A City Full of Hawks

On the Waterfront Seventy Years Later—Still the Great American Contender

Stephen Rebello

"Journalist Rebello delivers a meticulous account of On the Waterfront’s bumpy path to the silver screen.... Rebello gamely traces how real-life political drama combined with rank Hollywood gamesmanship to create a classic of American film. Cinephiles will be transfixed." - Publishers Weekly

Perhaps no movie has better dramatized the interplay of ambition, corruption, and disappointment in America than On the Waterfront, best captured in the closing “I could’ve been a contender” speech given by Marlon Brando’s character Terry Malloy. A gripping tale about organized crime and dockworkers in New Jersey, it is justifiably remembered today as one of the greatest movies of the twentieth century.

This film about internecine power struggles and thwarted ambition had its share of big personalities involved in its making, among them Brando, Elia Kazan, playwright Arthur Miller, screenwriter Schulberg, producer Sam Spiegel, composer Leonard Bernstein, Marilyn Monroe, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Montgomery, Grace Kelly, Aaron Copland, and more. What happened among them, let alone the dramas that were unfolding in their personal lives when they were off set, ironically recalls WHAT Michael Corleone says in one of On the Waterfront’s most celebrated descendants, The Godfather: “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.”

But, of course, it’s always intensely personal—as this fascinating narrative shows. From creative clashes to the challenges of filming on the Hoboken waterfront to the spectre of anticommunist paranoia that shadowed the movie’s creation and reception, this is a revealing look at the making of a genuine cinematic classic.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Applause

Pages: 224 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-4930-7780-9 • Hardback • November 2024 • $32.95 • (£25.00)

Subjects: Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism, Performing Arts / Film / General, Performing Arts / Drama

A City Full of Hawks

On the Waterfront Seventy Years Later—Still the Great American Contender

Hardback

Summary

"Journalist Rebello delivers a meticulous account of On the Waterfront’s bumpy path to the silver screen.... Rebello gamely traces how real-life political drama combined with rank Hollywood gamesmanship to create a classic of American film. Cinephiles will be transfixed." - Publishers Weekly
Perhaps no movie has better dramatized the interplay of ambition, corruption, and disappointment in America than On the Waterfront, best captured in the closing “I could’ve been a contender” speech given by Marlon Brando’s character Terry Malloy. A gripping tale about organized crime and dockworkers in New Jersey, it is justifiably remembered today as one of the greatest movies of the twentieth century.
This film about internecine power struggles and thwarted ambition had its share of big personalities involved in its making, among them Brando, Elia Kazan, playwright Arthur Miller, screenwriter Schulberg, producer Sam Spiegel, composer Leonard Bernstein, Marilyn Monroe, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Montgomery, Grace Kelly, Aaron Copland, and more. What happened among them, let alone the dramas that were unfolding in their personal lives when they were off set, ironically recalls WHAT Michael Corleone says in one of On the Waterfront’s most celebrated descendants, The Godfather: “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.”
But, of course, it’s always intensely personal—as this fascinating narrative shows. From creative clashes to the challenges of filming on the Hoboken waterfront to the spectre of anticommunist paranoia that shadowed the movie’s creation and reception, this is a revealing look at the making of a genuine cinematic classic.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Applause

Pages: 224 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-4930-7780-9 • Hardback • November 2024 • $32.95 • (£25.00)

Subjects: Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism, Performing Arts / Film / General, Performing Arts / Drama

Author

Stephen Rebello is a screenwriter and bestselling author. He has written screenplays for Disney, Paramount, Focus Features, and others. He has written for GQ, Playboy, Movieline, Hollywood Life, Statement, More, and Cosmopolitan. Born in southern New England, he is a longtime resident of southern California.

Reviews

Journalist Rebello delivers a meticulous account of On the Waterfront’s bumpy path to the silver screen. He discusses how in the early 1950s, director Elia Kazan and playwright Arthur Miller, both fresh off the success of Death of a Salesman, teamed up again to adapt for film a series of New York Sun articles about organized crime’s infiltration of the International Longshoremen’s Association. Politics complicated the fledgling project, Rebello writes, noting that studio bosses unsuccessfully pressed Miller to make the villains Communists instead of racketeers, and that Kazan’s decision to name suspected Communists in his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952 drove a wedge between him and Miller. (Novelist Budd Schulberg wrote the final script after Miller’s departure.) Elsewhere, Rebello discusses how producer Sam Spiegel convinced Marlon Brando to sign on to the film despite reservations over Kazan’s testimony, how Spiegel’s 'penny-pinching' hampered production (venetian blinds were installed in the taxi for the 'I coulda been a contender' scene because Spiegel claimed to have forgotten to pay for rear projection footage), and how the strength of Brando’s performance persuaded Leonard Bernstein to write the score for the film despite his aversion to the film industry. Rebello gamely traces how real-life political drama combined with rank Hollywood gamesmanship to create a classic of American film. Cinephiles will be transfixed.

— Publishers Weekly

Compelling from start to finish, A City Full of Hawks is a page-turner, thanks to vivid storytelling, an energetic pace, and surprising details about the conflict and creativity behind an American classic. Rebello impressively conveys how difficult it is to make a good film, much less a great one. He also debunks the myth of the director-as-sole-creator, as he explores the contributions of writer Budd Schulberg, cinematographer Boris Kaufman, composer Leonard Bernstein, and notorious producer Sam Spiegel, whose devious financial dealings were balanced by excellent taste. The result is a definitive book on its subject - one that gives director Elia Kazan the praise he deserves as a filmmaker, while reminding us of his flawed morality during the Hollywood blacklist.

— Steven C. Smith, author, A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann

On the Waterfront remains a powerhouse film that has been endlessly quoted but never before so meticulously examined as by Stephen Rebello in his painstaking chronicle, A City Full of Hawks. As he reveals, the movie itself was almost the least dramatic element of the project's odyssey from the docks to the screen. Along the way there were unions, the mob, Reds, the blacklist, and assorted denizens who straddled one or more of those labels. As brilliantly as Rebello captured Hitchcock's Psycho, he wrestles On the Waterfront into history.

— Nat Segaloff, author of The Exorcist Legacy and Breaking the Code: Otto Preminger vs. Hollywood's Censors