When New York City Truly Teetered on the Brink

If I were running beleaguered Mayor Adams’ reelection campaign, I would do everything in my power to have each and every voter watch “Drop Dead City.” It gives us gloomy New Yorkers a healthy dose of perspective.

The 108-minute documentary, directed by Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn and now screening at IFC Center, offers an almost lighthearted account of New York City’s 1975 minuet with bankruptcy. Through rich use of archival footage and interviews with the men and women who navigated us through the crisis, “Drop Dead City” captures one of the city’s most harrowing episodes. As hard as it might be to imagine today, but for the last-minute change of heart on the part of the teachers union president to participate in a public bond offering, the greatest city in the world would have defaulted on its public debt. A bankruptcy filing appeared inevitable.

But “Drop Dead City” is more than simply a faithful retelling of the city’s brush with disaster. It is also a valuable period piece which perfectly captures the city at its most  dystopian, dysfunctional and, yes, utterly wonderful.

You think the streets are dirty now? Wait until you see the mountains of trash piling up on the sidewalks during the sanitation workers’ strike. Do voters have crime on their minds? In 1975, a year when the population was less than 7.5 million, 1,645 people were killed in the five boroughs, more than four times the 377 who were killed in our city of 8.5 million last year (FYI, 2025 is running 25% below 2024’s level). And fires? Fuggedaboutit. Entire neighborhoods were seemingly engulfed in flames, the result of arson for profit and arson for fun. “Firemen were dealing literally with this apocalypse,” noted one historian. “There were fires everywhere.” 

You think our infrastructure is crumbling now? Well, one day in 1975, three northbound lanes of the West Side Highway collapsed, and 50 tons of hot asphalt spilled onto the service road below. Even the lamented toll takers got into the act, bringing traffic to a standstill by simply lifting the drawbridges.

In 1975, I was something of a New York City immigrant myself, having moved from the suburbs to attend the Upper West Side progressive oasis called the Walden School. Of course I recall the graffiti, decay, garbage and violence. But what sticks with me was the thrill of magically discovering a city pulsating with life, ideas and diversity. “Drop Dead City” manages to convey the good and bad of New York without making it ugly.

For the most part, 2025 New York compares favorably to that of 1975. But in one area, today’s city comes up wanting: In that era, the city was blessed with a surplus of mature, far-thinking civic leaders who helped pull us back from the fiscal brink. If things suddenly turned that bleak these days, it’s hard to imagine such brilliant and farsighted people rising to meet the moment.

The film’s title is based on the iconic October 30, 1975 Daily News headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” At the time, New York City and State were seeking federal loans to forestall bankruptcy. President Gerald Ford resisted the bailout, saying it was not the federal government’s responsibility to reward liberal New York City’s profligate spending. The Daily News headline came to symbolize the city’s toughness; for some of us, it is also a reminder of when our local press was an integral part of public discourse. Eventually, Ford capitulated; later he blamed the headline for contributing to his 1976 electoral loss to Jimmy Carter.

The 1970s fiscal crisis was eventually resolved by high-pressure negotiations between the banks, unions, and state and city officials. A half century later, it is still inspiring to watch these people at work. In particular, three dedicated New Yorkers from utterly different backgrounds emerged as true New York heroes. 

One was New York Gov. Hugh Carey, who inherited the mess from his predecessor, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. Carey, a recent widower who in the film is shown sweetly making breakfast for his young children, put together a financial package for the city whereby the newly formed Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC) would provide fiscal oversight for the city’s finances. Carey proved an eloquent proponent of working to save the city.

Victor Gotbaum was the powerful and feisty leader of the city’s largest municipal labor union, D.C. 37, which had over 100,000 members. While Gotbaum initially saw the fiscal struggle as one between the union and the rapacious banks balking at buying the City’s bonds, he eventually rose to the challenge of the time by negotiating concessions from the banks and the City, in exchange for the union’s participation in the City’s municipal bond offering.

Finally, there was Felix Rohatyn, the European-born investment banker who brought the parties together, negotiated a final rescue package and served as MAC’s first chair. The soft-spoken Rohatyn actually offers one of the more prescient lines in the film, when he’s asked if New York City can survive. “I think ultimately the federal government has to realize you can't have an industrially advanced culture without having thriving urban centers.” (Co-director Michael Rohatyn is Felix Rohatyn’s son.) 

One cannot help but wonder whether our business and union leaders, not to mention our governor and mayor, would have the mettle to lead the city through a comparable crisis today. Cowardly responses to the menace from Washington from our mayor, a certain university and several giant law firms suggests they do not.

I loved being transported back to a time of New Yorkers wearing Afros, when salsa music was in the air, men sported wide sideburns and women wore coke-bottle glasses and spoke with thick New York accents. It’s a great time.

That said, I do wish the filmmakers had more deeply explored the lessons of the crisis. They take a rather goodhearted approach to governmental accountability — with the exception of Nelson Rockefeller’s overambitious social welfare schemes, no individual really gets much criticism. John Lindsay, mayor for the eight years preceding Mayor Abe Beame and one of the people who effectively helped land the city in the soup, barely merits a mention.

Why exactly did New York face the abyss in 1975? For those who worry about history repeating itself, it is crucial to answer this question accurately.  Was it because the City was simply too generous with its municipal unions, free college tuition and public hospital system? This is known as the high cost of good intentions. Or was it because the City was caught flat-footed by economic forces beyond its control, i.e. the collapse of the manufacturing and industrial job base?

Still, whatever its shortcomings as a work of history, “Drop Dead City” shines as a love letter to the city. It reminds us how, even in what was then our darkest hour (this was before 9/11), the city’s disparate interests united behind a common purpose. Our current leaders — business, non-profit, political and labor — would do well to apply these lessons to our current crisis.