Walter Matthau The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Walter Matthau (1920–2000) plays Lieutenant Zachary Garber in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), a Transit Authority police officer who negotiates the hostage crisis from the subway control center. Matthau was fifty-three and at the peak of a run that included The Odd Couple (1968), Charley Varrick (1973), and The Sunshine Boys (1975). He came to the role knowing it was a supporting part in a genre picture and said so plainly.

"I like the piece. It moves swiftly and stays interesting right down to the wire. That's the reason I wanted to do it. The TA inspector I play is really a supporting role -- they built it up a bit when I expressed interest in it -- but it's still secondary." — Walter Matthau, Los Angeles Times (1974)

Garber works because Matthau plays him as a civil servant, not a cop

The role could have been a standard hostage-negotiator performance — tense, heroic, escalating. Matthau plays it as a man doing his job. Garber is irritated, competent, and sardonic. He does not volunteer for the crisis. He handles it because he is on duty when it starts, and he manages it the way a city employee manages anything: with the tools available and the bureaucracy in the way.

Roger Ebert located the performance's appeal in Matthau's refusal to play it big:

"Walter Matthau is gruff, shaggy and sardonic as a Transit Authority lieutenant; Robert Shaw is clipped and cruel, and the supporting performances are allowed to grow and take on personality." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (1974)

Olivia Rutigliano, writing at CrimeReads nearly fifty years later, argued that the casting is the film's secret weapon:

"There is no actor finer than Matthau at locating the colorfulness in ordinariness." — Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads (2022)

John H. Dorr at The Hollywood Reporter agreed on release:

"The large, well-characterized cast is ably headed by Walter Matthau, whose wonderfully weary sense of irony is perfect." — John H. Dorr, The Hollywood Reporter (1974)

Matthau was in the middle of a crime-thriller streak when he made Pelham

Tim Salmons at The Digital Bits placed the Garber performance in the context of Matthau's early-1970s run — not a detour into genre work, but the peak of a sustained commitment to it:

"At this point in his career, Matthau was on a streak of great crime thrillers that included Charlie Varrick and The Laughing Policeman, both classics in their own right. His performance as the schlubby Lieutenant Garber is the glue that holds Pelham together, with an ironic yet sincere take on the material that keeps the film moving along and entertaining." — Tim Salmons, The Digital Bits (2022)

Matthau spent as little time in the tunnels as possible

The production shot eight weeks underground in the abandoned Court Street station. Matthau participated in the tunnel work but found the conditions hazardous and made no effort to hide his discomfort. Most of his scenes were shot in the control-center replica at Filmways Studios in East Harlem, which suited both the actor and the film's structure — Garber and the hijackers communicate by radio, not face to face, for most of the running time.

Joseph Sargent recalled the cast as the element that rescued a difficult production:

"Thank god for the actors, because from Walter Matthau down, it was a joy." — Joseph Sargent, DGA Visual History Interview