Baby Face Nelson.  And as Sammy Glick would add, the show is available for production at your theatre.

Originally published in the New York Magazine
of the Sunday New York Herald-Tribune