On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York (Cushwa Center Studies of Catholicism in Twentieth-Century America) [Hardcover]

James T. Fisher (Author)

Book Description

Series: Cushwa Center Studies of Catholicism in Twentieth-Century America | Publication Date: August 6, 2009

Site of the world's busiest and most lucrative harbor throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the Port of New York was also the historic preserve of Irish American gangsters, politicians, longshoremen's union leaders, and powerful Roman Catholic pastors. This is the demimonde depicted to stunning effect in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954) and into which James T. Fisher takes readers in this remarkable and engaging historical account of the classic film's backstory.

Fisher introduces readers to the real "Father Pete Barry" featured in On the Waterfront, John M. "Pete" Corridan, a crusading priest committed to winning union democracy and social justice for the port's dockworkers and their families. A Jesuit labor school instructor, not a parish priest, Corridan was on but not of Manhattan's West Side Irish waterfront. His ferocious advocacy was resisted by the very men he sought to rescue from the violence and criminality that rendered the port "a jungle, an outlaw frontier," in the words of investigative reporter Malcolm Johnson. Driven off the waterfront, Corridan forged creative and spiritual alliances with men like Johnson and Budd Schulberg, the screenwriter who worked with Corridan for five years to turn Johnson's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1948 newspaper exposé into a movie. Fisher's detailed account of the waterfront priest's central role in the film's creation challenges standard views of the film as a post facto justification for Kazan and Schulberg's testimony as ex-communists before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

On the Irish Waterfront is also a detailed social history of the New York/New Jersey waterfront, from the rise of Irish American entrepreneurs and political bosses during the World War I era to the mid-1950s, when the emergence of a revolutionary new mode of cargo-shipping signaled a radical reorganization of the port. This book explores the conflicts experienced and accommodations made by an insular Irish-Catholic community forced to adapt its economic, political, and religious lives to powerful forces of change both local and global in scope.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The true crime story behind Elia Kazan's award-winning 1954 film On the Waterfront is exhaustively detailed in this new history from Catholic historian Fisher (Communion of Immigrants), who follows the tight web of dockworkers, union organizers, crime bosses, politicians and church leaders bound for decades to the corrupt Irish-controlled ports. Fisher begins just after the Civil War, when Irish Tammany assumed control of Manhattan's Lower West Side waterfront with a mob-like system of violence and intimidation. Trading in bribes, fees, and exploitive labor that impoverished the communities they helped build, the crime bosses finally met their match in the 1940s, with the Jesuit priest John M. "Pete" Corridan. A hard-drinking, foul-spoken, yet unimpeachable leader hewn from the same rock as the wicked men he opposed, Corrigan possessed a knowledge of dock dynamics and a tactician's skill to rival any of the crime bosses'; in his effort to retake the ports, Corrigan played politicians, the media, and even Hollywood powerbrokers while converting thousands to the cause. Possibly the most thorough genealogy of Irish-American waterfront crime to date, this dense work may put off some readers, but will more than satisfy anyone devoted to this singular slip of New York history.
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Review

"It may be hard for some to imagine an era when the waterfronts clustered around New York City constituted America's dominant commercial port. Yet as late as the 1950s the region's 900 piers-spread over Manhattan's West Side, South Brooklyn, and Hoboken and Jersey City, N.J.-handled more cargo than any port in the world. This is the setting for James T. Fisher's On the Irish Waterfront, a fascinating work of history that explores the rise of New York's commercial port from the early 1900s to the 1950s and the corruption that eventually infiltrated all levels of the cargo business, until a crusading priest helped to put a stop to it-and inspired a classic film along the way." --Edward T. O'Donnell, Wall Street Journal, 9 September 2009

"Amply fills in the gaps among organized crime, public officials and the street priests and Catholic hierarchy. . . also provides new insights into the long-debated claim that the film was intended by its screenwriter, Budd Schulberg, and its director, Elia Kazan, as a justification for their naming names of former Communist associates in their testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He also clarifies the context of the famous utterance of Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City: 'I am the law.' It turns out Mayor Hague was not flaunting his legendary power (he did not have to). He was intervening to get jobs for two truants rather than complying with legalities by sending them back to school. --Sam Roberts, New York Times, 29 January 2010

"For anyone who has ever been moved by Marlon Brando delivering the immortal line, 'I coulda been a contender,' this book is a must. Through state-of-the-art research, James T. Fisher recreates the tough, corrupt universe of the waterfront, a huge commercial and criminal bounty where careers were built, noses broken, dissenters murdered, riches gained and lost-and it all became the basis for one of the most cherished American movies of all time. On the Irish Waterfront is a major act of historical restoration and a fascinating yarn told by a skilled literary maestro." --T. J. English, New York Times bestselling author of Paddy Whacked, The Westies, and Havana Nocturne

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr; 1st edition (August 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801448042
• ISBN-13: 978-0801448041
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #95,819 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What A Delight!, September 26, 2009

By 

Athanasius (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York (Cushwa Center Studies of Catholicism in Twentieth-Century America) (Hardcover)

One wouldn't think that a history of New York/New Jersey's waterfront could be even remotely interesting. In fact, I'm not sure why I started reading it. Well, I did and I couldn't be more glad. "On the Irish Waterfront" is riveting, almost unputdownable. More than anything else, it's a history of the Catholic Irish in New York. What a cast of fascinating characters they were! Rascals, rogues, and pirates, every single one of them. And all (well, almost all) blessed with an abundance of Gaelic charm.

The references to the movie, "On the Waterfront", are inescapable. For the most part, they make for interesting reading and are well mixed into the overall story. And why not? After all, James Fisher is clearly a gifted and skilled writer, as well as historian. One mistake that I know will strike most people as picayune, but I can't resist: On page 64, Fisher writes "discretely" when he of course means "discreetly".

Wonderful read; strongly recommended.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and unexpected, September 9, 2009

By 

L. Mowder "all things bright and beautiful" (North Brunswick, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York (Cushwa Center Studies of Catholicism in Twentieth-Century America) (Hardcover)

"On the Irish Waterfront" is really the story of violent compulsion of tribalism - religious, geographic, cultural, and labor-industrial. All the various strains that can make up one's "identity", and all the various forces that coerce obedient behavior, are outlined skillfully and poetically in this book. Fisher reveals the story here in all its mythic entirety, written in the sweat and blood of the men who created the waterfront of the largest port the world had ever seen. When one man, Pete Corridan, who is not of that tribe, devotes his entire being to help free the working men from the brutal oppression of the dockbosses - the men he is attempting to free reject him!

Ultimately, it seems, preserving one's identity as a member of the tribe is more important, more vital, more necessary, than ostensible freedom offered by an "outsider". How many of us still chose the identity that comes with being in a tribe, no matter how violent, over the anxiety that freedom can bring?

Fisher has written the best kind of history here - one that reveals the narrative previously unrecognized in a huge mass of facts and research. He brings it to us, his readers, in compelling and literate prose. Through his historical explication , we learn things about the men, the businesses, the city, the institutions that make up our nation's physical and psychic past. We come to understand ourselves, the metaphoric children of these men and their institutions.

And we also come to understand the true value of Narrative itself. It was not politics, or unions, or the intercession of priests, politicians or labor leaders that finally broke the back of oppressive power on the docks of New York harbor. It was the narrative ability of the reporters, essayists, and screenwriters - the modern bards - to break the silences and reveal the truths that finally freed the waterfront, and the men who worked on it.


These truths about the intertwining of violence, power and oppression were first revealed on the Irish Waterfront when a dockworker was brave enough to say, "Cockeye Dunn shot me." Every institution that controlled the docks had conspired to smother that sort of testimony. But Fisher reveals that it is only in this act of testifying, only in the very act of breaking the conspiracy of silence, that there could be any chance of ending the reign of violent terror that had left hundredss of corpses floating in the East River.

Dr Fisher's most powerful argument is that all of us must break the silences compelled by "sacred" institutions, if we are ever to end the barbarism that destroys lives every day.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an epic of the Irish waterfront, powerfully told, December 29, 2009

By 

coston - See all my reviews

This review is from: On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York (Cushwa Center Studies of Catholicism in Twentieth-Century America) (Hardcover)

On the Irish Waterfront tells a 20th century epic tale, complete with heroes-- in particular, Fr. John "Pete" Corridan, the Jesuit from the West Side of Manhattan who championed the plight of the longshoremen by standing up to "Mr. Big"--- and humanity. It also tells the story of the making of one great movie, On the Waterfront. The setting is the port of New York and New Jersey: Where now are parks and condos, was once a gritty, dangerous territory, under the control of mobsters and the Church alike. In Fisher's narrative, the Irish Waterfront is a metaphor not only for the port, but also for the insular Irish-Catholic community that grew up and out from there.

On the Irish Waterfront is an epic in itself, full of detail about the whole catalogue of mobsters, politicos, dockworkers, and many more on both sides of the Hudson. As a review in the Sept. 2009 Wall Street Journal said, On the Irish Waterfront is "a fascinating work of history," told with "admirable care." Another review (in the Dec. 2009 New Jersey Star-Ledger) notes that the book is a "riveting account" of what's "very much a New Jersey tale" and a well-researched, ardently told, read.