Synopses & Reviews
What if the world of the old New York waterfront was as violent and mob-controlled as it appears in Hollywood movies? Well, it really was, and the story of its downfall, told here in high style by Nathan Ward, is the original New York mob story.
New York Sun reporter Malcolm Mike” Johnson was sent to cover the murder of a West Side boss stevedore and discovered a waterfront jungle, set against a background of New Yorks magnificent skyscrapers” and providing rich pickings for criminal gangs.” Racketeers ran their territories while doubling as union officers, from the West Sides Cockeye” Dunn, whod kill for any amount of dock space, to Jersey Citys Charlie Yanowsky, who controlled rackets and hiring until he was ice-picked to death.
Johnsons hard-hitting investigative series won a Pulitzer Prize, inspired a screenplay by Arthur Miller, and prompted Elia Kazans Oscar-winning film On the Waterfront. And yet J. Edgar Hoover denied the existence of organized crimeeven as the governments dramatic hearings into waterfront misdeeds became mustsee television.
Nathan Ward tells this archetypal crime story as if for the first time, taking the reader back to a city, and an era, at once more corrupt and more innocent than our own.
Nathan Ward, who was an editor with American Heritage, has written for The New York Times and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn.
Historians often debate if the world of the old New York waterfront was as violent and mob-controlled as it appears in Hollywood movies. In Dark Harbor Nathan Ward claims that it was, revealing the original New York mob story and its downfall.
New York Sun reporter Malcolm Mike” Johnson was sent to cover the murder of a West Side boss stevedore and discovered a waterfront jungle, set against a background of New Yorks magnificent skyscrapers” and providing rich pickings for criminal gangs.” Racketeers ran their territories while doubling as union officers, from the West Sides Cockeye” Dunn, whod kill for any amount of dock space, to Jersey Citys Charlie Yanowsky, who controlled rackets and hiring until he was ice-picked to death.
Johnsons hard-hitting investigative series won a Pulitzer Prize, inspired a screenplay by Arthur Miller, and prompted Elia Kazans Oscar-winning film On the Waterfront. And yet J. Edgar Hoover denied the existence of organized crimeeven as the governments dramatic hearings into waterfront misdeeds became mustsee television.
Nathan Ward tells this archetypal crime story as if for the first time, taking the reader back to a city, and an era, at once more corrupt and more innocent than our own. "Nathan Ward's elegant and affectionate visit to gangster New York in the 1940s is excellent true crime and true histroy. Dark Harbor goes on the shelf next to Joseph Mitchell and A.J. Liebling."Alan Furst, author of Night Soldiers
"Carefully researched, Nathan Ward's Dark Harbor nonetheless reads as if it were ripped from the day's headlines. Here is the realand fascinatingstory of the waterfront."Kevin Baker, author of Strivers Row
"Former American Heritage editor Ward reveals the seedy history of the old New York waterfront, a brutal, dangerous environment ruled by corrupt union officials and the mob. The author focuses on New York Sun investigative reporter Mike Johnson's Pulitzer-winning series of articles in 1948, which uncovered the graft and terror tactics that characterized life on the docks. These tactics ultimately brought down International Longshoremen's Association 'president for Life' Joseph Ryan and improved conditions for the embattled workers. Packed with colorful characters including the murderous thug 'Cockeye' Dunn, fearsome 'Tough Tony' Anastasio, dapper Abe 'Kid Twist' Reles and Charlie 'The Jew' Yanowsky (who was ice-picked to death), the book reads like classic noir. Beleaguered laborers marinate in dirty saloons, murders abound, death threats fly and the nation is forced to reckon with the reality of organized crime as sensational TV government hearings drag the dirty business into the light. Arthur Miller was inspired by the murder of a reform-seeking longshoreman to write a screenplay about the milieu. More famously, writer Budd Schulberg's take on the issue became the classic Marlon Brando film On the Waterfront (1954), whose principal characters and situations were inspired by actual people and events. Ward's most engaging characters are the tough, streetwise priest John Corridan, a plain-talking rabble-rouser who courageously walked the docks and agitated for justiceKarl Malden memorably played the figure based on Corridan in Waterfrontand the congenitally crooked union boss Joe Ryan, a blustery operator who hid his misdeeds behind a smokescreen of anti-communist rhetoric. The author deftly marshals vast amounts of research to tell his story, including original interviews with players from the era, and he richly evokes the atmosphere of mid-century New York. A lucid, illuminating history of the epicenter of organized crime in America."Kirkus Reviews
"This gritty examination of the corrupt New York City waterfront provided by Ward, a former editor with American Heritage and Library Journal, has all of the local color, rich detail, and notorious gangland figures of Elia Kazan's film masterpiece, On the Waterfront. Ward parallels the 1948 muckraking efforts of Malcolm Mike Johnson, a legendary New York Sun reporter, to uncover three decades' worth of unsolved rubouts on the West Side docks. Instead, he discovered, in Ward's words, a city apart, with its own bosses, language and codes, bankers, soldiers, and even martyrs. Johnson found widespread corruption linking the city fathers, police, and waterfront racketeers. Ward serves up some stirring profiles of characters like suave lawyer Jim Longhi, with a radical past; shrewd, politically well-connected union boss Joseph Ryan; Father John Corridan, the anticorruption waterfront priest; and stoolie Abe Reles, whose plunge from a Coney Island hotel window ended an early probe into the bloody antics of Murder Inc. Extremely valuable to all interested in 20th-century New York City, the book tells a bitter truth: despite Johnson's three-week-long scandal-baring newspaper series, which stirred the pot, nothing loosened the iron grip of the mob on the waterfront."Publishers Weekly
"In 1948 a New York newspaper published an exposé of murderous corruption on the city's piers; the revelations became the real-life foundation for the now-classic movie On the Waterfront. Ward's history of the story bridges its journey from print to celluloid, beginning with the reporter whose series broke open the scandal. Malcolm Johnson pursued his investigation of several killings of longshoremen into the web of union leaders, mobsters, and politicians who ruled the docks. Ward infuses their biographies with their reputations for ruthlessness, which casts a decidedly noir shadow over the narrative. Against the menace of union boss Joe Ryan and the brass-knuckled racketeers who dictated dockside hiring, Ward pits intrepid reporter Johnson as well as Father John Corridan, the inspiration for the movie's Karl Malden character, and carries the tale through to the consequences of their anticorruption crusades: trials, the Kefauver hearings into organized crime, and adaptation of the story from script to screen. True-crime and film fans alike will be engrossed by Ward's street-savvy research into the original waterfront."Gilbert Taylor, Booklist
Review
“Meticulous reporting, a keen eye for detail, and an elegant writing style...terrific.” —Jonathan Eig, The New York Times Book Review
“True crime done right, sharply researched and written with an economy of language...as atmospheric as a two a.m. stroll down the wharf on a late October night.” —Allen Bara, The Daily Beast
“Brilliant.” —New York magazine
“Riveting.” —New York Post
“This gritty examination of the corrupt New York City waterfront...has all of the local color, rich detail, and notorious gangland figures of Elia Kazans film masterpiece, On the Waterfront. Extremely valuable to all interested in twentieth-century New York City.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)“Nathan Ward's elegant and affectionate visit to gangster New York in the 1940s is excellent true crime and true histroy. Dark Harbor goes on the shelf next to Joseph Mitchell and A.J. Liebling.” —Alan Furst, author of Night Soldiers
“Carefully researched, Nathan Ward's Dark Harbor nonetheless reads as if it were ripped from the day's headlines. Here is the real—and fascinating—story of the waterfront.” —Kevin Baker, author of Strivers Row
“True-crime and film fans alike will be engrossed by Ward's street-savvy research into the original waterfront.” —Gilbert Taylor, Booklist
Synopsis
What if the world of the old New York waterfront was as violent and mob-controlled as it appears in Hollywood movies? Well, it really was, and the story of its downfall, told here in high style by Nathan Ward, is the original New York mob story.
New York Sun reporter Malcolm “Mike” Johnson was sent to cover the murder of a West Side boss stevedore and discovered a “waterfront jungle, set against a background of New Yorks magnificent skyscrapers” and providing “rich pickings for criminal gangs.” Racketeers ran their territories while doubling as union officers, from the West Sides “Cockeye” Dunn, whod kill for any amount of dock space, to Jersey Citys Charlie Yanowsky, who controlled rackets and hiring until he was ice-picked to death.
Johnsons hard-hitting investigative series won a Pulitzer Prize, inspired a screenplay by Arthur Miller, and prompted Elia Kazans Oscar-winning film On the Waterfront. And yet J. Edgar Hoover denied the existence of organized crime - even as the governments dramatic hearings into waterfront misdeeds became mustsee television.
Nathan Ward tells this archetypal crime story as if for the first time, taking the reader back to a city, and an era, at once more corrupt and more innocent than our own.
Synopsis
“Theyd never kill a reporter....” On the morning of April 29, 1948, a West Side pier hiring boss was shot on his way to work. The murder reminded the New York Suns city editor of a similar docks killing from the year before, and so he called over his best general assignment man, Malcolm “Mike” Johnson, telling him, “Lots of unrest down there. Maybe you can get a story out of it.” Johnson certainly did, discovering the greatest story of his long career, and a “waterfront jungle” with “rich pickings for criminal gangs.” His crime series ran on the Suns front page for twenty-four days in the fall of 1948, raising a national scandal and bringing death threats on him and his family. Johnson alleged the existence of an international crime “syndicate,” at a time when J. Edgar Hoover would not admit that such a syndicate, let alone a Mafia, existed.
Herein, Nathan Ward tells the original Mob story, “revealing a spiderweb of union corruption and outright gangsterism....His story has everything” (New York Sun), making Dark Harbor a modern true crime classic.
About the Author
Nathan Ward, who was an editor with American Heritage, has written for The New York Times and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, not far from the Red Hook piers.