On The Waterfront
My first relationship was with someone from New Jersey, whose father served in the state legislature in the 1990s before being forced to resign in a corruption scandal. When he told me about it, I was shocked, but he plainly responded; “I mean, it’s New Jersey.”
The Garden State isn’t the only place notorious for corruption, but it seems to be so prominent, it’s become a running joke. Three senators from New Jersey in the past 40 years have ended up embroiled in scandal. Former Gov. Chris Christie also found himself snagged in a scandal that ended his national ambitions.
Besides it’s notoriety for corruption, the state’s geographic location is also a key part of its identity. It ties into that notoriety too. New Jersey is nestled between two of the largest cities in the country, New York and Philadelphia, and became a destination for upwardly mobile, ambitious immigrants who first arrived in those cities. It also made New Jersey a hotbed for organized crime.
New Jersey’s location on the Atlantic Ocean adds to its identity. With over 100 miles of beachfront, the state has some of the best beaches in the world that would rival the Caribbean and South Pacific if the climate didn’t make them uninhabitable for nearly half the year. The “Jersey Shore” has become such a cultural staple, MTV made a show about it, and reinforced some awful stereotypes along the way. The proximity to the sea also makes New Jersey home to a key shipping port.
It’s there where our New Jersey movie takes place. For some movies on my list, I considered songs and TV shows associated with states. For New Jersey, the state’s own Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer” came to mind. I listen to it nearly every time I drive through the state. The song starts “Tommy used to work on the docks, the unions been on strike…”
And then it hit me. What movie can show off New Jersey’s relationship with the ocean, its sordid history of corruption and how its residents navigate it?
Elia Kazan’s 1954 iconic On The Waterfront, considered one of the best of all time.
The film is set in Hoboken in the 1950s, and the main characters work on the docks, like Tommy in the song, as longshoremen. The film opens with our protagonist Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) returning a lost pigeon to a neighbor Joey Doyle, who like Malloy keeps a pigeon coup on his roof (We New Yorkers know all about that). It’s a ruse to lure Johnny to the roof, where, to Terry’s surprise, he is thrown to his death. When police respond, a woman, who is never named in the movie, notes that her son was killed the same way, a hint that this is not the first “hit” that’s happened in Hoboken. Her son, like Joey, was speaking to the Waterfront Crime Commission about corruption in the longshoreman’s union and its connections to the mob.
Joey’s hysterical sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint, in her first movie role) vows to find his killer and shames the local parish pastor, Father Pete Barry (Karl Malden) by pointing out his cowardice: “Whoever heard of a saint hiding in the church?”
Terry is jaded. He approaches union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee Cobb) in his pub where Johnny’s henchmen, including Terry’s brother Charley (Rod Steiger), are gathered. Terry expresses remorse about what happened to Joey, but Johnny gives a boisterous gaslighting speech about why he is the good guy in all this. Johnny greatly fears the commission and the possibility that his workers will rat him out. He rules by intimidation.
Much of the movie takes place on the rooftops in and around the pigeon coups, which feels fitting as “pigeon” is a common slang word for someone who squeals to authorities.
As the movie goes on, we see how depressed and cynical Terry is. He used to be a boxer, but he lost some key fights (later we find out he took dives) and it ended his career. At the waterfront one morning, the men line up to be chosen to work unloading an arriving ship, but there are limited roles, so the workers fight over who gets to work that day. It’s notable that at this time, the peak of the post-Great Depression labor boom, you still had unionized workers fighting like piranha over prey for a chance to work. Edie shows up and joins the brawl, looking to secure work for her dad. Father Barry also shows up. When he asks a worker why there is a fight over jobs, the worker tells him that’s just how Johnny runs the union. Barry tells Edie he will take a leadership role in fighting the corruption and invites the workers to meet at his church and discuss the corruption.
Meanwhile, Terry is approached by an investigator with the Waterfront Crime Commission but plays dumb. Charley asks Terry to go to Father Barry’s meeting to be a spy. He does, which intimidates the workers who showed up. The meeting is interrupted by Johnny’s thugs, who smash windows and scare away the workers. Terry helps Edie escape, but one worker, Kayo Dugan (Pat Henning) is beaten. He’s finally had enough and agrees to testify against Johnny. We all know how this is going to turn out.
A good chunk of the meat of the movie is the budding relationship between Terry and Edie. First, they stroll along the Hoboken waterfront after the meeting, getting to know each other. Edie is trying to flesh out what side Terry is on, and Terry doesn’t want her to find out his role in her brother’s death. Later, Edie returns home where her father is packing to send her back to the convent school in the Hudson Valley she attends, but Edie says she won’t go back. Her dad makes an impassioned plea, noting that he worked hard to ensure she got a good education, but Edie insists she will stay until she finds out who murdered Joey.
Edie and Terry meet near a pigeon coup on one of the rooftops. They go to a local pub, where Edie proves to not be as prudish as she lets on, knocking back a shot like a boss. We can see that Edie isn’t the innocent, helpless little girl she appears to be. It’s notable how more courageous the young Edie is than the men on the docks.
We find out more about Terry’s difficult upbringing. His father was killed in a mob hit, and he and Charley grew up in a boy’s home. Terry tried to make it as a fighter but took dives to help his brother who got involved in organized crime. The two share some nice moments but they’re interrupted by a member of Johnny’s gang who tells Terry the boss wants to speak to him. A member of the crime commission also comes to serve Terry with a subpoena. He refuses to testify, which angers Edie.
Terry’s conscience is almost an unseen character. Johnny and Charley warn Terry to stay away from Edie. They admit they know Dugan is talking to the authorities, which predictably leads to Dugan’s death in a staged work accident the next day. Dugan’s death is a dramatic turn in the movie. Father Barry shows up to give Dugan last rites and in a powerful speech that should have won Malden a second Oscar, Barry compares the murders of Joey and Dugan by the mobbed-up union bosses to Jesus’ crucifixion and those who refuse to help end the injustice are crucifying Christ all over again. It’s a reminder of what a powerful motivator Faith was to this generation of European Americans.
This leads Terry to seek out Edie and Barry’s guidance. Terry tells Barry about his role in Joey’s murder and Barry implores him to tell Edie. He does, in one of the best scenes in cinematic history. With Father Barry watching on, we see Terry confess to Edie, but we don’t hear one word he says. The sounds of working cranes and ships whistling at the docks drown out his words and act as metronomes, becoming louder and more erratic, echoing the nervous beating heart and anxiety of Terry (and ours), and the shock and anger we know Edie must feel. Mortified, Edie runs off.
Having lost everything, Terry runs to the rooftops, where he meets the investigators who admit he recognizes Terry from his fights, a reminder of how Terry sabotaged his own career for his brother and his corrupt friends.
Johnny finds out Terry is talking to the detectives and plots to kill him, but Charley intervenes, and meets up with Terry, offering him a job in exchange for him dropping his plans to testify. This is probably the most famous part of the movie. In the cab with Charley, he rejects the job offer and laments how he threw his career in one of the most famous movie quotes (“I could’ve had class. I could’ve been a contender”) and decides to testify anyway, as that’s the one thing he could do to salvage his self-respect. Charley threatens him with a gun but relents. He then lets Terry go, and it’s hinted that the driver of the cab is one of Johnny’s thugs. We know what’s about to go down.
Terry goes to Edie’s apartment seeking her forgiveness and confessing his love for her but is interrupted by word that Charley needs to see him. After he and Edie are almost killed in an alleyway, they come across Charley, dead and hanging from a hook. Terry snaps, vowing revenge he heads for Johnny’s bar, intending to kill him. There’s a confrontation at the bar, which Father Barry, almost acting as Terry’s own conscience here, shows up. He convinces Terry not to murder Johnny and instead testify against him. He agrees.
At the hearing, Johnny’s men clam up or refuse to testify, but Terry tells it all, ruining Johnny’s reputation with the dock bosses. As a result, Terry is blackballed from the docks and the pigeons in his rooftop coup are all killed in an act of symbolism. Terry vows to go to the docks to get work anyway.
In the final scene, Terry shows up to work but isn’t chosen. He confronts Johnny and blames him for all the deaths and the two get into a fistfight, which Terry appears to be winning until Johnny’s henchmen step in. They beat Terry and walk off. Edie and Father Barry show up and try to bring a beaten Terry to his feet.
The workers, all gathered to watch the attack, turn on Johnny. He tries to order them around, but they don’t listen. Joey and Edie’s father even pushes Johnny into the water. Now that the truth is out, Johnny no longer has power over them. The shipping bosses call the workers back to work and they all go, following Terry, into the warehouse while Johnny rages, powerless, behind them.
My political brain couldn’t help but notice how in the end, it was the big corporate boss who welcomed Terry and the rest of the workers into his job site over the objections of the corrupt union head. This dynamic is a pretty good window into one of the reasons this generation ultimately turned against organized labor and saw them as no better or perhaps even worse than corporations and bosses.
On The Waterfront shows how corruption becomes so ingrained at times, it seems almost impossible to fight, and when things seem hopeless, we all need fighters and heroes. It’s not surprising to me that Edie is one of those heroes. Anyone who’s ever known a “Jersey Girl” knows how ruthless they can be, especially when it comes to family, and Edie is probably one of the most iconic Jersey Girls. (Saint, herself a New Jersey native, won a Best Supporting Actress for playing Edie).
I’m also reminded that these characters are likely the parents and grandparents of the type of the generation that gave us to modern Jersey stereotypes, and honestly that makes sense, doesn’t it? We can see where that “f*ck around and find out” mentality was born, on the docks of Hoboken.