Leave it to James Martin to unearth this intriguing bit of Jesuit trivia, tied to the sad news that Karl Malden has gone to the great Actors Studio in the sky:

News today that Karl Malden died at the age of 97 (I liked him best in “The Streets of San Francisco,” where he played the gruff-but- unflappable cop to Michael Douglas’s hotheaded rookie), reminded me of his seminal role as Fr. Pete Barry, the priest in the film “On the Waterfront.” The person upon whom that character was based was the Jesuit priest John Corridan. Fordham University professor James Fisher is hard at work on a book on the life and work of this astonishing man. Below is a short piece by Fisher that was published in Company in 2003. (I’ll link to the original piece “Waterfront Priest” here, but reprint most of it below, with a tip of the hat to Company, the magazine for Jesuits and their friends, since the original site has some photos missing.) Also, here’s another piece about the man in The Irish Echo. Finally, believe it or not, Mr. Malden died on the 25th anniversary of Fr. Corridan’s death, July 1, 1984.

–THE CLASSIC 1954 film, On the Waterfront, is renowned among film buffs for the legendary performance of Marlon Brando as longshoreman Terry Malloy, the gritty Hoboken, N.J., locations, and the brilliant direction of Elia Kazan. Far less well known–even among dedicated fans of the Academy Award-winning film–is that the inspiration for the film, Fr. John Corridan, was a Jesuit who graduated from Regis High School in New York in 1928.

“Pete” Corridan, as he was known in the Society [of Jesus, aka the Jesuits], was a labor priest and associate director of the Xavier Institute of Industrial Relations, housed in St. Francis Xavier Parish on 16th Street in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. Shortly after Fr. Corridan arrived at Xavier in 1946, the labor school’s director, Fr. Philip Carey, SJ, assigned him to work with longshoremen from the nearby Chelsea piers. Corridan quickly became the leading authority on the labor situation in the Port of New York and a passionate advocate of democratic reforms in the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), a union with an overwhelmingly Catholic membership.

Fr. Corridan compiled voluminous records on the politics and economics of the waterfront. When investigative reporter Malcolm Johnson of the old New York Sun launched an investigation of corruption in the docks in the autumn of 1948, he came to Corridan for help. The resulting series of articles, “Crime on the Waterfront,” was a sensation that earned Johnson a Pulitzer. Johnson showed that the piers of New York Harbor were a racket-ridden jungle in which gangsters operated with the cooperation of union officials.

“Crime on the Waterfront” was followed up by another Sun series that targeted Joseph Ryan, the “life president” of the ILA. In February 1949 Fr. Corridan confided to a San Francisco Jesuit: “the material for this second series was submitted to the reporter [by Corridan] and was published under his name with very little change. This, of course, is top secret.” The articles for the Sun cracked open the waterfront’s “code of silence” for the first time and instigated a growing demand for reform. By the time novelist Budd Schulberg was commissioned to write a screenplay based on Johnson’s articles in 1950, Fr. Corridan was known throughout the Port of New York as the “Waterfront Priest.” He wrote fiery articles for America and other publications condemning the “shape-up” system of waterfront hiring, testified before congressional committees investigating union corruption, and sparred with Joe Ryan in televised debates. Malcolm Johnson urged Schulberg to “go down to Xavier and meet Fr. John. He really knows the score.”

Visit the link for the rest. You can also read the New York Times obit right here here, with the heartening news that Malden and his wife had just celebrated their 70th anniversary. Yes, 70th.