RARA-AVIS: Re:Movie adadptations

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 29 Jun 2007


Juri,

Re your question below:

"Wasn't Budd Schulberg's ON THE WATERFRONT actually a novelization? I think he wrote the script first and then the novel."

Schulberg's script for the film did, indeed, precede the novel WATERFRONT, which appeared after the film's release.

The original script was based on a Pulitzer Prize winning series of articles about organized crime in the NYC and NJ waterfronts by Malcolm Johnson for the New York SUN. Brando's character, Terry Malloy, was partly based on Anthony DeVincenzo, a longshoreman who blew the whistle on mob control of the docks when he testified before a special investigating commission. Lee J. Cobb's Johnny Friendly was a fictionalized depiction of Albert Anastasia. Karl Malden's waterfront priest character, Father Barry, was modeled on Father John Corridan.

Schulberg gave Terry Malloy a different fate in the book than the one he enjoyed in the film because he thought a different ending would be more appropriate to the prose medium.

Interstingly, Frederick Durenmatt's THE PLEDGE, a novelization of his script for IT HAPPENED IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, also has a more downbeat ending then the screenplay.

JIM DOHERTY

 
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