Academy Award for Best Picture

1954

On the Waterfront

Release date

July 28, 1954

Starring

Marlon Brando

On the Waterfront is a 1954 American crime drama film about union violence and corruption among longshoremen. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando. and features Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, and, in her film debut, Eva Marie Saint. The soundtrack score was composed by Leonard Bernstein. It is based on "Crime on the Waterfront", a series of articles in the New York Sun by Malcolm Johnson. The series won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. The stories detailed widespread corruption, extortion and racketeering on the waterfronts of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

On the Waterfront was a huge critical and commercial success and received 12 Academy Award nominations, winning eight, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Brando, Best Supporting Actress for Saint, and Best Director for Kazan. In 1997 it was ranked by the American Film Institute as the eighth greatest American movie of all time. It is Leonard Bernstein's only original film score not adapted from a stage production with songs.