One of the most talked-about films of the fifties, On the Waterfront was (and is) the center of great controversy for its implication that the dockers' union was run by gangsters, coming at a time when the union was hounded by McCarthyism; and for its defense of informing, coming from Elia Kazan, a “friendly witness” at the HUAC hearings (as were author Budd Schulberg and actor Lee J. Cobb, who plays the vicious union boss Johnny Friendly). It also remains an enduring classic, for Marlon Brando's performance as the forlorn dockworker Terry Malloy, who would have been a contender and almost ends up a dead pigeon when he sings to the government investigatory committee about the death of a fellow dockworker; for the gritty realism of the waterfront and inner city location shooting and the superb cinematography of Boris Kaufman; for the brutal poetry of Schulberg's script; and for what was perhaps the culmination of the Actors' Studio method in performances by Brando, Rod Steiger as his brother, Eva Marie Saint as the dead man's sister, and Karl Malden as Father Barry.