Waterfront Property...

Do you remember this gateway on the Hoboken Piers?  Do you remember, "Let's go. Everyone works today"? If so, you could have been a contender for a vivid image from the New Jersey classic film On the Waterfront, filmed on Court Street in Hoboken in 1954.  The backstory, though, is something that maybe youse don't know.  That's why we needed Jim Fisher, historian and professor at Fordham University, to tell it in On the Irish Waterfront the real story of the fight for the soul of the ports of New York and New Jersey.

If you grew up any where in Hudson County, you know about the docks, now gentrified with condos and townshouses, that formed the commercial passageway to the largest market in the world.  The story of their dynamic is one of politics, greed, corruption, brute strength, and brute force.  It is also the story of  the psychomachia, the struggle between good and evil for the soul of man.
To me, On the Waterfront remains one of the great Catholic movies of all time, along with Dead Man Walking, Grand Torino, and Angels with Dirty Faces.  The "soul" of the film lies in the "This is My Church" speech given by Karl Malden in the character of Father Barry, the unofficial chaplain of waterfront labor.  Father Barry was based on the real-life "waterfront priest" Father John M. Corridan, S.J., a Jesuit priest, graduate of Regis High School who operated a Roman Catholic labor school on the West Side of Manhattan. Father Corridan, and the world of labor and ethnic politics that give him his context, is  the driving force behind both Fisher's book and the  classic movie.

New York - A striker points out something of interest to Rev. John M. Corridan, S.J., Associate Director of the Xavier School and adviser to dock strikers. The Rev. Corridan, a recognized expert in labor, said the Wildcat Dock Strike is largely a revolt against Joseph P. Ryan and the racketeers and mobsters along the waterfront. The Rev. also predicted that even if strikers return to work "an explosion is brewing on the waterfront which will make this strike seem like a picnic." (1951)

Don't miss On the Irish Waterfront.  It's a smart book about tough times, times that shaped national and local politics and made many people consider the working role of God in their lives.
 
Here are today's Jersey Words: 
 
"If you do it to the least of mine, you're doin' it to me....and only you, with God's help, have the power to knock him out for good."
 
     ...from the screenplay of On the Watefront by Budd Schulberg
 
Keep writing,
 
Maureen