“On the Waterfront” received 12 Academy Award nominations, including one for its score; it won eight Oscars, including best picture, director, screenplay, cinematography, and of course, actor. Bernstein lost to Hollywood veteran Dimitri Tiomkin for “The High and the Mighty” — a plane-in-peril drama with a popular soundtrack (John Wayne, as the movie’s hero, whistles the title theme throughout the film). With its tortured history, however, “On the Waterfront” was a surprising Oscar winner, and remains a polarizing film in some quarters to this day.