Working Class NYC on the Screen

New York City is, fundamentally, a city of workers. We're not the richest and most powerful city in the country because we're a bunch of lazybones. There are numerous socioeconomic classes in NYC but combined they are all part of one big class -- the working class, the hard working class.

If you listen to the media, you'd be forgiven for believing that the "working class" is mostly elsewhere in "middle America" (coal miners in West Virginia that voted for Trump, for example). But the real working class, the biggest and most diverse working class in America, is right here in the buildings and streets of the five boroughs.

In fact, there's been a plethora of movies and TV shows over the decades of working class lives in NYC. Here are some of my favorites that are worth checking out:

The Nanny, the 1990s sitcom about a woman from Flushing who becomes not only the nanny but also the de facto mother for some rich Manhattinites (it stars the amazing Queens-native and current comeback Queen Fran Drescher).

Marty, the big Oscar-winning 1955 movie about a lovelorn butcher from the Bronx, starring Ernest Borgine. 

Working Girl, the 1988 classic about a Staten Island secretary who takes on and beats corporate America. Melanie Griffith is amazing as the never-to-be-underestimated Tess!

And, if you want to look at the dark side of the NYC working class, there's no better movie than 1975's Dog Day Afternoon about a 1972 Brooklyn bank robbery gone very wrong. It features probably Al Pacino's best performance and is a look at what happens when working class New Yorkers run out of dreams and hopes. 

All great movies and TV shows about hard workers New Yorkers (for better or worse) from all five boroughs!