Thomas Handley's father, a longshoreman, was blackballed for opposing corrupt union leaders. He disappeared when Handley was 4 months old, and may have been murdered by the gang that controlled the New York docks.
Handley was initially hired to feed the pigeons on the set of On the Waterfront (1954), but Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg had him audition for the movie.He went on to become a longshoreman himself, and in 2002 was elected recording secretary of his union after the leadership was ousted for corruption.
