On the Irish Waterfront: a Jesuit workers' priest and the Hollywood director Bud Schulberg

There was a movement in Catholicism of workers' priests - men who ministered to and championed the cause of workers. Bud Schulberg lionized one played by Karl Malden in the unforgettable tale of betrayal On the Waterfront.

Fordham theology Professor and historian James T. Fisher is here interviewed about the Jesuit labor priests of the New York Waterfront. One of them, Fr. John M. Corridan, was a driving force in bringing about the Waterfront Commission which sought to "clean up the docks". Fisher explains that Karl Malden's character in On the Waterfront was based on Father Pete Corridan.

Corridan and his spiritual mentee Bud Schulberg are the central figures in Fisher's On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie and the Soul of the Port of New York, a new release from Cornell University Press.