This week I spent four days in New York City shooting a video in a location that overlooked the Hudson River into Hoboken, New Jersey. I knew that was where Frank Sinatra was from but I didn’t realize until today that that is On the Waterfront territory.
The 1954 film that AFI listed as the #8 American film of all time and which I would list as one of my top films ever. And while I have written about it before I discovered sonething today that gives some reasons for its lasting appeal.
Before the film won 8 Oscars the events that lead to the movie were published in a 24 part series in the New York Sun back in 1948 by Malcolm Johnson. The series titled Crime on the Waterfront won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. (The articles are now in book form called On the Waterfront: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Articles That Inspired the classic film and Transformed the New York Harbor.)
There is a book version of Johnson’s articles that has been published and I look forward to trying read it. Here’s how the book starts.
And I also read that the famed Death of a Salesman writer Arthur Miller also wrote a draft of the script. Though he is not credited on the movie, I find it hard to believe that they didn’t use any of his work.
[…] This week I spent four days in New York City shooting a video in a location that overlooked the Hudson River into Hoboken, New Jersey. I knew that was where Frank Sinatra was from but I didn’t realize until today that that is On the Waterfront territory. The 1954 film that AFI listed as the #8 American film of […] Original Source… […]