28 Street Was the Scene of a Heist in “The Taking of Pelham 123,” with Hector Elizondo

This quintessentially New York heist picture used this train station for key scenes.

by Rich Watson 

This post is part of the We Are Family Blogathon, an event focusing on relatives of film and TV stars. At the end I’ll tell you where to find more posts like this.

The Taking of Pelham 123 is a crime movie from 1974 based on a book, starring Walter Matthau. Armed men hijack a subway car, with passengers inside. They demand a million dollars from New York City. Matthau is the transit cop who leads the team trying to apprehend them and save the hostages. 

Much of the action takes place on the east side of midtown on Park Avenue, at or near the 28 Street station, where the 6 train runs.

“Pelham” and the 6 train

The 6 train, part of the IRT Lexington Avenue Line with the 4 and 5, runs 

• from Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx (hence the film’s title),
• past the Cross Bronx Expressway and the Bronx River, 
• over the Harlem River into Manhattan, 
• down the east side, past Grand Central Station and the Chrysler Building, 
• to City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge.

It runs local, but goes express during rush hour. Instead of a circle emblem at the head of the train car, express service is indicated with a diamond.

28 Street is near 

• Madison Square Park, 
• the Lexington Armory, and 
• the New York Life Building.

The station opened in 1904, one of New York’s original twenty-eight stations (on October 27, four days from now). Renovations took place in 1987, and again, from 2015-19. When I worked on Third Avenue in the nineties, this was the station I used.

In Pelham, the four hijackers board the 6 one station at a time until they reach 28 Street. That’s where they hold up the motorman and conductor. The quartet stops the train in the tunnel outside 28 Street and broadcast their demands.

The hijackers are played by Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Earl Hindman, and today’s other subject, Hector Elizondo.

Hector Elizondo as “Mr. Grey”

Elizondo’s character, like all the hijackers, use colors for code names and are strangers to each other. “Mr. Grey” is ex-Mafia. His trigger-happy nature causes problems for Shaw and the others.

In this interview, Elizondo says part of the film shooting was done in an abandoned subway station, but the MTA prohibited adding graffiti, even though it was ubiquitous within New York’s subway system at the time. 

Pelham was made when New York was grittier and more dangerous. The movie reflects the period’s in-your-face attitude.

A New York native, Elizondo has been acting professionally since the sixties in theater, TV and movies. He won an Emmy for the show Chicago Hope. Among the other movies he’s made include Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride. As a teenager, he was an athlete, scouted professionally by Major League Baseball until an injury forced him to change career paths.

He has been married three times, with one son. His third wife is another Emmy-winner, Carolee Campbell.

Carolee Campbell, fine book binder

Campbell won the Emmy in 1978 for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Religious Programming, for a TV movie called This is My Son. Before that, she spent nine years on the daytime soap opera The Doctors, playing a nurse. She and Elizondo met on the show and married in 1969.

In 1984 she went into fine book binding, starting her company Ninja Press as a result of her love of photography. Her books have been collected by the New York Public Library, Harvard and Yale, among other places. This Los Angeles Times feature goes into more detail.

She’s also into kendo and Japanese fencing.

Pelham was remade in 2009 with Denzel Washington and John Travolta. In that version, the hijack remains on the 6 train, but it begins at the 77 Street station.

@byrichwatson

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More posts in the We Are Family Blogathon can be found at Taking Up Room, from October 25-27.