On the Waterfront(1954)
Columbia Pictures Jul 28, 1954
An ex-prize fighter turned New Jersey longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses, including his older brother, as he starts to connect with the grieving sister of one of the syndicate's victims.
Releases
Original Release | Jul 28, 1954
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- Sun Apr 12
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Director & Top Cast
Other Details
Country of Origin: United States
Language: English,Latin
Summaries
Plot Summary
- Mob-connected union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) gloats about his iron fist control of the waterfront. The police and the Waterfront Crime Commission know that Friendly is behind a number of murders, but witnesses play "D and D" ("deaf and dumb"), accepting their subservient position rather than risking the danger and shame of informing.Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is a dockworker whose brother Charley "the Gent" (Rod Steiger) is Friendly's right-hand man. Some years earlier, Terry had been a promising boxer, until Friendly had Charley instruct him to deliberately lose a fight that he could have won, so that Friendly could win money betting against him.Terry is coerced into luring fellow worker Joey Doyle (Ben Wagner) onto a rooftop, where he believes Friendly's henchmen want to talk Joey out of testifying to the Waterfront Crime Commission. Terry assumed that Friendly's enforcers were only going to "lean" on Joey to pressure him into silence. When they instead murder Joey by throwing him off the roof, Terry confronts Friendly but is threatened and bribed into acquiescence.Friendly says that his mother raised 10 kids on their father's meager pension, and he had to beg for work at the docks when he was 16. Friendly says that today the docks have 2000 workers, and they pay $72,000 in protection money to him, which pays everyone's salaries. Friendly takes his cut on everything that moves in and out of the docks. Friendly argues that the whole operation would be shut down due to one person squealing to the cops. Friendly controls the docks and he decides who works at the docks or not.Lead Investigator for Crime Commission (Leif Erickson) reaches out to Terry at the docks and wants him to testify, which Terry flatly refuses.Joey's sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint), angry about her brother's death, shames "waterfront priest" Father Barry (Karl Malden) into fomenting action against the mob-controlled union. Father Barry asks Edie to have patience as everybody in the neighborhood knows the forces behind Joey's death, but nobody is willing to testify. Barry invites the dock workers to the church for a meeting to encourage them to stand up for their rights.Friendly sends Terry to attend and inform on a dockworkers' meeting Father Barry holds in the church. Very few workers show up and nobody is willing to talk about who killed Joey. The meeting is broken up by Friendly's men. Terry helps Edie escape the violence and is smitten with her. Edie lives with Pop Doyle (John F. Hamilton), who warns Edie that Terry is the brother of Charley, who is Friendly's right hand man and a brutal operator. Edie is charmed by Terry's soft manners and his sensitive side. Terry tells Edie that at the docks it is every man for himself and just surviving is a challenge.Another dockworker, Timothy J. "Kayo" Dugan (Pat Henning), who agrees to testify after Father Barry promises unwavering support, ends up dead after Friendly arranges for him to be crushed by a load of whiskey in a staged accident.Although Terry resents being used as a tool in Joey's death, and despite Father Barry's impassioned "sermon on the docks" reminding the longshoremen that Christ walks among them and that every murder is a Calvary, Terry is at first willing to remain "D and D", even when subpoenaed to testify. However, when Edie, unaware of Terry's role in her brother's death, begins to return Terry's feelings, Terry is tormented by his awakening conscience and confesses the circumstances of Joey's death to Father Barry and Edie. Horrified, Edie breaks up with him.As Terry increasingly leans toward testifying, Friendly decides that Terry must be killed unless Charley can coerce him into keeping quiet. Charley tries bribing Terry with a good job and finally threatens Terry by holding a gun against him, but recognizes that he has failed to sway Terry, who blames his own downward spiral on his well-off brother.Terry reminds Charley that had it not been for the fixed fight, Terry's prizefighting career would have bloomed. "I could have been a contender," laments Terry to his brother, "Instead of a bum, which is what I am - let's face it."Charley gives Terry the gun and advises him to run. Terry flees to Edie's apartment, where she first refuses to let him in but finally admits her love for him. Friendly, having had Charley watched, has Charley murdered and his body hung in an alley as bait to lure Terry out to his death, but Terry and Edie both escape the attempt on Terry's life.After finding Charley's body, Terry sets out to shoot Friendly, but Father Barry prevents it by blocking Terry's line of fire and convincing Terry to fight Friendly by testifying instead. Terry proceeds to give damaging testimony implicating Friendly in Joey's murder and other illegal activities, causing Friendly's mob boss to cut him off and Friendly to face indictment.After the testimony, Friendly announces that Terry will not find employment anywhere on the waterfront. Terry is shunned by his former friends and by a neighborhood boy who had previously looked up to him. Refusing Edie's suggestion that they move away from the waterfront together, Terry shows up during recruitment at the docks. When he is the only man not hired, Terry openly confronts Friendly, calling him out and proclaiming that he is proud of what he did.The confrontation develops into a vicious brawl, with Terry getting the upper hand until Friendly's thugs' gang up on Terry and nearly beat him to death. The dockworkers, who witness the confrontation, show their support for Terry by refusing to work unless Terry is working too and pushing Friendly into the river. Encouraged by Father Barry and Edie, the badly injured Terry forces himself to his feet and enters the dock, followed by the other workers.A soaking wet and face-scarred Friendly, now left with nothing, swears revenge on them all, but his threats fall on deaf ears as they enter the garage, and the door closes behind them.
Storyline
- A longshoreman and ex boxer named Terry Malloy witnesses a murder perpetrated by his corrupt union. When a beautiful young woman comes into the picture that just so happens to be the murdered man's sister, Terry feels obligated to stand up to his bosses as a result of his recent relations with her. — drewsoccer707 Terry Malloy is an ex prize-fighter who works on the docks doing errands for corrupt union boss, "Johnny Friendly."After witnessing the murder of one of the dock men, he takes a second look into the men he is working for. He feels guilty about the death of the young man after falling for his sister and meeting "Father Barry" in his campaign to take down the evil longshoremen union bosses in the courts. — eljohnson3742 Dockworker Terry Malloy had been an up-and-coming boxer until powerful local mob boss Johnny Friendly persuaded him to throw a fight. When a longshoreman is murdered before he can testify about Friendly's control of the Hoboken waterfront, Terry teams up with the dead man's sister Edie and the streetwise priest Father Barry to testify himself, against the advice of Friendly's lawyer, Terry's older brother Charley. — Jwelch5742 Twenty-nine year old Terry Malloy has been a pawn for others his entire adult life. A former boxer, he was controlled by his older brother Charley Malloy, who told him subtly when to take a fall in having big bets against him in return for a small cut. Taken out of that life, he is now a longshoreman working the Hoboken docks, the union and thus the docks controlled by Michael Skelly aka mobster Johnny Friendly for who Charley works in the upper ranks. In doing Johnny's bidding, Terry is not only assured work in the day-to-day calls but is given what are considered the cushy jobs. Conversely, anyone who crosses Johnny in talking or threatening to talk to the authorities ends up in the morgue in what are considered "accidents". The latest such victim is Joey Doyle, who was considered a good kid and who was Terry's friend. Terry got Joey into the situation of being on his building's roof, from where he "fell", Terry not knowing Johnny's end goal of having Joey pushed off. Catholic priest Father Barry is the moral voice of the docks, he trying to get the longshoremen to talk about what they know in situations such as the cause of Joey's death. He is supported in this specific matter by Joey's younger sister Edie Doyle, who only wants the truth in what happened. Concurrently, Terry and Edie start to fall for each other, and Terry is served with a subpoena to testify in a commission investigating crime on the waterfront. Terry has to confront the matters of telling Edie the truth about what happened to Joey including his role which may threaten their relationship, the one good thing that has ever happened in his life, and in association testifying against Johnny at the commission, which has its own consequences beyond his life being in jeopardy at Johnny's hands. — Huggo 3 more See all
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