Model Cities: The Landlord, New York Mayor John Lindsay, and the Challenges of Urban Renewal

hal ashby made films that succeeded with both critics and audiences in the 1970s (Cook 110). His films often dealt with the major political issues of the time—for instance, American society's cynicism toward the military in The Last Detail in 1973; the superficiality of American politics in Shampoo in 1975; and the personal and political damage wrought by the Vietnam War in Coming Home in 1978. Ashby's films stand as historical documents of their time. Aaron Hunter, who wrote one of the few scholarly examinations of the director, asserts that Ashby stands out among the 1970s film-makers for exploring the way politics impacts people's personal lives (87). Arguably, his first film, The Landlord, is his most historically prescient. Its portrayal of a wealthy white man buying a tenement house in a predominantly African American Park Slope in Brooklyn predicted the gentrification of the borough that began in the 1980s and continues to be an issue (Zukin 57–58). It also represents a striking document of New York in its depiction of African American urban poverty that bred a "volcanic" anger that "would be heard" according to a Life magazine cover story in 1968 (Newfield 87). Despite its rich thematic and historical significance, little has been written about the film since its release in 1970. The film reflects the urban troubles experienced by major cities like New York at the time and anticipates the changes New York would experience in its redevelopment to an economic juggernaut.

At the time, such a future seemed far away. During the making of The Landlord in the summer of 1969, New York's Republican mayor John V. Lindsay was in a bitter battle for his reelection. After his own party rejected him in its primary, Lindsay was reelected on a third-party line with a large turnout of black voters. Four years earlier, the mayor had come to office with the promise of leading an urban renaissance in New York. However, those expectations confronted chronic urban problems: middle-class flight, significant decrease in manufacturing, and the concomitant rise of an urban under-class, issues directly and indirectly depicted in The Landlord. In a 1971 interview with the editorial staff of the New York Amsterdam News, Lindsay asserted his "disappointment" that his administration had not done more in lower-class areas (McCall, "A Black Appraisal" A2). After Lindsay acknowledged the conservative tilt of the Republican Party and switched to the Democratic Party in August 1971, the newspaper printed a series of editorials on his leadership by various black thinkers. The editorial staff asserted that Mayor Lindsay was neither a "'honkey' nor a white knight" but someone who seemed "to be sincerely searching for answers and genuine solutions to the problems of New York City and urban America" ("On John Lindsay" A6). On the flip side, the paper's editor, H. Carl McCall, acknowledged that Lindsay spoke well to African Americans, making them "feel good … But the real issue is not that we feel better under Lindsay; but are we doing any better" ("Black Appraisal: Have We Learned a Lesson?" A7).

McCall answered in the negative, citing the "intolerable conditions in our communities," such as those portrayed in The Landlord. Mc-Call also criticized black politicians and activists, indicting the militants, who condemned African Americans working for city government as "selling out," for not holding the mayor accountable for his policies ("A Black Appraisal: Have We Learned a Lesson?" A7). While Mc-Call accurately asserted that New York's black communities were not doing well in the 1960s and '70s, much of the city was suffering from the destructive national and global economic trends that afflicted all northeastern cities. The Landlord indicates the consequences of these trends on African American neighborhoods while indirectly revealing the Lindsay administration's attempts to mitigate those developments' impact on African American neighborhoods.

Black Migration to the North

After World War II, African Americans moved north, leaving the racial hatred in the southeast for northeastern cities that they hoped would be sanctuaries of industrial employment, fair...