Yet one of the main characters was based closely on the life of a remarkable Irish-American priest, Fr. John Corridan, S.J., who spent years crusading against the scourge of mob corruption, violence, and exploitation on the waterfront.
John M. Corridan — known as “Pete” to his friends — was born into a working-class family on Manhattan’s West Side in 1911. His father was a policeman who provided a modest living for his family. Young Pete excelled in school and earned admission to Regis High School, an elite Jesuit school that charged no tuition. He graduated in 1928 and soon joined the Jesuits. He studied theology and economics and was ordained in 1946.
That same year, Corridan was assigned to the Xavier Institute of Industrial Relations at St. Francis Xavier parish in Manhattan on East 16th Street. The school’s director assigned Corridan to work among the longshoremen from the nearby waterfront district, most of whom were Irish Catholic. At the time the waterfront’s labor scene was in the iron grip of the International Longshoremen’s Association, a corrupt union with ties to organized crime run by Joseph Ryan. No one could find work on the docks without an ILA card and union members had to pay large sums to acquire one. Then longshoremen were subject to daily “shape-ups” where a privileged number of men (i.e., those who paid the necessary bribes) were picked to perform a day’s work. The reality for longshoremen was as brutal as it was basic: pay up or you don’t work.
Corridan soon became an expert on the ILA’s system of labor exploitation, racketeering, extortion, and intimidation and the toll it took on the longshoremen. When the New York Sun investigative reporter Malcolm Johnson decided to write an expose on the doings of the ILA, he quickly came to rely on Corridan as his main source. Johnson’s series of articles, “Crime on the Waterfront,” caused a sensation for exposing the collusion between the ILA and organized crime. It also brought notoriety to Fr. Corridan as the “Waterfront Priest” waging a one-man crusade against the injustices suffered by the city’s longshoremen. Corridan used his fame to bring further attention to the waterfront situation, penning articles for magazines, testifying before Congress, and debating ILA president Joe Ryan on television.
So when novelist Budd Schulberg began writing a screenplay about the dark world of the New York waterfront, he inevitably found himself following Fr. Corridan on his rounds. “I found,” Schulberg later remembered of his first meeting with the intrepid Jesuit, “a tall, gangling, balding, energetic, ruddy-faced Irishman whose speech was a fascinating blend of Hell’s Kitchen jargon, baseball slang, the facts and figures of a master in economics and the undeniable humanity of Christ.” Not surprisingly, Schulberg made a charismatic priest a central character in his story.
When the film project (after many rejections) finally got off the ground in 1953, director Elia Kazan hired Corridan to act as a consultant. Shot on location in Hoboken, N.J., the film centers on two characters. Terry Malloy (played by Marlon Brando) is a longshoreman caught in the web of waterfront corruption. Fr. Pete Barry (based on Corridan and played by Karl Malden) befriends Malloy and eventually convinces him to testify against the union. The crucial scene comes straight from one of Corridan’s famous waterfront speeches. After a worker suspected of talking to officials about corruption is killed in a fake accident, Fr. Barry shouts down into the hold of a freighter: “Some people think the crucifixion only took place on Calvary; they better wise up! Every time the mob puts the crusher on a good man — tries to keep him from doing his duty as a citizen — it’s a crucifixion! If you don’t think Christ is here on the waterfront, you got another guess coming.”
Unfortunately for Corridan, the film failed to bring about any immediate change on the real waterfront. When longshoremen were presented with a choice between the ILA and a reform-minded union promoted by Corridan, they chose the ILA. But in the coming years law enforcement officials broke the ILA and sent Ryan to prison. By then the steep decline of the New York waterfront was well under way as freighters headed for New Jersey and containers and cranes eliminated thousands of longshoremen’s jobs.
In 1957 Corridan left the waterfront to take a position teaching economics at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, N.Y. Two years later he accepted a job teaching theology at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City. He remained there for eight years when in 1967 he become a hospital chaplain in Brooklyn. Corridan retired in 1981 and died in 1984 at the age of 73. Papers across the country carried his obituary, reminding the nation of his crusade as the “Waterfront Priest” and the award-winning film he inspired three decades earlier.
Readers Note: The full story of Fr. Corridan can be found in the 1955 book “Waterfront Priest,” by Allen Raymond. More about the film “On the Waterfront” can be found at a 50th anniversary exhibit at the Hoboken Historical Museum — www.hobokenmusum.org.
HIBERNIAN HISTORY WEEK
March 29, 1882: Founded by Rev. Michael J. McGivney, the Knights of Columbus is granted a charter by the state of Connecticut.
March 30, 1955: Grace Kelly wins an Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in “The Country Girl.”
HIBERNIAN BIRTHDATES:
March 28, 1879: Nationalist martyr Terence MacSwiney is born in Cork.
March 28, 1944: NBA star Rick Barry is born in Elizabeth, N.J.
March 30, 1880: Writer Sean O’Casey is born in Dublin.