Glucksman Ireland House presents
Professor Jim Fisher discusses On the Irish Waterfront: the Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York
Saturday, October 3rd at 6pm
at Glucksman Ireland House NYU
The site of the world’s busiest and most lucrative harbor throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the Port of New York was also the historic preserve of Irish American gangsters, politicians, longshoremen’s union leaders, and powerful Roman Catholic pastors. This is the demimonde depicted to stunning effect in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954) and which Professor James T. Fisher of Fordham University explores in his remarkable and engaging historical account of the classic film’s back-story. On the Irish Waterfront is a detailed social history of the New York/New Jersey waterfront, from the rise of Irish American entrepreneurs and political bosses during the World War I era to the mid-1950s, when the emergence of a revolutionary new mode of cargo-shipping signaled a radical reorganization of the port.