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On the Waterfront: The Play
Budd Schulberg's classic story of the New York waterfront and the kid who “coulda been a contender” is best known in its memorable movie version with Marlon Brando. But here, adapted for the stage by Mr. Schulberg and Stan Silverman, it remains a moving and powerful drama. This play script for On the Waterfront has been used in theatres large and small, throughout the country, to great success. It offers amateur and professional groups an opportunity to re-create Mr. Schulberg's indelible characters and highly charged moments. Helpful stage suggestions are included, and the author introduces the script with a reminiscence that is both poignant and informative. As with all Plays for Performance books, this one is presented with production values uppermost in mind.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 28, 1998
About the author
Budd Schulberg
76 books108 followersBudd Schulberg (1914–2009) was a screenwriter, novelist, and journalist who is best remembered for the classic novels What Makes Sammy Run?, The Harder They Fall, and the story On the Waterfront, which he adapted as a novel, play, and an Academy Award–winning film script. Born in New York City, Schulberg grew up in Hollywood, where his father, B. P. Schulberg, was head of production at Paramount, among other studios. Throughout his career, Schulberg worked as a journalist and essayist, often writing about boxing, a lifelong passion. Many of his writings on the sport are collected in Sparring with Hemingway (1995). Other highlights from Schulberg’s nonfiction career include Moving Pictures (1981), an account of his upbringing in Hollywood, and Writers in America (1973), a glimpse of some of the famous novelists he met early in his career. He died in 2009.
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September 8, 2026
On the whole, I found it interesting to revisit, in play form, a classic film story from the 1950’s; and if On the Waterfront the play will not cause anyone to forget On the Waterfront the film, it is nonetheless helpful that the play format gives author Budd Schulberg the opportunity to explore, in greater detail, some aspects of his original story that might not have fit comfortably within the limits of a 1-hour, 48-minute film.
Schulberg was born in New York City, grew up in Los Angeles, and set forth in both novels and screenplays a bleak, hard-boiled vision of life. His novels included What Makes Sammy Run? (1941), a grim look at a young man who rises in 1930’s Hollywood through intellectual-property theft and betrayal, as well as The Harder They Fall (1947), an expose of corruption in professional boxing. And his best-known screenplay, aside from On the Waterfront, is probably A Face in the Crowd (1957), a sardonic study of a drifter (played by Andy Griffith) who becomes a celebrity and learns how to manipulate his crowds of admirers for his own benefit.
Within that background, On the Waterfront makes an enormous amount of sense. Like so much of Schulberg’s work, it is a study of corruption – in this case, a corrupt union tyrannizing over the lives of longshoremen working the Hoboken, New Jersey, docks. And the 1954 film, made on a relatively modest budget, was a smash hit both commercially and critically. Director Elia Kazan orchestrated well the work of a great cast – Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint – and the film cleaned up at the Oscars. Kazan won for Best Director, Brando for Best Actor, Saint for Best Supporting Actress, and Schulberg himself for Best Story and Screenplay.
Schulberg, a hard-working writer who achieved great success in a tough industry, had to know that whenever he passed away (he died in 2009), the headline or lede for the obituary in the Los Angeles Times the following day would read something like “Budd Schulberg, Oscar-winning screenwriter for On the Waterfront…”
Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that Schulberg found himself returning to the On the Waterfront story down the years – first as a 1955 novel, and eventually as a 1988 play that ran on Broadway (though I personally would have preferred to see the minimalist version that ran “with minimal sets (a series of ramps on a virtually bare stage) at the Renegade Theater in Hoboken, New Jersey”. I’m sure it was a good and engaging play to watch, though more than a few theatregoers might have found that their memories of the film were distracting them from what they were seeing on stage.
The stage directions tell us that the story of On the Waterfront is set “in the 1950’s on and around the New York-New Jersey waterfront”. The main character, Terry Malloy, is a young ex-boxer whose brother Charley (the Gent) works for Johnny Friendly, the “pistol local” union boss who runs the longshoremen’s association as his own private organized-crime racket.
The catalyst incident for the plot occurs at the play’s beginning; Terry, at Charley’s prompting, has arranged for a couple of Johnny Friendly’s enforcers to find Joey Doyle, a dockworker who has begun working with the Waterfront Crime Commission to try to end the corruption and mob rule on the waterfront. Terry had thought that the enforcers would only “lean on” Joey to get him to keep quiet, but instead the enforcers throw Joey from a rooftop to his death.
Joey’s sister Edie is outraged by the murder of her brother, and wants to see justice done. Toward that end, she urges the waterfront priest, Father Pete Barry, to take an open stand against Johnny Friendly and the waterfront mobsters. Fans of the film will recall that the film’s Father Barry (played by Karl Malden) is already, from the film’s opening scenes, a clear and open opponent of the mobsters. The play’s Father Barry, by contrast, is hesitant about moving away from safe pieties about God’s will, and toward activism on behalf of waterfront longshoremen.
Edie successfully appeals to Father Barry’s conscience – “Look at Saint Paul – Ignatius – Francis Xavier. You think they hid in the church? Was there ever a saint who hid in the church?” (p. 30) – and Father Barry starts taking a stand, even though he subsequently faces pressures from his superiors to lay off and keep quiet. Johnny Friendly always puts plenty of cash in the collection plate at church, and therefore Father Barry gets scolded by higher-ranking priests that “You’re not a labor leader. You’re a priest, under church discipline!” (p. 78).
A Waterfront Crime Commission investigator, one Agent Glover, starts coming round to ask that Terry testify before the commission. The pressure not to testify is intense – as another dockworker puts it, “On the docks, we’ve always been D ’n’ D – Deef ’n’ Dumb” (p. 51). The dockworkers’ adherence to that code of silence, a sort of waterfront omertà, helps Johnny Friendly maintain his power.
Terry ultimately does decide to testify against Johnny Friendly – though the scene from the play, when Terry admits to Edie that he played a role (although unwittingly) in Joey’s death is not nearly so powerful as the way the scene is presented in the film, with the spoken words of actors Brando and Saint drowned out by ships’ horns, but the anguish in their faces revealing all that the viewer needs to know.
Charley tries to get Terry to commit to silence before the commission, and it is at this point that the reader, or playgoer, learns about a crucial moment from Terry’s past – that he was an up-and-coming boxer before Johnny and Charley ordered Terry to throw a fight he could and should have won. Terry’s opponent from that night went on to a shot at the boxing title; for Terry, by contrast, it was “a one-way ticket to Palookaville. I was never the same after that night” (p. 98).
Terry’s subsequent lament regarding the future he gave up when he threw that fight – “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum – let’s face it – which is what I am” (p. 98) – is one of the most famous movie lines in cinema. Be honest: didn’t you start doing your Brando impression, just a bit, when you read that line? I wonder what the actor playing Terry at the Renegade Theater in Hoboken, New Jersey, did to make his delivery of that line sound non-Brando-ish.
One of the best moments in the play, I thought, occurred in Scene 10, when Terry Malloy’s testimony before the Waterfront Crime Commission is counterpointed with Father Barry’s interrogation before the Catholic Church’s Chancery Office for violating church discipline. Father Barry’s official silencing by the Church – “You are restricted to the rectory of Saint Timothy’s while your case is considered by the Vicar General” – is placed side by side with Terry’s declaration to the Commission that Johnny Friendly
…couldn’t afford to let a bum like Joey – some bum! – screw ’im outa the sweet deal he had going on the docks. It was worth millions, see – I guess you fellas know that, huh? – so, he couldn’t let Joey keep on agitatin’ against ’im an’ squealin’ to you – he hadda scare ’im off. Anyway, that’s what I thought. Oney Johnny don’t play that way, he plays for keeps. I shoulda known ya don’t scare off a stand-up kid like Joey – ya kill ’im off…! Goddam it, I shoulda known – Johnny kills ’em off! (p. 109)
Terry’s testimony before the Commission, like Father Barry’s before the Chancery Office, is treated as a heroic act – something that made me think of a crucial moment from the careers of both screenwriter Schulberg and film director Kazan. On the Waterfront came out of the 1950’s – the Cold War era of the “Red Scare,” the time when Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee launched an all-out attack on civil liberties in the name of ferreting out communist subversion. When McCarthy and HUAC turned their gaze toward Hollywood, both Schulberg and Kazan testified and named names, providing information on fellow Hollywood professionals who either had joined the Communist Party or had attended Communist Party meetings. A number of those Hollywood professionals ceased to be Hollywood professionals; they were “blacklisted,” and never worked in the U.S. film industry again.
Perhaps Schulberg and Kazan honestly believed that they were doing their duty – maybe they thought they were defending American democracy, even. But their actions remain controversial. I remember when director Kazan got his Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1999 Academy Awards ceremony. Many in the audience stood and applauded. Many others remained seated, their arms folded, their faces stony with disapproval.
No doubt it is for reasons like those that Schulberg has his Terry Malloy go down to the docks and declare to Johnny Friendly’s face that “I’m glad what I done t’ ya, see.” And when Johnny yells, “You ratted on us!”, Johnny’s reply is, “From where you stand, maybe. But I’m standin’ on my side now. I was rattin’ on myself all them years an’ I din’ know it – helpin’ punks like you against stand-up guys!” (p. 113).
A cycle of accelerating and intensifying violence ends with one violent act that is quite different from what one witnesses in Kazan’s film. You can compare and contrast the two, and see which you like better.
From On the Waterfront the movie, to On the Waterfront the novel, to On the Waterfront the play, one can see that this story got its hooks into author Schulberg and never let go. In a helpful introduction, Schulberg talks about the amount of time and research he put into this story, starting with a feature article that he wrote for The New York Times Sunday Magazine after being told by a real-life waterfront priest about a story that the New York papers were not covering.
Writing in 2001, Schulberg reminded the readers of that time of the stories about mob control of unions at the Javits Center in Midtown Manhattan – “The waterfront, moved inland” – with a horrifying story eerily like that of poor Joey Doyle: “A carpenter’s union official, who had been ousted for daring to speak up for union democracy, had been set on fire” (p. 12).
On the Waterfront certainly remains relevant. While the play may not cause you to forget the film, it provides an interesting alternative look at a story that continues to be compelling – seven decades after Marlon Brando, sitting in the back of a car with Rod Steiger, looked toward screen left and said, “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender.”
Schulberg was born in New York City, grew up in Los Angeles, and set forth in both novels and screenplays a bleak, hard-boiled vision of life. His novels included What Makes Sammy Run? (1941), a grim look at a young man who rises in 1930’s Hollywood through intellectual-property theft and betrayal, as well as The Harder They Fall (1947), an expose of corruption in professional boxing. And his best-known screenplay, aside from On the Waterfront, is probably A Face in the Crowd (1957), a sardonic study of a drifter (played by Andy Griffith) who becomes a celebrity and learns how to manipulate his crowds of admirers for his own benefit.
Within that background, On the Waterfront makes an enormous amount of sense. Like so much of Schulberg’s work, it is a study of corruption – in this case, a corrupt union tyrannizing over the lives of longshoremen working the Hoboken, New Jersey, docks. And the 1954 film, made on a relatively modest budget, was a smash hit both commercially and critically. Director Elia Kazan orchestrated well the work of a great cast – Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint – and the film cleaned up at the Oscars. Kazan won for Best Director, Brando for Best Actor, Saint for Best Supporting Actress, and Schulberg himself for Best Story and Screenplay.
Schulberg, a hard-working writer who achieved great success in a tough industry, had to know that whenever he passed away (he died in 2009), the headline or lede for the obituary in the Los Angeles Times the following day would read something like “Budd Schulberg, Oscar-winning screenwriter for On the Waterfront…”
Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that Schulberg found himself returning to the On the Waterfront story down the years – first as a 1955 novel, and eventually as a 1988 play that ran on Broadway (though I personally would have preferred to see the minimalist version that ran “with minimal sets (a series of ramps on a virtually bare stage) at the Renegade Theater in Hoboken, New Jersey”. I’m sure it was a good and engaging play to watch, though more than a few theatregoers might have found that their memories of the film were distracting them from what they were seeing on stage.
The stage directions tell us that the story of On the Waterfront is set “in the 1950’s on and around the New York-New Jersey waterfront”. The main character, Terry Malloy, is a young ex-boxer whose brother Charley (the Gent) works for Johnny Friendly, the “pistol local” union boss who runs the longshoremen’s association as his own private organized-crime racket.
The catalyst incident for the plot occurs at the play’s beginning; Terry, at Charley’s prompting, has arranged for a couple of Johnny Friendly’s enforcers to find Joey Doyle, a dockworker who has begun working with the Waterfront Crime Commission to try to end the corruption and mob rule on the waterfront. Terry had thought that the enforcers would only “lean on” Joey to get him to keep quiet, but instead the enforcers throw Joey from a rooftop to his death.
Joey’s sister Edie is outraged by the murder of her brother, and wants to see justice done. Toward that end, she urges the waterfront priest, Father Pete Barry, to take an open stand against Johnny Friendly and the waterfront mobsters. Fans of the film will recall that the film’s Father Barry (played by Karl Malden) is already, from the film’s opening scenes, a clear and open opponent of the mobsters. The play’s Father Barry, by contrast, is hesitant about moving away from safe pieties about God’s will, and toward activism on behalf of waterfront longshoremen.
Edie successfully appeals to Father Barry’s conscience – “Look at Saint Paul – Ignatius – Francis Xavier. You think they hid in the church? Was there ever a saint who hid in the church?” (p. 30) – and Father Barry starts taking a stand, even though he subsequently faces pressures from his superiors to lay off and keep quiet. Johnny Friendly always puts plenty of cash in the collection plate at church, and therefore Father Barry gets scolded by higher-ranking priests that “You’re not a labor leader. You’re a priest, under church discipline!” (p. 78).
A Waterfront Crime Commission investigator, one Agent Glover, starts coming round to ask that Terry testify before the commission. The pressure not to testify is intense – as another dockworker puts it, “On the docks, we’ve always been D ’n’ D – Deef ’n’ Dumb” (p. 51). The dockworkers’ adherence to that code of silence, a sort of waterfront omertà, helps Johnny Friendly maintain his power.
Terry ultimately does decide to testify against Johnny Friendly – though the scene from the play, when Terry admits to Edie that he played a role (although unwittingly) in Joey’s death is not nearly so powerful as the way the scene is presented in the film, with the spoken words of actors Brando and Saint drowned out by ships’ horns, but the anguish in their faces revealing all that the viewer needs to know.
Charley tries to get Terry to commit to silence before the commission, and it is at this point that the reader, or playgoer, learns about a crucial moment from Terry’s past – that he was an up-and-coming boxer before Johnny and Charley ordered Terry to throw a fight he could and should have won. Terry’s opponent from that night went on to a shot at the boxing title; for Terry, by contrast, it was “a one-way ticket to Palookaville. I was never the same after that night” (p. 98).
Terry’s subsequent lament regarding the future he gave up when he threw that fight – “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum – let’s face it – which is what I am” (p. 98) – is one of the most famous movie lines in cinema. Be honest: didn’t you start doing your Brando impression, just a bit, when you read that line? I wonder what the actor playing Terry at the Renegade Theater in Hoboken, New Jersey, did to make his delivery of that line sound non-Brando-ish.
One of the best moments in the play, I thought, occurred in Scene 10, when Terry Malloy’s testimony before the Waterfront Crime Commission is counterpointed with Father Barry’s interrogation before the Catholic Church’s Chancery Office for violating church discipline. Father Barry’s official silencing by the Church – “You are restricted to the rectory of Saint Timothy’s while your case is considered by the Vicar General” – is placed side by side with Terry’s declaration to the Commission that Johnny Friendly
…couldn’t afford to let a bum like Joey – some bum! – screw ’im outa the sweet deal he had going on the docks. It was worth millions, see – I guess you fellas know that, huh? – so, he couldn’t let Joey keep on agitatin’ against ’im an’ squealin’ to you – he hadda scare ’im off. Anyway, that’s what I thought. Oney Johnny don’t play that way, he plays for keeps. I shoulda known ya don’t scare off a stand-up kid like Joey – ya kill ’im off…! Goddam it, I shoulda known – Johnny kills ’em off! (p. 109)
Terry’s testimony before the Commission, like Father Barry’s before the Chancery Office, is treated as a heroic act – something that made me think of a crucial moment from the careers of both screenwriter Schulberg and film director Kazan. On the Waterfront came out of the 1950’s – the Cold War era of the “Red Scare,” the time when Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee launched an all-out attack on civil liberties in the name of ferreting out communist subversion. When McCarthy and HUAC turned their gaze toward Hollywood, both Schulberg and Kazan testified and named names, providing information on fellow Hollywood professionals who either had joined the Communist Party or had attended Communist Party meetings. A number of those Hollywood professionals ceased to be Hollywood professionals; they were “blacklisted,” and never worked in the U.S. film industry again.
Perhaps Schulberg and Kazan honestly believed that they were doing their duty – maybe they thought they were defending American democracy, even. But their actions remain controversial. I remember when director Kazan got his Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1999 Academy Awards ceremony. Many in the audience stood and applauded. Many others remained seated, their arms folded, their faces stony with disapproval.
No doubt it is for reasons like those that Schulberg has his Terry Malloy go down to the docks and declare to Johnny Friendly’s face that “I’m glad what I done t’ ya, see.” And when Johnny yells, “You ratted on us!”, Johnny’s reply is, “From where you stand, maybe. But I’m standin’ on my side now. I was rattin’ on myself all them years an’ I din’ know it – helpin’ punks like you against stand-up guys!” (p. 113).
A cycle of accelerating and intensifying violence ends with one violent act that is quite different from what one witnesses in Kazan’s film. You can compare and contrast the two, and see which you like better.
From On the Waterfront the movie, to On the Waterfront the novel, to On the Waterfront the play, one can see that this story got its hooks into author Schulberg and never let go. In a helpful introduction, Schulberg talks about the amount of time and research he put into this story, starting with a feature article that he wrote for The New York Times Sunday Magazine after being told by a real-life waterfront priest about a story that the New York papers were not covering.
Writing in 2001, Schulberg reminded the readers of that time of the stories about mob control of unions at the Javits Center in Midtown Manhattan – “The waterfront, moved inland” – with a horrifying story eerily like that of poor Joey Doyle: “A carpenter’s union official, who had been ousted for daring to speak up for union democracy, had been set on fire” (p. 12).
On the Waterfront certainly remains relevant. While the play may not cause you to forget the film, it provides an interesting alternative look at a story that continues to be compelling – seven decades after Marlon Brando, sitting in the back of a car with Rod Steiger, looked toward screen left and said, “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender.”
June 8, 2017
This play is much different from the movie of the same title. There are over twenty scenes in the play and I really couldn't picture how it could be performed on a stage due to the variety of staging needs. I think the movie delivered a much more appealing story and ending. Overall I wouldn't attend a performance of this work as a play.
November 17, 2020
I listened to the LA Theatreworks version of the play. It was probably assisted by my love of Jeffrey Donovan, who did a fantastic job in the lead. The love story moves far too fast, but that's just how a bunch of plays work 🤷♀️
October 19, 2024
On the whole, I prefer the screenplay (which I have not yet read).
March 1, 2025
There is a great version of this classic on Audible. I really felt for Terry Mallory. He is a tragic character caught in the times he lived in.
Non fiction
New Jersey
1940s
Non fiction
New Jersey
1940s
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 23, 2013
So I listened to a version with Jeffery Donovan playing Terry. It was pretty good. A few foul words but I am glad I listened to it as a play because I think it gave it a little more depth then just reading it would have done.
November 3, 2018
DNF though I made it through the first act. I listened to it as an audiobook, which always helps. The play seems well written but is a political piece of its time, which is why I lost interest. I'm aware it's great on the stage/screen but i couldn't get through it on audio.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews