Journalist Rebello delivers a meticulous account of On the Waterfront's bumpy path to the silver screen. He discusses how in the early 1950s, director Elia Kazan and playwright Arthur Miller, both fresh off the success of Death of a Salesman, teamed up again to adapt for film a series of New York Sun articles about organized crime's infiltration of the International Longshoremen's Association. Politics complicated the fledgling project, Rebello writes, noting that studio bosses unsuccessfully pressed Miller to make the villains Communists instead of racketeers, and that Kazan's decision to name suspected Communists in his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952 drove a wedge between him and Miller. (Novelist Budd Schulberg wrote the final script after Miller's departure.) Elsewhere, Rebello discusses how producer Sam Spiegel convinced Marlon Brando to sign on to the film despite reservations over Kazan's testimony, how Spiegel's 'penny-pinching' hampered production (venetian blinds were installed in the taxi for the 'I coulda been a contender' scene because Spiegel claimed to have forgotten to pay for rear projection footage), and how the strength of Brando's performance persuaded Leonard Bernstein to write the score for the film despite his aversion to the film industry. Rebello gamely traces how real-life political drama combined with rank Hollywood gamesmanship to create a classic of American film. Cinephiles will be transfixed.

Compelling from start to finish, A City Full of Hawks is a page-turner, thanks to vivid storytelling, an energetic pace, and surprising details about the conflict and creativity behind an American classic. Rebello impressively conveys how difficult it is to make a good film, much less a great one. He also debunks the myth of the director-as-sole-creator, as he explores the contributions of writer Budd Schulberg, cinematographer Boris Kaufman, composer Leonard Bernstein, and notorious producer Sam Spiegel, whose devious financial dealings were balanced by excellent taste. The result is a definitive book on its subject - one that gives director Elia Kazan the praise he deserves as a filmmaker, while reminding us of his flawed morality during the Hollywood blacklist.

On the Waterfront remains a powerhouse film that has been endlessly quoted but never before so meticulously examined as by Stephen Rebello in his painstaking chronicle, A City Full of Hawks. As he reveals, the movie itself was almost the least dramatic element of the project's odyssey from the docks to the screen. Along the way there were unions, the mob, Reds, the blacklist, and assorted denizens who straddled one or more of those labels. As brilliantly as Rebello captured Hitchcock's Psycho, he wrestles On the Waterfront into history.

"A perfect recap of the film and the controversial era; a treat for cinephiles."

"Stephen Rebello covers the Waterfront, and how! Just as he did with Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho and Dolls, Dolls, Dolls: Deep Inside the Valley of the Dolls, Rebello gives us another colorful, probing, precise, and wise account of the making of a classic. It's got class, it's a contender. And, it's terrific. A triumph!"

"Leave it to Stephen Rebello (who gave us brilliant bestsellers on the making of Psycho and the making of Valley of the Dolls) to reveal the behind-the-scenes saga of the creation of this landmark film in ways that are cinematic, compelling, and You-Are-There immersive. He makes reading A City Full of Hawks almost as revelatory and powerful as watching On the Waterfront itself. Painstakingly researched, beautifully written and enthrallingly entertaining, A City Full of Hawks is a contender for any serious movie lover's book of the year."

"Stephen Rebello has written several excellent and enlightening books about the films and filmmakers about whom we thought we knew pretty much everything. Rebello always reveals more, and always reveals what makes the artists and the films better for us. His discernment is truly rare. Not only is A CITY FULL OF HAWKS beautifully written, it is alsi full portrait that balances art and politics, and transforms the 'making of' book--normally a magnum of chloroform--into something like a page-turner. Very highly recommended as required reading for any committed movie lover."

"InA City Full of Hawks, Stephen Rebello tells the fascinating story of how a classic American film almost didn't get made... and how the people who believed in it never gave up. We are the beneficiaries of Rebello's dogged research and vast experience in telling a great behind-the-scenes saga."

"Stephen Rebello pulls no punches with this thoughtful and deeply researched examination, both celebratory and searing, of an American classic. He rightly praises the film's tackling of sweeping political movements through its delicately crafted characters, while also capturing the array of powerful, conflicted emotions that generations of film lovers (Rebello included) have about Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg's cinematic masterpiece."