Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976)
Vitals
Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, disturbed taxi driver and Vietnam War veteran
New York City, Spring to Summer 1976
Film: Taxi Driver
Release Date: February 9, 1976
Director: Martin Scorsese
Costume Designer: Ruth Morley
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Happy International Taxi Driver Day to all cabbies whose alienation doesn’t drive them to a violent murder spree shooting up a brothel! This observance commemorates when the first gas-powered taxi cabs reportedly arrived on the streets of London on March 22, 1907.
The profession was immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver, written by Paul Schrader and filmed on location in New York City during the scorching summer of 1975. Two years after his first Academy Award win (for The Godfather, Part II), Robert De Niro received his second Oscar nomination for his performance as Travis Bickle, the lonely Marine-turned-cabbie whose PTSD, insomnia, and paranoid psychosis becomes a dangerous powder keg in the squalid decay of 1970s New York.
Though Taxi Driver received the Palme d’Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival and remains considered among the best movies ever made, it also began the unfortunate tradition of Scorsese films being shut out at the Oscars, continued this year with Killers of the Flower Moon receiving zero awards from its ten nominations. In addition to De Niro’s nomination, Taxi Driver was nominated for Best Picture, Best Original Score (for the late Bernard Herrmann, who died two months before the film’s release), and Best Supporting Actress for Jodie Foster’s turn as the teenage prostitute Iris, who unknowingly inspires Travis’ murder spree.
Much as art imitated life with Schrader drawing inspiration from attempted presidential assassin Arthur Bremer, life would imitate art after John Hinckley Jr. cited Taxi Driver among his rationale for shooting at President Ronald Reagan in March 1981. After watching Taxi Driver at least 15 times in theaters, Hinckley found himself identifying deeply with the Travis Bickle character (red flag!) and developing a deeply unhealthy erotomaniac obsession with Jodie Foster. Like Travis’ own attempt at a political assassination, Hinckley believed he needed to take his desire to the same extreme in order to be noticed by the actress as a national figure and fired six shots at Reagan outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, wounding Reagan as well as Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, DC Police officer Thomas Delahanty, and press secretary James Brady—who ultimately died as a result of his head wound 33 years later in August 2014.
In an AV Club retrospective published earlier in 2014, A.A. Dowd remarked that “Scorsese was supposedly informed of Hinckley’s fandom at the 1981 Oscars, moments after he lost Best Director [for Raging Bull] to Robert Redford [for Ordinary People], and was so disturbed by the knowledge that he briefly considered quitting filmmaking.” Luckily for us, he did not.
What’d He Wear?
Travis Bickle cycles through a limited wardrobe in Taxi Driver, all demonstrative of traditional masculinity: military jackets (befitting his veteran status) and western-informed shirts, jeans, belt, and boots. These timeless pieces remained in style among men who resisted the excess of 1970s trending fashions that would’ve been found on the disco floor, from polyester leisure suits to rayon shirts with long collars and garish prints.
One of these days, he’s gonna get organiz-ized!
The Tanker Jacket
Travis spends much of Taxi Driver‘s first two acts dressed in a tanker jacket, swapping it out for a burgundy corduroy sports coat when dressing up for dates with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) and eventually replacing it with his iconic M-65 field jacket—and hair sculpted into a mohawk—as his madness escalates to violence. Though Travis is implied to have served in Vietnam, his tanker jacket actually predates Robert De Niro himself.
The U.S. Army Quartermaster had designated the “Jacket, Winter, Combat,” P.Q.D. Spec. No. 26″ in February 1941. The jacket’s dark khaki-presenting 12-ounce cotton twill shell is actually the Army’s contemporary olive drab shade #3″(OD3), also used on the bib-front overalls and helmet that compiled the three-piece Winter Combat Uniform intended for the Army’s armored units. This resulted in the top half’s enduring shorthand as the “tanker jacket”, though it also found favor among U.S. Army Air Force pilots who appreciated it as a pliable alternative to the dashing leather A-2 flight jacket inside the cramped and poorly ventilated cockpits of the P-38 Mustang. (The intended use among armored units can be demonstrated on screen by Brad Pitt’s tank-commanding “Wardaddy” wearing a No. 26 jacket in the 2014 World War II-set film Fury.)
The zip-front blouson-style jacket features an olive brown elasticized worsted wool knit squared standing collar, tubular cuffs, and waist hem. A matching brown kersey wool blanket lining properly insulates it for wintry climates. The double-pleated bi-swing “action back” aids movement, whether its wearer was in an infantry combat situation, at the controls of a tank, or in a fighter’s cockpit.
Just over a year later, in March 1942, the jacket was slightly redesigned and reissued as the P.Q.D. Spec. No. 26(A). Later runs of the No. 26 had already replaced the backing of the cotton twill wind flap with a hardier brown wool matching the rest of the lining, so the most significant update to the No. 26(A) reconfigured the No. 26’s open-top patch pockets as cotton-lined slash pockets.
The U.S. military had updated its tanker jacket through several iterations by the time Travis would have served with the Marine Corps, though he has personalized his No. 26(A) tanker jacket with his name and insignia indicating his service. (There are very valid theories suggesting that Travis was lying about his service but I believe interviews with both Scorsese and Schrader exist that concretely state that they intended for Travis to be a bona fide veteran, thus informing some of his paranoid trauma.)
On the jacket’s right breast, his olive-brown rectangular patch features the yellow-embroidered parachute and wings worn by Navy and Marine parachutists. The “King Kong Company” embroidered in the round patch over his upper left sleeve is not, as far as I know, an actual unit. His name “BICKLE.T” is stamped in fading black ink along the jacket’s upper back.
Travis’ Shirts
Travis maintains about a week’s worth of western-styled work shirts that he cycles through, most of which are busily checked with long sleeves (at least initially) with snap-front plackets.
When he first takes his job at Dependable Taxi Service and seen while picking up several fares—including presidential hopeful Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris)—he wears a mid-weight flannel long-sleeved shirt checked in orange, brown, and beige with green and red overchecks. The shirt has a fashionably long point collar, snap-up front placket, and two chest pockets with snap-down flaps—all with white pearlized snaps. The distinctive colors in this shirt’s plaid identify it as the LLL Triple Brand shirt “stitched with a mountain and cacti graphic” as described by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, which inventories many of De Niro’s screen-worn costumes and personal effects that have been donated to the Center.
Travis frequently wears a predominantly red shadow plaid flannel long-sleeved shirt with white squares where the checks overlap. Like the earlier shirt, this too has a long point collar, snap-front placket, and two chest pockets with long-pointed single-snap flaps. This also appears to be the shirt that Travis wears for his cabbie ID photo in the badge that Palantine spots while riding in the back seat.
While making his illegal firearms purchase, Travis wears his tanker jacket over a short-sleeved shirt in a golden yellow duo-toned block-checked lightweight cotton, framed with a large-scaled rust-red overcheck. This shirt has a narrow spread collar, pointed western yokes, snap-up front placket, and two chest pockets with long-pointed single-snap flaps.
As the weather gets warmer, Travis transitions to wearing lighter cotton shirts like this as opposed to the heavier flannel from his earlier days as a cabbie. Some of these are still long-sleeved, like the busy red-and-white multi-checked shirt he wears for breakfast with Iris. Unlike the other shirts, the front placket closes with white traditional buttons rather than snaps and it has a single breast pocket.
When Iris introduces Travis to her pimp “Sport” (Harvey Keitel), Travis wears another busily checked snap-front shirt, again worn open over his plain white cotton crew-neck short-sleeved undershirt. The plaid cotton shirt is checked in red, burgundy, tan, and white, with five pearlized snaps up the front placket and a traditional button at the neck. The two chest pockets are covered with pointed single-snap flaps, and the shoulders have pointed western yokes.
During the convenience store holdup where Travis first uses one of his new guns, he wears the same brown, white, and yellow-checked cotton shirt that he also wears under his tanker jacket for the film’s denouement (and which he had also worn when inviting Betsy out for “coffee and pie”.)
This long-sleeved shirt shares the same design characteristics as his others, with a long collar, pointed western yokes, two chest pockets with pointed single-snap flaps, and five white-finished snaps up the front placket with a traditional button left open at the neck.
Everything Else
Travis typically wears dark indigo-blue denim jeans, specifically the Lee 101 Rider as informed by the cut and shape of the five-pocket configuration, as well as the small branded black patch sewn along the top of the back-right patch pocket.
Travis holds up his jeans with a dark russet-brown leather belt. The belt closes through a flashy 12-sided silver buckle, featuring ornate silver scrollwork around the dark burgundy-filled buckle that also frames a large pearled oval stone in the center.
In his western shirts, ornate belt buckle, and cowboy boots, Travis Bickle must have felt the powerful six-shooter in his hand transformed “God’s lonely man” into a God-sent lone gunman.
Continuing the western theme of his base layers, Travis wears russet-brown leather cowboy boots. The calf-high shafts are brown-stitched in a three-diamond and inverted flame pattern, as described by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
When he storms into the Palantine campaign office to confront Betsy for ignoring his calls, Travis wears the same light khaki chino cotton trousers that he wore with his corduroy sports coat during their dates. These flat-front trousers have a medium-high rise with a straight cut through the legs, flared just enough at the plain-hemmed bottoms to comfortably accommodate Travis’ cowboy boots. The trousers are styled with belt loops (and he wears his usual belt), straight side pockets, and two scallop-flapped back pockets.
Travis’ romantic rival Tom (Albert Brooks) isn’t quite sure how to deflect the erratic Travis’ advances on Betsy.
Travis’ sunglasses are the gold square-framed aviators, following the design of the American Optical Flight Goggle 58 (FG-58) that was developed to meet the U.S. Air Force’s Type HGU-4/P eyewear standard and authorized for service beginning in 1959. In addition to the semi-rectangular shape, this “Original Pilot Sunglass” model is distinguished by the straight “bayonet” temples designed to be more compatibly worn with flight helmets and oxygen masks.
In 1982, Randolph Engineering became the prime contractor of Type HGU-4/P sunglasses for the Department of Defense, but the model worn in Taxi Driver would have likely been crafted by its original designer, American Optical.
The Car
Travis carries out his work for Dependable Taxi Service in a 1975 Checker A11, the iconic yellow sedan that dominated American taxicab services through much of the mid-to-late 20th century, as the robustly built sedans could comfortably seat many passengers and the minimal design changes from the late 1950s simplified maintenance and parts management. The final Checker taxi was retired from service in Manhattan in 1999.
In 1975, the Checker was offered in two different Chevrolet engines—a 250 cubic-inch straight six that generated 105 horsepower and a 350 cubic-inch V8 that generated 145 horsepower. Travis’ Checker had New York taxi license plate #1759-TI.
The Guns
Disgusted by the depravity he observes on the city streets and urged by his pistol-packing pal “Wizard” (Peter Boyle), Travis buys a quartet of handguns from shady gun salesman “Easy Andy” (Steven Prince) for $915, including forty dollars for a shoulder holster.
Left to right: Smith & Wesson Model 29, Smith & Wesson Model 36, Smith & Wesson Escort, and Astra Constable, with the large holster Travis purchases to carry his Model 29.
Smith & Wesson Model 29
Travis begins their transaction by asking Andy if he’s “got a .44 Magnum?”, likely attracted to the weapon after hearing the violent fantasies of a cuckolded misogynist in the back of his cab one night. After Travis assures Andy that he’s “got money” for the expensive weapon, Andy explains that:
It’s a real monster. Could stop a car at 100 yards, put a round right through the engine block.
The weapon in question is a Smith & Wesson Model 29, the .44 Magnum revolver immortalized five years earlier by Clint Eastwood’s monologue in Dirty Harry (1971) that proclaimed it to be “the most powerful handgun in the world.” The .44 Magnum cartridge was introduced by Smith & Wesson in tandem with the double-action Model 29 in the mid-1950s, and it was indeed the most powerful production handgun configuration for decades until the commercialization of larger rounds like the .454 Casull and .50 Action Express.
For $350, Travis purchases a blued Model 29 with an 8⅜”-long barrel, at that point the longest factory barrel length available for this weapon. After Andy observes that “only a jackass would carry that cannon in the streets like that,” he spends an extra $40 on a massive tan leather shoulder holster that Andy describes as “handmade.”
“You talkin’ to me?”
Smith & Wesson Model 36
Ever the aggressive salesman, Andy calls out that the .44 Magnum “might be a little too big for practical purposes” and thus recommends Travis look at a Smith & Wesson Model 36 revolver:
It’s nickel-plated, snub-nose, otherwise the same as a service revolver. That’ll stop anything that moves. The Magnum, they use that in Africa for killin’ elephants. That .38, that’s a fine gun. Some of these guns, they’re like toys… that .38, you go out and hammer nails with ‘er all day, come back, it’ll cut dead center on target every time. It’s got a really nice action to it. A heck of a wallop.
Smith & Wesson debuted this easily concealed five-shot double-action revolver during the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) convention in 1950, when the original “Chiefs Special” name was voted on. Later that decade, it was renamed the Model 36 when Smith & Wesson transitioned to numerical nomenclature for its firearms. It was produced in both blued and nickel finishes, with the stainless Model 60 variant introduced in 1965.
Travis purchases the Model 36 for $250. During a brief continuity error, it appears to be swapped out with a similarly configured nickel-plated Colt Detective Special when he’s testing it at the firing range, but it’s the canonical Model 36 every other time it appears. Although he doesn’t purchase his holster from Andy like he did for the .44 Magnum, Travis eventually keeps the Model 36 in a second shoulder rig positioned under his right armpit for a left-handed draw.
Based on the #221316 serial number of the snub-nosed Model 36 that Travis purchases, it was likely manufactured sometime in the late 1950s or early ’60s.
Smith & Wesson Model 61 Escort
You interested in an automatic? It’s a Colt .25 automatic. It’s a nice little gun, it’s a beautiful little gun. Holds six shots in the clip, one shot in the chamber… that’s if you’re dumb enough to put a round in chamber.
Andy surely breaks a gun dealer record for making the most errors in a single sales pitch, flubbing the manufacturer, caliber, capacity, and terminology… really only correctly describing the weapon as a “little gun”. (And he would probably get roasted on the r/CCW subreddit for his commentary against chambering a round as well!)
The “Colt .25 automatic” that Andy sells Travis for $125 is actually a Smith & Wesson Model 61 Escort, a subcompact semi-automatic pistol produced in the early 1970s, adapted from the much older design of the Bayard 1908 pistol in response to the Gun Control Act of 1968 that banned the importation of small, easily concealed handguns. The blowback-operated single-action pistol takes five rounds of .22 Long Rifle (.22 LR) in the magazine—not the six rounds of .25-caliber as described by Andy, who may also note that I said “magazine” instead of the more colloquial “clip”.
Around 65,000 were produced across the early ’70s in both blued- and nickel-plated finishes, though the Model 61 Escort gained a reputation for poor reliability and Smith & Wesson attempted to improve the design four times across its three-year production timeline—not a promising indicator of success. Most Escorts produced were blued, so Travis scored one of the approximately 6,600 finished in nickel.
Weighing less than a pound, the Model 61 Escort measures 4.69 inches long overall, with a barrel length just over two inches. Travis capitalizes on this compactness by eventually rigging his Escort to a sliding mechanism mounted to his forearm under the sleeve of his field jacket. (Yet another firearm-related continuity error shows a stainless Galesi-Brescia Brevetto 5 pistol when Travis lays out his handguns at the firing range, though he’s back to using the canonically correct Escort when firing it down range.)
Note the Model 61 Escort’s distinctive underbarrel, a continuation of the Bayard 1908 design that fixed the barrel to the frame under a recoil spring covered by the slide.
Astra Constable
The fourth and final handgun that Travis buys is described by Andy as a “.380 Walther, holds eight shots in the clip… a nice gun, a beautiful little gun… during World War II, they used this gun to replace the P38. Just gave it out to officers. Isn’t that a little honey?”
Sigh, Andy. We’ll cut him a break here, as the Astra Constable was at least designed as a Spanish-made clone of the Walther PPK, which Andy was actually describing and what was surely meant to be the weapon depicted on screen. (And, in yet another continuity error, actually is seen when Travis is at the shooting range.)
Like the Walther PP and PPK, the Astra Constable was offered in .32 ACP, .380 ACP, and a limited run in .22 LR. The overall aesthetic, blowback operation, and traditional double-action trigger closely follow that of the older Walther design. Interestingly, a similar blued Astra Constable would appear in Martin Scorsese’s later film Goodfellas (1990) in the possession of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta).
Travis purchases his Constable for $150, and it’s the only weapon he doesn’t have an intentional carry system for as he just chooses to keep the pistol in the waistband of his jeans, covered by his shirt. He uses it to shoot a convenience store robber, handing it to the owner to get rid of when he realizes he would get in trouble for his illegal possession of it.
Though it may look like a Walther PPK at first glance, note the slightly different silhouette as well as “Astra Unceta y Cía—Guernica, Spain” clearly etched on the slide.
You can read more about the weaponry of Taxi Driver at IMFDB.
How to Get the Look
Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976)
Travis Bickle embraces the masculine uniformity of military outerwear with western-coded shirts, jeans, belt, and cowboy boots, rotating through a series of plaid snap-front shirts under his World War II-era tanker jacket while motoring his Checker cab through the decaying 1970s New York City.
- Olive drab #3 cotton twill zip-up U.S. Army Winter Combat P.Q.D. Spec. No. 26(A) “tanker jacket” with brown worsted wool standing collar, cuffs, and hem, straight-zip front with wool-backed storm flap, cotton-lined slash pockets, bi-swing pleated “action back”, and brown kersey wool blanketed lining
- Brown and/or red busy-checked cotton long-sleeved shirt with long point collar, pointed western yokes, snap-up front placket, and two chest pockets with long-pointed single-snap flaps
- Dark indigo denim Lee 101 Rider jeans
- Dark russet-brown leather belt with silver 12-sided ornately detailed buckle with large pearl-like center-mounted stone
- Russet-brown leather cowboy boots with diamond-stitched shafts
- Gold square-framed Type HGU-4/P aviator sunglasses
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
The Quote
Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man.
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