Brando’s Memorable Line

In January we will publish a new edition of Budd Schulberg’s novel of ON THE WATERFRONT.  It’s not actually based on the screenplay for the classic film; in the novel Schulberg felt he was able to give Terry Malloy and other characters greater dimension than he could in the movie.  “The film’s concentration on a single dominating character, brought close to the camera eye, made it esthetically inconvenient, if not impossible, to set Terry’s story in its social and historical perspective,”  Schulberg wrote.  “In the novel Terry is a single strand in a rope of intertwining fibers, suggesting the knotted complexities of the world of the waterfront that loops around New York.”

In a story told at Schulberg’s memorial service last month in New York, Elia Kazan, who directed the film of ON THE WATERFRONT, tried to convince Schulberg to cut “I coulda been a contender,” leaving only “I coulda been somebody.”  Fortunately Schulberg resisted.