Stage Set for Hollywood Great to Make Fringe Festival Debut
By GARETH EDWARDS
Budd Schulberg of On the Waterfront fame confirms visit
A HOLLYWOOD writer behind some of the classics of the silver screen is making a 3500-mile trip to the Capital to see a new stage production of his most famous work.
Veteran author Budd Schulberg, 94, one of Tinseltown’s most important and celebrated writers, is leaving his home in New York next month to see the opening night of the Fringe version of On the Waterfront.
The classic Oscar-winning 1954 film, written by Schulberg, is perhaps best known for catapulting Marlon Brando to international stardom. In the role of ex-prizefighter Terry Malloy, Brando uttered the now immortal line “I coulda been a contender”.
The stage version, being shown at the Pleasance, is being directed by actor, writer and director Steven Berkoff, and is expected to be one of the big hits of this year’s Fringe Festival.
Schulberg has been collaborating on the script for the production since Berkoff gained the rights to stage it three years ago. Following the rave reviews it received for its premiere at the Nottingham Playhouse earlier this year, he confirmed he would be heading to the Capital for the Fringe opening.
Schulberg will also sit in on final rehearsals in Edinburgh during the week before the Festival. Mr Berkoff said: “It is wonderful that the author of one of the greatest movies of the 20th century is coming all this way at the age of 94 to see the adaptation of his remarkable script.”
Pleasance director Anthony Alderson said he was thrilled Schulberg was making the trip.
He said: “We are all extremely excited to hear that he has confirmed he is coming over. I know he has been working with Steven on the play and I believe it is a stage version he wrote around the same time as the screenplay, which makes it very special indeed. To have someone with his reputation and history coming over to see the play is fantastic.”
Budd Schulberg is regarded as one of the most influential figures in Hollywood history and is behind some of the greatest films of his 1950s heyday, including The Harder They Come, starring Humphrey Bogart and Rod Steiger, and Elia Kazan’s A Face In The Crowd. He was raised in Hollywood, where his father was a pioneer film producer, whose film Wings won the first ever Oscar in 1928.
While serving in the navy during the Second World War, Schulberg was assigned to the office of strategic services, working with John Ford’s documentary unit.
He worked briefly with F Scott Fitzgerald during his time in Hollywood, and his disastrous experience with Fitzgerald became the “spine” of his later novel and subsequent play, The Disenchanted.
Schulberg is still working and lives on Long Island. A spokesman said he was “delighted” to be coming to the Capital for the play.
On the Waterfront runs at The Pleasance Grand from July 31 to August 25.
(c) 2008 Evening News; Edinburgh (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.