The film was shot almost exclusively on the streets, rooftops, and piers of Hoboken. On the Waterfront The film stunned critics with a gritty portrayal of the Mobbed-up Labor Rackets that ruled over the lives of Jersey Longshoremen during the mid-1950s.
The audience was shocked by the dirty dealings of cargo thieves and two-bit loan sharks, as well as corrupt union leaders who made dockworkers’ lives hellish.
It wasn’t entirely made up—in fact, the film was based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles that appeared in the New York Sun in the 1940s exposing corruption in the longshoremen’s union.
Alfred E. Driscoll – then governor of New Jersey – was so outraged at the thuggery on the docks, he called for the establishment of an independent agency that would have special powers to combat organized crime. Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor was created to bridge the harbor and foster true bi-state cooperation. As Driscoll described it, “Organized crime does not respect state boundaries.”
Driscoll couldn’t have predicted the political and economic trends which led to the Waterfront Commission closing its doors. In April, U.S. Supreme Court…
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