Overwhelming interest in the recent, nationally televised O.J. Simpson parole hearing probably reminded many viewers of 2016’s multi-Emmy Award winning mini-series on FX cable “The People vs. O.J. Simpson.” And over the last several decades, a number of outstanding mini-series have become staples of network and cable TV.
One of the very best of the genre was HBO’s riveting, six-part “Show Me a Hero” (August 2015), dissecting racially tinged attempts to build 200 units of low-income housing in Yonkers, N.Y.—a hyper-segregated city of 195,000—from 1987-94.
The searing, real-life story is seen through the eyes of its 28-year-old Democrat mayor—feisty, ultimately tragic Nicholas Wasicsko, masterfully portrayed by look-alike Oscar Isaac.
Based on a nonfiction book by Lisa Belkin of The New York Times, “Show Me a Hero” is of particular significance to me because I knew and respected the besieged Wasicsko. America’s youngest mayor, he was one of a kind and, to many, a true hero.
After leaving the Milwaukee Journal in 1987 to become an editorial writer-columnist with the New York Daily News, I met and interviewed Wasicsko twice in Yonkers. In addition to spending time with him and his staff in their offices, he showed me around his city at the south end of Westchester County, just north of the Bronx.
As a result, I wrote op-ed page columns headlined “The Man in the Middle in Tense Yonkers” and “Wasicsko Ready to Hit Comeback Trail.” Visiting Yonkers on my own, interviewing black, white and Latino residents and attending several raucous city council meetings, I wrote several dozen editorials over a three-year period about its high-profile struggle to build low-income housing on the largely white east side of town.
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“Show Me a Hero” was unrelenting in depicting outrage and occasional violence—including death threats—by white residents opposed to the townhouses planned for their neighborhoods. Some of the blacks and Latinos wallowing in poverty in high-rise, crime-ridden public projects, were shown as long-suffering and eager for a better life, as well being simply drug dealers, users and unwed mothers.
Among its stars, Isaac—with his Al Pacino-like voice—was far from the only polarizing figure so brilliantly portrayed in “Show Me a Hero.” Alfred Molina was bombastic as councilman-turned-mayor, Hank Spallone, a strident housing foe; Jim Belushi was sly as six-term Mayor Angelo Martinelli and Bob Balaban was demanding as U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand, who held Yonkers in contempt—imposing and doubling daily fines which would bankrupt it in less than a month if it failed to agree to build the housing.
The young Wasicsko—an attorney, ex-cop and former councilman who was mayor from 1987-’89—took heat from white residents and city council members for supporting the housing, saying: “For the first time in my life, I’m on the right side of something.” But he later backed a legal appeal of Sand’s pro-housing rulings, which was denied.
At the same time, his political future was severely impacted by the city’s two-year mayoral term. Yet, after pushing through legislation adding a second two-year term, he lost to Spallone in his bid for re-election. But this was far from his only political problem.
After agreeing to step aside to help the party instead of running for a second term as mayor, Wasicsko was gamed by politicians he trusted. His wife was fired from her job in the city’s parking authority and, effectively, he was put out to pasture.
However, Wasicsko ran for his old city council seat and narrowly won. Before the next election, the city altered council boundaries and his district became heavily Latino, assuring defeat if he ran there again. In 1993, he lost a bid for city council president.
Taking its title from novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous quote “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy,” TV’s “Show Me a Hero” played out in exactly that way. Despite heavy opposition, low-income townhouses were built on the largely white east side of Yonkers. But the road for many people was long and rocky.
The show followed the lives of four black and Latino women coping with daily pressures of ghetto life and garnered scintillating performances. They accurately channeled Yonkers’ 12% minority population stuck on the poverty-stricken, drug-ridden west side.
In a tragic finale, a 34-year-old Wasicsko commits suicide in October 1993, shooting himself in the mouth seated against a tree in a cemetery near his father’s grave. After moving scenes of his funeral that brought out his allies and opponents, the mini-series ends by showing the real life characters next to the actors who portrayed them. Isaac won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. And this true story, bolstered by a stellar cast, make is one of the great TV mini-series ever.
