For a truly Hoboken experience, take the On the Waterfront tour
Do you really know Hoboken? For one of the best deep dives into Hoboken history, join Hoboken native and film industry pro, Lenny Luizzi, on Sunday, June 9, 1 – 4 pm, for his one-of-a-kind “On the Waterfront” bus tour.
Lenny was a boy when director Elia Kazan and a Hollywood film crew descended on Hoboken in search of the gritty realism that would suit the gripping story of longshoreman Terry Molloy’s struggle to do the right thing. Scriptwriter Budd Schulberg based his story on a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of news reports about Father Corridan, a crusading priest, who organized a worker’s resistance movement to the mob influence in the longshoremen’s union that controlled jobs across the New York harbor docks.
Schulberg and Kazan quickly learned the docks on the New York side of the Hudson were still too much under the control of the mob for safety. They discovered that Hoboken’s docks afforded the same setting, but with less danger, and set up film locations inside tenement apartments, churches and local taverns, as well as up on the rooftops and on the docks of Hoboken. They happily employed locals as extras, including a young boy, Tom Hanley, whose father had disappeared and whose mother struggled to pay the rent. (Hanley tells his story in the Museum’s “Vanishing Hoboken” oral history chapbook series).
Lenny has spent his career in the film business, and with his insatiable curiosity about all things Hoboken, gathered every available detail from neighbors who were involved to members of the crew. He weaves the details into a compelling story of how Hoboken came to be one of the stars of this iconic American film, which earned 8 Academy Awards. The tour is unforgettable, and will help you appreciate the story behind the story.
Seating is limited. Tickets are $20 for members, $25 for nonmembers (plus ticket-handling fee). The bus will depart from and return to the Hoboken Museum, 1301 Hudson St. Film clips will be screened on video monitors on the bus. Click here for a web feature on the movie. Don’t miss it!