Paris

Paris
November 2010

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Blog 20: Final Version of Major Research Essay


Shannon Murray
Dr. Vasileiou
ENG 103.2682
20 May 2011
Living Life On the Waterfront
            No one expected the success of the film, On the Waterfront, not even the cast and crew.  After twelve nominations and eight Oscars at the 1955 Academy Awards for categories including Best Actor, Best Director and Best Screenplay, this influential film changed the movie industry forever (IMDB).  During an era of “epics and musicals” this film “with its social theme and location shooting, and in particular its close observation of working-class life…was far from typical of its time” (Neve).  On the Waterfront directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schullberg is the story of a longshoreman, played by Marlon Brando, who works at the Port of New York and New Jersey in the 1950s and witnesses corruption in the labor unions, which are ultimately controlled by the mob.  There is a code of silence which all of the longshoremen, must live by if they want to continue living their life; they must do nothing and say nothing.  Although this film is not a documentary, which is often assumed, it depicts the lives of longshoremen on the waterfront during 1950s, which is the time it was filmed and the time the story takes place.  Kazan and Schullberg worked hard to make sure that On the Waterfront was portrayed realistically regarding the social, political and economic aspects of life at that time in New York City. 
            On the Waterfront seemed to be cursed from the beginning.  Originally released in July of 1954, this classic film, with an all-star cast such as Brando, Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint, and an Academy Award winning director Kazan (Gentlemans Agreement, Streetcar Named Desire) very nearly went unrealized (Fisher 238).  After several rewrites of the script from Schullberg to make it more Hollywood and several more rejections from producers such as Twentieth Century Fox, producer Sam Spiegel agreed to make the picture with the help of United Artists and Columbia Pictures.  They originally had a budget of $800,000 which was enough financing for an independent, black and white film, but they couldnt seal the deal with Brando for political issues in the film.  After offering the role to Hoboken bred Frank Sinatra, they made an agreement with Brando, who was an overnight sensation with his performance as Stanley Kowalski in the 1947 Broadway production of Tennessee Williams Streetcar Named Desire, and persuading Columbia Pictures to increase the budget to $880,000 (Fisher 244-45).  The dark and violent film which was actually filmed in Hoboken instead of a pier on the West Side, and was filmed November through December, mainly outside and in the cold.  The film is about a man named Terry Malloy, Brando, who acts as an accomplice to the mobsters running the waterfront, but never actually kills anyone he just plays D & D,” deaf and dumb.  Since he is working under the mob, he is guaranteed a job everyday at the ports loading and hauling with the other longshoreman.  Doing half as much and making twice as much as everyone else, he follows the code by never talking to anyone, especially the police.  The character of Father Pete Barry, who is a typical witty and loud Irishman, but a not so typical priest, is based on a real person named Father Peter Corridan, who was a huge part in the making of the film.  Both Corridan and his alter-ego Barry fight against the union and try to convince the longshoreman to speak out against them, for all the men who have died trying to speak out.  Terry falls for Edie Doyle, played by Saint, who is the sister of Joey Doyle, a man recently killed by the mob for talking with the help of Terry.  Throughout the film Terry struggles with whether he should stay loyal to the mobsters and his brother who have always taken care of him, or whether he should stand up for whats right.  Eventually he decides to testify against Johnny Friendly in court to defend everyone who has been killed by these murderers.  At the pier he knows he has something coming for him, and after they brutally beat him up, he stands up and walks away, followed by the other couple hundred longshoremen.
The Port of New York and New Jersey covered a vast area of land, which had everyone struggling for power.  The Hudson County waterfront was a big part of the port that was sometimes overlooked even though it was just across the river.  Although the West Side of New York is where Schulberg originally imagined the setting for his screenplay, it was not the location chosen to make this film.  The film was actually shot in Hoboken instead of the crowded and noisy streets of the city.  This was one of the first postwar films to prove that Hollywood wasnt the only place where films could be made.  Filming in Hoboken was a plus because it still felt like the city and a primal film set without actually feeling like a real place and it was “a perfect blank canvas on which New York filmmakers inscribed their vision” (Fisher 252).  According to Peter Manso, Marlon Brando’s biographer, “Schulberg practically lived on the Hoboken waterfront,” to ensure the realism shined through in his writing even though his reports thus far have been based on the West Side (Fisher 253).  Throughout the film the location is never mentioned and remains unknown.  However there were problems faced in creating a neutral environment between the New Jersey side and the New York side.  “It offered no Jesuit schools or parishes” needed to portray the true role of Father Pete Barry that Father Corridan struggled for (Fisher 256).  That being said, the New Jersey side was a lot safer for the longshoreman to seek assistance and join the cause.  There was also the problem of which pier to film on since most of them were nonexistent or unavailable.  An “immediate renovation” of Pier 3 resulted in a “940-foot double deck” pier renamed Pier 1 and became an extremely important background in On the Waterfront (Fisher 258).  The locations used in Hoboken were all real places that were altered to keep the location impartial such as Hoboken Yacht Club, which was used as Johnny Friendly’s office, and the rooftop of an apartment building where the pigeons were kept.  Even though Hoboken wasn’t the center of the struggle for power in the port, it was still dangerous.  Kazan once stated, “The atmosphere was that violent…We were right in the midst of life on that picture, and it shows, doesn’t it?” (Fisher 264).  This film portrayed realism so well because of its location and shooting a film at a time where true hardships were being experienced.
The actors in the film had a huge role in portraying the film in a realistic way.  Even before his infamous, “I could have been a contender” line in the film, Marlon Brando had since proved himself as a serious actor in previous films such as Streetcar Named Desire in which he gave “one of the greatest Method performances of all time” (Lewis 223).  Method acting was a “style of acting that forsakes the expression of artificial emotions by gestures and other acting techniques for more naturalistic expressions based on the actor’s own deeply felt emotions,” which helped Terry Malloy’s character (Lewis 223).  In a scene where Edie drops her glove in the park, Brando picks it up and tries it on, which added both spontaneity and realism to the scene.  According to his co-star Eva Marie Saint, “Marlon would never do any scene quite the same…It became the catalyst to keep me in the scene” (Fisher 268).  “The long take of Terry and Edie Doyle first talking in a playground, are classics of naturalistic acting style and emotional realism” used by both actors throughout the film (Neve). Schulberg even hired Brando a “former professional middle weight…to teach Brando to carry himself like an ex-fighter” (Fisher 271).  Although Terry’s character is not specifically based on a single person, he does represent the people who ignored the politically run and socially unjust waterfront system, but eventually stood up for themselves.  Brando, who “was fifteen or more years younger than the top male box-office stars of the fifties, including John Wayne, Gary Cooper and James Stewart” further established himself after receiving the Best Actor Oscar for his truly believable role in On the Waterfront. 
Brando and Karl Malden were both favored by the people of Hoboken for their “easygoing camaraderie with the townspeople” (Fisher 262).  However, Brando wasn’t the only Method actor who really helped to shape this film.  Malden’s character, Father Barry, was based on the most important person in the entire waterfront reform, Father Corridan.  He spent eleven days with the priest, who was known for his drinking as well as his unconventional and tough attitude, just to prepare for the role.  When the real Pete Corridan walked onto set the first a longshoreman asked, “Are you the real or the phony one?” (Fisher 252).  “Malden wore Corridan’s hat and coat throughout the shoot” just so he could really feel the character he was portraying (Fisher 262).  In the scene where Malden flawlessly delivers the “Christ in the Shapeup” speech, which was the actual speech of Father Corridan, some critics felt that his role was “way too dominant” as well as “unbearably hammy with his sermons” (Fisher 272).  What these critics failed to understand was that the real Father Corridan delivered that same speech verbatim a few years prior and it was the “soul and spirit” of Schulberg’s original script.  That role rewarded Malden with an Oscar nomination the following year.
In the film, most of the extras that played longshoremen were real longshoremen (Neve).  They “were ferried across the river” every morning, paid $15 per day, the same amount for a day’s work on the pier, and they even participated in “shapeups” which are true longshoremen hiring methods, where the strongest and fittest men are picked to work (Fisher 262-63). Kazan wanted real longshoremen so they could show true emotion and didn’t have to “try to look like real people” (Fisher 263).  Kazan also felt the midwinter cold and outdoor shooting really made the actors look like normal people instead of celebrities, and created a bond of stamina between extras and actors.  He said, It showed true struggle and suffering because they had no choice” (Fisher 263).  A thirteen year old resident of one the buildings, named Tommy Hanley, was originally hired to feed the pigeons on the rooftop.  When they found out that his father was a longshoreman and had been murdered when he was only a baby, “they promised the youngster a part in the film” (Fisher 263).  Even though some of these things are not so obvious, every decision was made to bring out characters emotions and to bring a strong sense of realism to the film.  Schulberg remembered in an interview that, “hundreds of longshoremen were in the movie…and racketeers watching from the sidelines.  It was unreal.  What we were putting up on screen was happening all around us” (Fisher 265).

New York City has been through some of the most corrupt leaders such as Tammany Hall and John Cockeye Dunn but it also included a lot more gangsters like King Joe Ryan, Frank Hague and the McCormack brothers.  Since the late 19th century there have been some questionable people in charge at the West Side waterfront.  A prominently Irish Catholic community grew in this area over the years.  Families moved as close to the pier as possible so the men had a better chance of getting work and providing for their families.  Thousands of men would show up for work and only a few hundred would actually be picked.  Poverty was extremely high, especially because of the money the mobsters were taking out of the paychecks of the longshoremen.  If you had a problem or went to the police, you most likely ended up in the bottom of the Hudson River.  The laws we have today to protect the rights of labor union workers did not exist.  It was a dog eat dog world and basically it was survival of the fittest.

























Works Cited:
1. Fisher, James T. On the Irish Waterfront. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. Print.
2. Fisher, James T. “Insert Title Here.” The Irish Waterfront. 25 May 2011. Web. 25 May 2011. <http://irishwaterfront.wordpress.com/>
3. Lewis, Jon. American Film: a history. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. 223-25. Print.
4. Neve, Brian. “On the waterfront.” History Today 45.6 (1995): 19. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 27 May 2011.
5. “On the Waterfront.” IMDB. Web. 25. May 2011. <http://www.imdb.com/tttle/tt0047296/>
6. Williams, Gregory H. The City College of New York Class of 1954 50th Anniversary Reunion. Class of 1954 Reunion Committee. City College of New York, New York, NY. 06 June 2004. Speech.
7. “The Year 1954.” The People History. Copyscape, 2004. Web. 35 May 2011. <http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1954.html>

Blog 19: Reflection on Archives Essay

For my archives essay, I went to the archives copied and read all of the articles and statements in chronological order.  After reading everything I had a great understanding of New York and the U.S.A. at the time of the proposed “planned shrinkage.”  I then looked online to broaden my research with different testimonials and accounts of the idea.  Overall the archives helped me learn more than any of my other research.  There were very specific articles that gave me actual statistics regarding the amount of people who lost jobs, how much debt we were in as a city and as a country and other information that was extremely useful while writing this paper.
                The introduction of the archives project gave direct orders of what the essay needed to contain.  While reading all of the information from the archives, I was a little bit confused about what we were writing about.  But after I read the introduction everything made more sense.  Each page had a specific purpose to help develop the paper into a well written research and argumentative paper.  The introduction also helped me to organize my paper better.  I wasn’t sure where all of the information went at first but I divided it up to make sure everything made sense. 
                I believe that the archives paper was much easier than the research paper.  There was only a certain amount of information that we had to be familiar with which made the paper less overwhelming than the research paper.  It also only had be about 4 pages, while the research paper had to be a minimum of 7 pages and required a lot more work.  That being said, I enjoyed writing the research paper a lot more than I enjoyed writing the archives paper.  The research paper was about a movie that I really enjoy called On the Waterfront.   It also happens to be a film that I studied previously with a professor who wrote a book on the film.  Since I am well rehearsed in everything that was involved in the movie, the paper was a lot easier to write about.

Blog 18

blog 17

Blog 16

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Blog 15: Minority Report Response


I believe that offering security for all is necessary, but the way they offer it in the film Minority Report is extremely unethical.  Everywhere you go in our nation’s capital, Washington D.C., is monitored by retina scanners which track where people are in the city.  Whether you are shopping, or going to work or riding the metro the scanners and ultimately the police know exactly where you are.  This system completely ignores our right to privacy as human beings.  I do believe that in the film the price to pay for security is way too high.  The Precrime system in D.C. did eliminate murder completely for a span of 6 years, but it also put innocent people away in prison.  The precogs saw that these people were going to commit crimes, but they really didn’t commit them yet, thus making them innocent.  But after the “criminals” were arrested, the halos were placed on their heads.  Once the halos were on them they were at the total mercy of the police, and the police could extract and information or memories from the peoples subconscious minds.  The extraction of information is a serious violation of privacy.  As our world moves closer and closer and beings to advance into a world similar to the one in Minority Report, it’s scary to think that the one safe place we have left is our minds and that in the future that might not even be safe anymore.  Where will the line be drawn?  

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Archives Essay

Shannon Murray
Dr. Vasileiou
ENG 103.2682
10 May 2011
To Shrink or Not to Shrink?  That is the Question
            Public housing in New York City has been around since the 1930s and has been pretty vital in the survival of the city.  A man named Roger Starr once said “I cannot imagine what the city would be like without it.”  This man, Roger Starr, who in the 1970s was the New York City Housing Administrator, is known for advocating “one of the biggest controversies that a housing administrator ever got into,” an idea known as “planned shrinkage.”  This strategy planned to gradually reduce municipal services such as, sanitation collections, public transportation, ambulances, etc., to “encourage, within limits, the movement of people from these neighborhoods to more concentrated areas,” which would speed up population movement.  Basically, Starr suggested a reduction of public services in the slum areas which were already deteriorating and already had residents moving out.  This concept, which was first proposed back in 1976, was suggested in the first place to help assess the budget crisis not only in New York City, but the entire United States, and to also conserve the public services that were left after all of the budget cuts nationwide.  It was targeted at areas such as the South Bronx, and Brownsville and was said to have a “greater redevelopment value” once the areas were vacant.  The whole plan was really proposed to earn back some revenue for the city and to give certain areas a new reputation.  Although this proposal may come off as extremely unethical, it is important to understand where Starr is coming from and it is necessary to look at the whole picture from an unbiased point of view.
            One year before “planned shrinkage” was even introduced, in the year 1975, the United States was in a recession, “the country’s worst recession in 34 years” to be exact.  The current deficit was $78 billion under the President Ford administration and inflation was seriously hurting New York City.  For a few days in May the nation witnessed a very public verbal argument between the Mayor of New York and President Ford.  The Mayor of New York City, Mayor Abraham Beame on May 13, 1975 ordered that 13,782 job positions were to be dropped as of July 1, 1975.  The entire country was in debt, but in order to meet its requirements for the new budget, it was necessary.  Five hundred twenty-five Police Officers were to be let go, along with 332 Firefighters, 791 Sanitation workers, and 4,907 teachers and Education related workers to just name  a few.  The following day on May 14th Mayor Beame made a statement to the people about President Ford and his lack of interest in helping New York City saying that “New York’s problems are not created by the sins of its people, but by the national policies,” and stating that the Ford administration was “crippling our city.”  Mayor Beame pretty much blamed the economic problems on President Ford, and was irate that he wasn’t even offering to help.  The next day, May 16th, a statement was released from the Governor of New York, Hugh Carey and Mayor Beame saying that President Ford and the Republicans in power have denied their request for Federal assistance and rejected any proposal for State assistance.  They stated how “police protection will have to be substantially reduced” and “the remaining services will be both inefficient and thin, beyond all contemplation and beneath what the citizens have a right to expect.”  They said that Ford is simply trying to make an example out of New York City for the rest of the nation, but this “crude political act” will “prove disastrous to the people.”  They plead one last time to the President saying “we call upon them to reconsider…and not to abandon the people in a time of economic crisis.”  Another day later on the 16th of May a statement was released to the public about more drastic cutbacks that would have to be made in the city if the President does not agree to help.  Another 38,000 positions will be eliminated by June 30th adding to the already 13,782 which is almost 52,000 jobs lost and an 18% decrease in the work force.  Mayor Beame took some time to make himself look like the “good guy” to the public.  He stated, “In the brief 16 months I have served, I have managed to slash almost $1 billion in budgetary expenses.”  He then gives examples of what all of these lost jobs would mean and how it would affect everyone in the city.  “Police street patrol will reduce by 25% causing response time to double” with 911 calls being screened or just completely ignored altogether.  Four hospitals will close along with day cares centers, and “10 Child Health Stations depriving 10,000 children of health services.”  Public schools, colleges, welfare centers and prisons are just a few of the many places that would be affected by the job reduction.  Mayor Beame’s final statement on May 20th is a very angry and upset one.  He says that the President is punishing New York for “past budgetary practices” when he should be worried about the $78 billion debt our country is in.  These statements just show how bad the economy was at that time and why we were all desperate for some sort of plan to get us all out of our recession.  Almost a year after the drama between the Mayor and the President, Roger Starr proposed the idea of “planned shrinkage” and the city is quick to voice their anger of this new plan.  Some headlines read, “Starr Under Fire for Plan to Shrink Slum Services” and “A Display of Ignorance” and the articles read to be very biased.  Many people were so upset they called for Starr’s resignation, while others protesting and even attacked him while he speaking at a public conference.  His plan was called, “genocidal, racist, inhuman, arrogant and irresponsible” by certain Councilmen.  In a 1993 interview Starr remembers a time when he turned on the radio to hear a young Puerto Rican woman say “Starr hates us Puerto Ricans.  He wants to drive us out of the city.”  Even Mayor Beame, who he described as a “very, very sweet man” and someone who hated to offend anyone, was very unsure of the idea.  Overall, the plan was so unpopular that he became an extremely hated man very quickly.
            Roger Starr’s good friend Robert Moses once said “there’s only one way to make a housing problem go away, and that’s to start with vacant land.”  This statement probably gave Starr his inspiration for his idea of “planned shrinkage.”  He felt the only way to help these areas and start to gain revenue was to start fresh and have everyone move away from the slums he wanted to redevelop.  Moses told Starr he wanted to move people out of their buildings and demolish their homes and then continue to do this until all of the slums are finished.  Starr then said, “Bob, you don’t really think that you can treat people nowadays as though they were parcels in the package room in the railroad station, you just move them around without asking them whether or they like it or not.”  Starr did have a concerned side to him, he just believed in being brutally honest.  He understood that people were human beings and had to be treated with respect.  Thus, Starr had motivation to think of a better way to go about doing this, for the wellbeing of New York and its inhabitants.  Starr had some problems with rent-control “because rent control was destroying New York City’s private housing stock from the middle ranges down to the lowest ranges.”  He also had problems with public housing.  He states, “The problem is to fill the housing with tenants who are not destructive and who pay their rent, and who we want to keep there forever because they’re good tenants, and the problem with government programs is that you find yourself having to take in tenants who are extremely destructive and whom you can’t get rid of.”  He also has problems with these tenants doing drugs and things that weren’t foreseen at all like “urinating in the elevator.”  All of his problems have to do with different things he has experienced with people and he is mostly concerned.  He stated that with all of the economic problems in the United States there city was in bad shape because it had borrowed all of its money.  He felt frustrated because he feels like he has to “take care of people who can’t take care of themselves.”  His philosophy about these populations of people was just that he wanted them to be self-sufficient people who can thrive off of their new community, but even if he “offered a step up to families of low income, this did not guarantee that these families would indeed take the step upward in putting their lives in order.”  He did not have problems with one particular race, he simply wanted to make sure that the people in these new developments were the right choices for the tenants.
            I believe that Roger Starr, although blunt about his opinions wasn’t the “homicidal lunatic” everyone thought he was.  After World War 2 he was released from the army and went straight to work for his father’s business.  He then joined the board of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council and eventually was picked by Mayor Beame to be the housing and development administrator.  I believe that “planned shrinkage” could have been a very successful strategy but the way Starr presented his ideas made the people involved become very defensive.  It was meant to be a way to pick up the dying areas of the city and make them the best they could be, thus boosting their revenue, and given the financial status of the city and the country, any little bit of profit could help.  I also think that his idea was appropriate for the times.  He did not mean to come off racist, nor did he force any type of migration on these people in the projects, these people just happen to be minorities who settled in these areas.  It was also a way for the people to move to nicer parts of the city, and for those areas to become nicer for others to move in.  I don’t think that “planned shrinkage” was such a bad idea, but I think it would have worked better in a different time.

Special Activity: MOMI

Blog 13: Draft of Archives Essay