On the Waterfront: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Articles That Inspired the Classic Film Andtransformed the New York Harbor

by Budd Schulberg, Haynes Johnson, Malcolm Johnson

Book Overview

Presents a compilation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper articles, collected for the first time since their original publication in 1948, that explored the role of organized crime on the New York waterfront, documenting a violent underworld and its profound influence on New York politics, industry, and society, and inspired the award-winning

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1596090138
• ISBN13: 9781596090132
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Chamberlain Brothers
• Length: 307 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.4" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8

Customer Reviews

Handsomely Reproduced Time Capsule

Reading this book is like stepping into another era, and the shocks are everywhere. First of all, the material is from an olf time New York daily newspaper, the SUN, a paper long vanished into the annals of journalism. Thank goodness someone kept some old copies of this scandal-making series of articles by SUN reporter Malcolm Johnson, many of which took up the first page of the old SUN, and filled the paper with an expose on union activities along the piers and docks of old New York. Johnson's son, nonfiction specialist Haynes Johnson, contributes context for his father's Pulitzer-Prize winning scoop. Budd Schulberg, who read these articles and worked with Elia Kazan on the screenplay of the film, pays tribute to Malcolm Johnson like one craftsman to another. But he's no dummy, Schulberg. The first thing you realize when reading these articles is what a great job Schulberg did bringing life to what is essentially a pretty dry tale of graft, without any real heroes or plot. In presenting this old journalism, Schulberg insures that we appreciate his artistry. There aren't any Terry Malloys in the pages of the SUN, and there are definitely no Eva Marie Saints looking on wistfully. What you'll take away from what was once the expose of the decade is now merely a case of mutatis mutandis. I'm sure things along the docks have not changed an iota. Prices have, though! Johnson presented as a shocker the annual salary of the corrupt union head--$20,000! That wouldn't get you very far in today's New York. You might be able to buy a life buoy but I doubt it. And yet to his readers, that salary must have repesented the equivalent of a million bucks today, and been instantly a suspicious red flag as though to scream out in 24 pt type, RYAN'S A CROOK. And what a prescient picture of the Mafia! It was an organization only dimly visible through the underground fog, yet one that extended its tentacles into every arena of modern urban life. Johnson must have been one of the first reporters to dig into it with any depth or understanding. It's a surprise he lived! I would have thought after three or four days of this serial, the boys would have put his shoes into concrete and sunk him under the pier. Instead he lived for another 30 years, with the Pulitzer on his mantel and a grin across his face.