Film Plot. The Redemption Journey. On The Waterfront. Eight Academy Awards
On the Waterfront is a 1954 American drama film about union violence and corruption among longshoremen. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steiger, Karl Malden and Lee J. Cobb. The soundtrack score was composed by Leonard Bernstein. It is claimed it was based on a series of articles written in the New York Sun by Malcolm Johnson. However, in 1950, playwright Arthur Miller approached Kazan with the script The Hook. They took it to the major Hollywood studios, where Miller would meet Marilyn Monroe for the first time. The script was checked by the F.B.I. and they concluded the script should be re-written with the crooks as Communists. Miller withdrew, and Columbia boss Harry Cohen called Miller anti-American. Kazan confessed to a past with the communist party, gave names to HUAC, and was assured he could continue with the studio. On the Waterfront is an adaptation of The Hook, except Kazan made Brando out as the guy who snitches but keeps his honour, as he wished himself to be seen as that person.
The film received eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director.
This story of Mob informers was based on a number of true stories and filmed on location in and around the docks of Hoboken, New Jersey. Mob-connected union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) gloats about his iron fisted control of the waterfront. The police and the Waterfront Crime Commission know that Friendly is behind a number of murders, but witnesses play "D and D" ("deaf and dumb"), submitting to their oppressed position rather than risk the danger and shame of informing.
Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is a dockworker whose brother Charley (Rod Steiger) is Friendly‘s lawyer. Some years earlier, Terry had been a promising boxer until Friendly had Charley instruct him to deliberately lose a fight that he could have won, so that Friendly could win money betting on the weaker opponent.
As the film begins, simpleminded Terry is used to coax a popular dockworker, Joey Doyle (Ben Wagner), out to an ambush, preventing him from testifying against Friendly before the Crime Commission. Terry resents being so used in the murder but is still willing to remain D&D. Terry meets and is smitten by the murdered Joey Doyle's sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint), who has shamed "waterfront priest" Father Barry (Karl Malden) into fomenting action against the union/mob.
Soon both Edie and Father Barry are urging Terry to testify. Another dockworker by the name of Kayo Dugan who agrees to testify after Father Barry's promise of unwavering support, ends up dead after Friendly arranges for him to be crushed by a load of whiskey in a staged accident.
As Terry, tormented by his awakening conscience, increasingly leans toward testifying, Friendly decides that Terry must be killed unless Charley can coerce him to keep quiet. Charley tries bribing Terry with a plum job, and finally threatens him by holding a gun up against him, but recognizes he has failed to sway Terry, who places the blame for his own downward spiral on his well-off brother.
In one of the most famous scenes in film history, Terry reminds Charley that if it had not been for the fixing of the fight, "I coulda been a contender." Charley gives Terry a gun and advises him to run. Friendly has been spying on the situation, so he has Charley murdered, his body hanged in an alley as bait to get at Terry. Terry sets out to shoot Friendly, but Father Barry obstructs that course of action and finally convinces Terry to fight Friendly by testifying.
After the testimony, Friendly announces that Terry will not find employment anywhere on the waterfront. Edie tries to persuade him to leave the waterfront with her, but he nonetheless shows up during recruitment at the docks. When he is the only man not hired, Terry openly confronts Friendly, proclaiming that he's proud of what he did.
Finally, the altercation develops into a vicious brawl, with Terry getting the upper hand until Friendly's goons gang up on Terry and nearly beat him to death. The dockworkers, who witnessed the confrontation, declare support of Terry and refuse to work unless Terry is working too. Finally, the badly wounded Terry forces himself to his feet and enters the dock, followed by the other longshoremen.
On the Waterfront was based on a 24-part series of articles in the New York Sun by Malcolm Johnson, "Crime on the Waterfront". The series won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. The stories detailed widespread corruption, extortion and racketeering on the waterfront of Manhattan and Brooklyn.
To add realism, On the Waterfront was filmed over 36 days on-location in Hoboken, New Jersey (the docks, workers' slum dwellings, bars, littered alleys, rooftops). And some of the labour boss's chief bodyguards/goons in the film (Abe Simon as Barney, Tony Galento as Truck and Tami Mauriello as Tullio) were real-life, former professional heavyweight boxers.
In On the Waterfront, protagonist Terry Malloy's fight against corruption was in part modelled after whistle-blowing longshoreman Anthony DiVincenzo, who testified before a real-life Waterfront Commission on the facts of life on the Hoboken Docks and had suffered a degree of ostracism for his deed. DiVincenzo sued and settled, many years after, with Columbia Pictures over the appropriation of what he considered his story. DiVincenzo claimed to have recounted his story to screenwriter Budd Schulberg during a month-long session of waterfront barroom meetings. Shulberg attended Di Vincenzo's waterfront commission testimony every day during the hearing.
Karl Malden's character of Father Barry was based on the real-life "waterfront priest" Father John M. Corridan, S.J., a Jesuit priest, graduate of Regis High School who operated a Roman Catholic labor school on the west side of Manhattan. Father Corridan was extensively interviewed by Budd Schulberg (who wrote the foreword to a biography of Father Corridan, Waterfront Priest by Allen Raymond).
On the Waterfront is also the only movie in which we can see the Andrea Doria, the Italian liner that sank in 1956 after a collision in the Atlantic Ocean: in a scene, Marlon Brando watches the ship as she descends the Hudson River.
(Amera Ziganii Rao Note; Despite the fact this film to me is a perfect Hero’s Journey rise to go up against ‘the machines’ or indeed, polite society, conformity and the norm, and standing up for what one believes, whether it be heart, individuality, sexuality or humanity, it has to be said that.....) the film is widely considered to be Kazan's answer to those that criticized him for his identifying eight (former) Communists in the film industry before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1952. Kazan's critics included his friend and collaborator, the renowned playwright Arthur Miller, who had written the original screenplay (titled The Hook) for the film that would evolve into On the Waterfront. Miller was replaced by Budd Schulberg, also a witness before HUAC.
On the Waterfront, being about a heroic mob informer, showed that there could be nobility in a man who "named names". In the movie, variations of that phrase are repeatedly used by Terry Malloy. The film also repeatedly emphasizes the waterfront's code of "D and D" ("Deaf and Dumb"), remaining silent at all costs and not "ratting out" one's friends. In the end, Malloy does just that and his doing so is depicted sympathetically. Miller's response to the film's message is contained in his own play, A View from the Bridge, which presents a contrary view of those who inform on others.
Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando
On The Waterfront. Quotes
Terry Malloy
Hey, you wanna hear my philosophy of life? Do it to him before he does it to you.
Quite a nose, huh? Some people just have a face that sticks in your mind.
Yeah his racket, everybody's got a racket.
You don't understand. I could'a had class. I could'a been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charley.
Remember that night in the Garden you came down to my dressing room and you said, "Kid, this ain't your night. We're going for the price on Wilson." You remember that? "This ain't your night"! My night! I coulda taken Wilson apart! So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors in the ballpark and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palooka-ville! You was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me just a little bit so I wouldn't have to take them dives for the short-end money.
You know this city's full of hawks? That's a fact. They hang around on the top of the big hotels. And they spot a pigeon in the park. Right down on him.
You know you're not too funny today, fat man.
(To Friendly) You think you're God Almighty, but you know what you are? You're a cheap, lousy, dirty, stinkin' mug! And I'm glad what I done to you, ya hear that? I'm glad what I done!
Edie: Shouldn't everybody care about everybody else?
Terry Malloy: Boy, what a fruitcake you are! Edie: But Pop, I've seen things that I know are so wrong. Now how can I go back to school and keep my mind on... on things that are just in books, that-that-that aren't people living?
Terry Malloy: If I spill, my life ain't worth a nickel.
Father Barry: And how much is your soul worth if you don't? Father Barry: Isn't it simple as one, two, three? One. The working conditions are bad. Two. They're bad because the mob does the hiring. And three. The only way we can break the mob is to stop letting them get away with murder.
Friendly: Where you guys going? Wait a minute! I'll remember this! I'll remember every one of you! I'll be back! Don't you forget that! I'll be back!
Thank you to Wikipedia for the excerpt and to outside sources for photographs.
Amera Ziganii Rao
Amera Ziganii Rao is a philosophical writer, essayist, social commentator, prose writer, dramatist and photographer artist as well as a consciousness explorer, self actualiser and emotional healer. She is a former journalist who is now turning professional with her art forms and indeed, her healing forms, after a long journey of inner searching, self teaching and exploring many layers and areas of both craft and wisdom. She is now working on her first book of philosophy and esoteric thought, and social and cultural commentary. She is also showing her first photography collections. And last but most definitely not least, she is building a business to share her consciousness and empowering explorations to reach as many people as possible across the world. She is 46 years old and currently lives in London.
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