On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York (review)

The now classic Kazan-Schulberg film On the Waterfront (1954) depicted a brutal world, already familiar from testimony to the Senate's Crime Committee. More unexpectedly, the hero was a "labor priest," Father Pete Barry. In this deeply researched and compellingly narrated book James T. Fisher tells the true story behind the famous movie. The priest was based on the charismatic Jesuit Father "Pete" Corridan of the Xavier Labor School, who had been running a long campaign against humiliating hiring practices, corrupt union officials, and the connections of both businessmen and labor leaders with criminals on Manhattan's West Side piers. Corridan faced an uphill battle, and the book has no happy ending, as he was ultimately defeated. Fisher has three main objectives. First, and this is perhaps his most original achievement, he aims to provide a complete picture of the interlocking worlds of businessmen, labor leaders, politicians, priests, and gangsters who, in their different ways, exercised great power over life in the waterfront districts on either side of the Hudson River from the later nineteenth century up to the 1950s. These five forms of power are represented here by the stevedoring millionaire, William J. "Mr. Big" McCormack; "King Joe" Ryan, life president of the International Longshoremen's Association; Frank Hague, mayor of Jersey City for thirty years; Monsignor John J."Taxi Jack" O'Donnell, chaplain to the port; and John "Cockeye" Dunn, who was finally brought to the electric chair for the last of an alleged thirty-two murders. All these men were Catholics of Irish descent, most had risen from poverty, and most were intimately acquainted with one another. Each in his own way contributed to the formidable strength of the status quo; and, above all, this regime, in spite of its many evils, was accepted by a large proportion of their fellow Irish Catholics living and working on the waterfront.

Fisher's second aim is to provide a sympathetic, though not uncritical, account of Corridan's crusade. He came from an Irish working-class background similar to those arrayed against him, but his strength lay in the ability to forge alliances with those who could publicize his crusade, most notably Malcolm Johnson of the New York Sun and the screenwriter Budd Schulberg, who became a close friend. But this strength was also in some ways a liability since, as Fisher repeatedly notes, he was much less effective in making alliances with those actually working on the waterfront.

The third theme of the book is the making of the movie, and here a major concern is to refute ill-informed criticisms of Schulberg's motives in writing the script. It is a great achievement to bring these three stories together to make a coherent and thoroughly convincing big story. Inevitably the narrative structure and the focus on the key personalities means that no one aspect can be considered in the detail that a more narrowly focused study would permit. Those especially interested in the Catholic dimension will welcome the extended discussion both of the potential impact of a "labor priest"in such an overwhelmingly Catholic milieu and also of the limits placed on his work by powerful opponents within the diocese or, in this case, his order. Corridan was fortunate in enjoying the support for many years of his provincial (and of Cardinal Francis Spellman), but when a new provincial came, the turbulent priest was quickly sidelined. Fisher's most interesting point is that the "labor priest"could face opposition even from those whom he hoped to assist: There was a widely held view that priests should stick to the "spiritual" and not directly enter the world of politics or industrial relations. Here one might wish for a whole chapter devoted to "Taxi Jack," who maintained what...