Life or Script, ‘Waterfront’ Retains Drama

Budd Schulberg is one of those gifted people who seems to have done it all. In his 74 years, he has:

--Written scripts in Hollywood with F. Scott Fitzgerald.

--Written a book about unfettered ambition in Hollywood, “What Makes Sammy Run,” that turned the film community on its ear.

--Served in John Ford’s documentary film unit during World War II.

--Won an Academy Award for his script, “On the Waterfront,” and actually saw some dockland reforms come from the motion picture.

So what is this son of Hollywood--his father was the noted producer B. P. Schulberg--and current resident of Long Island doing these days?

Rewriting, recycling and--for the New Year’s holiday--relaxing on the Yucatan Peninsula.

The major project on Schulberg’s busy schedule is bringing “On the Waterfront” to the stage. The play (co-written with his friend Stan Silverman) had its world premiere at the Cleveland Play House in October.

Well received in Cleveland, the play will likely be mounted elsewhere, but where is a matter yet to be decided.

The movie won eight Academy Awards, including best picture. It still packs a wallop for audiences 34 years later.

So why mount a stage version of “On the Waterfront”? Why try to improve on a good thing? What is different, beside the times?

“We have freedom in the theater and the playwright is king,” said Schulberg. “We can extend the characters in a way that a (movie) studio might not like.”

The studios originally didn’t much like the screenplay. No one wants to see a movie about dockworkers, Schulberg and director Elia Kazan were told. They were considering turning it into a stage play when Sam Spiegel came up with the money for the film.

For Schulberg, the notion of producing “On the Waterfront” for the stage had come up again several years ago in New York, but the producers backed out.

The script and the idea languished in Schulberg’s desk drawer until Josephine Abady, in her first year as artistic director of the Cleveland Play House, began thinking about an unusual production to open its 73rd season. She persuaded Schulberg and Silverman to premiere their play at her theater.

Several rewrites and casting calls later, 22 actors were assembled from the hundreds who auditioned. The play opened Oct. 18 to mostly enthusiastic notices and full houses, and ran for a month.

In the film, the priest’s role, though memorably etched by Karl Malden, was a supporting one.

“As successful as the film was,” said Schulberg, “I had done so much research (on waterfront crime) and gotten to know the real priests, that I wanted to extend the role of the priest and explore his own struggles.”

Schulberg’s priest is based largely on Father John Corridan, a fast-talking, chain-smoking, tough-minded, sometimes profane Jesuit Irishman who urged his dockworker parishioners to resist the abuses of their corrupt union.

Father Corridan’s work on the New Jersey waterfront in the 1950s attracted attention from the media, politicians, and, of course, the mob.

“Father Corridan was punished for what he did,” said Schulberg. “He was transferred by the church, exiled from the waterfront. The rest of his life was a bitter anticlimax.”

Both the film and the play hint at a “Mr. Big,” a seemingly upright civic leader deeply connected to the waterfront gangsters. Such a person really existed, “a big mover and power broker in New York, who was nominated for some sort of very high award from the Catholic Church,” said Schulberg. “And Father Corridan went to the cardinal and told him of this person’s connections. The award was not given.

“But, of course, he eventually paid the price.

“Church politics have always played an important part in history. In South America in the last century. In Poland today. It’s a continuing debate: the role of priests and the church in the world.

“Today it’s called liberation theology,” Schulberg continued. “The waterfront priests were the forerunners. And that conflict will go on into the 21st Century.”

If Schulberg’s play is somewhat different, how have things changed on the waterfront?

Not much, he concedes.

“The method of hiring has been reformed. The brutal shape-up is no longer. Some people give the film a little credit for that.”

In the shape-up, dockworkers reported to hiring bosses and had to all but beg for work as there were many more men seeking work than jobs available. Alcoholism was a problem; those passed over in the morning shape-up often spent their time waiting in bars for the afternoon shape-up. Kickbacks were common. So was violence.

“That much has changed. But the mobs are still basically in charge of the waterfront locals. Loan sharking, smuggling, shakedowns, extortion, violence--they all still continue despite the efforts of everyone in law enforcement.”

In addition to “Waterfront,” Schulberg has finished a screenplay of “What Makes Sammy Run” for Warner Bros. He will be in Los Angeles for production meetings next month. Random House, the publisher, is planning a 50th anniversary edition of the novel.

Schulberg, who must have some of the drive he wrote about, is also busy on an updated version of his screenplay, “A Face in the Crowd”; has just written the introduction to a second collection of his short stories; and is working on an autobiography.

And on his regular visits to Los Angeles, Schulberg always finds time to visit the Watts Writers Workshop, which he helped found.

“Many of the young writers we have worked with are doing quite well. Perhaps, of all my work,” Schulberg said, “I am proudest of that.”