Curious Background to On the Waterfront

IN CONNECTION with the forthcoming stage version, you reported the views of the elderly Budd Schulberg on his screenplay for On the Waterfront, about the stevedore who informs on his crooked dockland bosses (August 2). He insists that his work in no sense represents an explanation for his testimony before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC ). At first this comes as no surprise in view of the curious early history of that film.

Frank Sinatra, a native of Hoboken, where the film was set, was originally cast as the stevedore, Terry Malloy, and actually had a costume-fitting for the role. Brando was initially reluctant to come on board because both Schulberg and the director, Elia Kazan, had appeared before HUAC and named names in their testimony. Brando finally agreed to play Malloy when he heard that Karl Malden (who played the dockland priest, Fr Barry, in the film) was assisting his friend Kazan with casting and had directed a scene with a young actor named Paul Newman, then at the Actor’s Studio in New York, which was being shown to the producers. What was also shown to the producers was another original script about New Jersey dockland corruption and violence written by the playwright Arthur Miller who had also been blacklisted but refused to appear before HUAC. His work was, however, rejected in favour of Schulberg’s. Miller’s disappointment at the time, however, was to some extent mitigated by Marilyn Monroe’s transfer of affection and much else from Kazan to Miller.

In view of his present claims, however, Schulberg would have been astonished had he read the following stark admission about the film in the autobiography of Kazan with whom he worked so closely: “When critics say I put my story and my feelings on the screen to justify my informing – they are right.” (Elia Kazan, A Life, 1988. ) Whatever its history and whatever the director or the writer had in mind, On the Waterfront remains one of the most outstanding and original cinema experiences of the twentieth century.

Lewis Cameron, 218 Nithsdale Road, Pollokshields, Glasgow.

Originally published by Newsquest Media Group.

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