"On the Waterfront" was based on magazine articles by Malcolm Johnson; it was to be filmed in New York, partly because the locations demanded it, and partly because Elia Kazan, like Huston, Mankiewicz and Zinnemann, believed the atmosphere in Southern California was detrimental to his work. He was still angry about the cuts Zanuck had insisted on in "Man on a Tightrope", but nevertheless On the Waterfront was destined for 20th Century-Fox until Zanuck decreed that audiences were not interested in labor problems. The project was taken on by the independent producer, Sam Spiegel, who arranged a deal with Columbia, and whose help in all ways was "tremendous", according to Kazan. The film reunited Kazan with Marlon Brando, whose performance as Terry Malloy, ex-pug and longshoreman, is one of the best ever recorded on celluloid. A foreword claims that the "film will exemplify the way self-appointed tyrants can defeated by right-thinking people in a vital democracy", thus avoiding the......
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