What is the Catalina reference about?

I always had an interest in ocean liners, and fortunately one of my good friends was a man named Frank O. Braynard, who was regarded as the world's leading authority on them, headed the American Maritime Institute, and was the author of many books on the subject. He was a fine artist and about 16 years ago we had him draw a picture of our summer house (I knew him from that community), which he'd do for friends. Well, when he came in with the finished sketch I was finally able to ask him a question. I showed him a brief scene in On the Waterfront, where Marlon Brando is sitting on his rooftop after finding the kid had killed his pigeons. Eva Marie Saint is telling him they should get out and go to a farm or somewhere, while Brando looks over toward Manhattan, across the Hudson River. There's a shot of about five seconds showing what he's looking at, which includes a liner embarking down the river on its voyage. I had finally paid attention one day and realized it was -- the Andrea Doria. Only this was just a chance shot: she happened to be heading down the river at the moment they shot that quick sequence. Mr. Braynard had traveled on the Doria, so I asked him if that wasn't the ship. He looked, then put me through my paces. "What year was this filmed?" "Well, 1954, but the scene may have been shot in '53." "When did the Doria make her maiden voyage?" "1953." "What's the only other ship it could have been?" "The Doria's sister ship, the Cristoforo Colombo." "And does it have the same lines as the Cristoforo Colombo?" "No." "So what ship is it?" "The Andrea Doria." "Right you are!" He always made you feel as though you were the expert. When he died at 91 a few years ago the Queen Elizabeth II stopped in mid-Atlantic and a memorial wreath was tossed off the stern in Frank's honor. Quite a tribute!

Anyway, I put that piece of Doria trivia on the OTW site a few years back. In the way that IMDb never reads duplicate entries I think someone else posted the same information later on, but I was always proud I'd beaten him to it! And that's the extent of my Doria-spotting in motion pictures.

My trivia question answer: it was in fact Joe Mantell, who did get a Supporting Actor nomination for Marty. He was actually a very good actor but never got a lot of great roles because he seemed so mousy or ratty or some other rodenty type of character. He starred in a couple of Twilight Zones and was very good in both.

Yes, I knew my allusion to "26 Miles" was five years too early, but "Avalon" didn't occur to me and would have been as apt. The first film I ran in my movie series this summer was Dreamboat, in which "Avalon" is the theme song for the silent movie pair played by Clifton Webb and Ginger Rogers. But it still didn't occur to me for my airborne stars.

I've never been to Catalina myself and would like one day to see it. Don't they limit development and so the population? I've read that shortly after he arrived in Hollywood in 1937 Ronald Reagan flew with friends to Catalina aboard a plane that went through a severe storm, a trip so nerve-wracking to Reagan that he resolved never to fly again. In the 1950s he had it written into his TV contract with GE that he would never be forced to take a plane to any of the company's plants where he was obligated to make appearances, so that all his travels had to be arranged around train schedules and cities not too far apart. It was not until 1966, when he was running for Governor, that his advisors finally convinced him that he had to fly to be an effective candidate. He discovered that aviation had made a few strides in the preceding three decades and found he enjoyed flying after all. I guess no one commented on the irony that he joined the Army Air Corps during the war, though he never flew and only made training films.