Subways Are for Stabbing

The lurching subway car on New York's ancient IRT line was a meticu lous replica of the real thing, complete with dirty windows and a scurfy litter of candy wrappers on the floor. It had been built from plans furnished by the New York Transit Authority, and set up in a Brooklyn studio for a Du Pont Show of the Week play called "Ride with Terror," by Nicholas Baehr.

But when the Transit Authority heard what "Terror" was about it was horrified. The play dealt brilliantly with a pair of hopped-up punks who terrorize a subway earful of early morning riders. For an hour the hoods tease, insult and frighten the passengers. Yet no one dares do anything to stop them. Finally, as one leather-jacketed jackal torments a father with a sleeping child, a young soldier rebels. "Leave those people alone," he cries, and suddenly there is a knife in the punk's hand. The other passengers simply watch as the hood closes in on the unarmed soldier in the terrible crouch of the switchblader. In the last grisly moments, the soldier is stabbed, the hoods are hauled off by the police.

NBC presented "Terror" despite the Transit Authority's protest that no incident like that had ever occurred on their subways. Next day an off-duty city detective was shot to death by a gang of teen-age thugs on an IRT train in Brooklyn.

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