“Irish On The Waterfront”

The author of a book about the Irish on the New York and New Jersey waterfront, the back story of the classic movie On the Waterfront, will speak at the December 8 meeting of the Irish Cultural Society. The meeting will start at 8:00 p.m. in the Garden City Library, on Seventh Street, across the street from the Garden City Hotel. Admission is free and the meeting is open to the public.

The James Fisher’s book On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie and the Soul of the Port of New York tells the story of the piers on the west side of Manhattan and the Hudson County piers in the 1940s and 1950s when Irish and Irish-American laborers, union leaders and entrepreneurs ruled the Port of New York. Familiar names of the time – William O’Dwyer, Frank Hague, Austin Tobin, Budd Shulberg, Cardinal Spellman, and so many more – populated Professor Fisher’s book but a less familiar name, Father “Pete:” Corridan, S.J. dominates this history of a time of colossal greed and corruption which cried out for a hero. Father Corridan, played by Karl Mauddin in The Waterfront, confronted the power brokers at the Port and used the popular media to shine the light of truth on the conditions at the Port.

One reviewer praised Professor Fisher’s book as a “tour de force, an amalgam of urban political history, ethnic studies, cultural criticism, with a little theology thrown in.”

Dr. James Fisher is Professor of Theology and American Studies at Fordham University. He is author of Communion of Immigrants. A history of Catholics in America. The Lives of Thomas A. Dooley, 1927-1961; and The Catholic Counterculture in America, 1931-1962. He has lectured on his subject at many venues, including Hofstra and NYU. Dr. Fisher’s gritty subject and his energetic speaking style promise to make this meeting a memorable one.