“I coulda had class. I coulda been somebody. I coulda been a contender.”
Even if you can’t name the movie, the words might ring a bell. In the 1954 classic On the Waterfront , Marlon Brando stars as Terry Malloy, a dockworker and former light heavyweight fighter who says these immortal lines. Years ago, we learn, his gangster brother (Rod Steiger) mangled his career, forcing him to take a dive in a big match at The Garden. Angst-ridden, Brando monologues to his brother about his dreams of boxing glory being snuffed out. It’s one of the most memorable scenes in all Hollywood history. And it may have come from the mouth of Marlon Brando, but first, it came from the pen of Budd Schulberg. Schulberg – a multi-hyphenate fight reporter, screenwriter and novelist – would go on to win an Oscar for Best Screenplay for the film. And though On the Waterfront is not a film about the sport of boxing, it’s no surprise that Schulberg would mine his passion for the sport to create one of the movie’s most heartbreaking scenes. He knew, up close, what a miasma of corruption, hope and masculine despair boxing could inspire. And for the better part of a century, he wrote about it better than anyone. By the time of his death
THE WITNESS BUDD SCHULBERG’S SHARP OBSERVATIONS AND DRIVE TO PORTRAY THE HUMAN SIDE OF BOXING LED TO SOME OF THE MOST ICONIC AND QUOTABLE MOMENTS IN
CINEMATIC HISTORY By Christina Newland
Marlon Brando (right) with Rod Steiger in On the Waterfront .
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