12 Angry Men (1957) Facts
| Director(s) | Sidney Lumet |
| Producer(s) | Henry Fonda, Reginald Rose, George Justin |
| Featured Cast | Martin Balsam, John Fiedler, Lee J. Cobb, E.G. Marshall, Jack Klugman |
| Total Facts | 36 |
Sidney Lumet had the actors all stay in the same room for hours on end and do their lines over and over without taping them. This was to give them a real taste of what it would be like to be cooped up in a room with the same people.
Lee J. Cobb's character insults Juror #12 by calling him "The Boy in the Gray Flannel Suit." One year before the release of 12 Angry Men Cobb starred in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, which also featured Joseph Sweeney (Juror #9).
Jack Lemmon appears in Mister Roberts with Henry Fonda, in which he takes over Fonda's position of Cargo Officer when Fonda is transferred off the USS Reluctant. In the 1997 remake 12 Angry Men, Lemmon plays the same juror that Fonda played in the original 12 Angry Men.
Reginald Rose's TV play script was left virtually intact in its move to feature film.
Henry Fonda disliked watching himself on film, so he did not watch the whole film in the projection room. But before he walked out he said quietly to director Sidney Lumet, "Sidney, it's magnificent."
Henry Fonda immediately complained to Sidney Lumet about the cheap backdrops outside the jury room windows when he walked on set. "They look like shit. Hitch had great backdrops, you could walk right in them," said Fonda, referring to the previous film he made with Alfred Hitchcock, The Wrong Man. Lumet assured him that the director of photography Boris Kaufman had a plan to make them work.
Henry Fonda was asked by United Artists to make this film, so he did it as both actor and producer. He was, however, very frustrated at being producer and decided never to do so again.
Henry Fonda, who symbolically wears white throughout the film, personally asked Sidney Lumet to direct the movie adaptation, having been impressed with his work on the TV version, Twelve Angry Men.
After a short but rigorous rehearsal schedule, the film was shot in less than three weeks for a budget of just $350,000.
After Juror #10's prejudicial rant about the poor and everybody turns their backs on him, Juror #4 tells him to "sit down and don't open his mouth again." Juror #10 thus doesn't say anything for the rest of the film (when prompted for his final vote he shakes his head "not guilty," and doesn't verbalize anything).
All but three minutes of the film was shot inside the bare and confining, sixteen by twenty-four foot "jury room".
As shooting of the film went on, director Sidney Lumet gradually changed to lenses of longer focal lengths, so that the backgrounds seemed to close in on the characters, creating a greater feeling of claustrophobia.
As the film failed to make a profit, Henry Fonda never received his deferred salary. Despite this setback, Fonda always regarded 12 Angry Men as one of the three best films he ever made, the other two being The Grapes of Wrath and The Ox-Bow Incident.
At the beginning of the film, the cameras are all positioned above eye level and mounted with wide-angle lenses to give the appearance of greater distance between the subjects. As the film progresses the cameras slip down to eye level. By the end of the film, nearly all of it is shot below eye level, in close-up and with telephoto lenses to increase the encroaching sense of claustrophobia.
Because of the demands of the film's low budget, if the lighting was set up for a shot that took place from one particular angle, all the shots from that same angle had to be filmed then and there. This meant that different sides of the same conversation were sometimes shot several weeks apart.
Because the painstaking rehearsals for the film lasted an exhausting two weeks, filming had to be completed in an unprecedented 21 days.
Debut of John Fiedler.
Despite numerous critical accolades, the film was not a box office success on first release.
For many years, only the first half of the kinescope of the TV version of "Twelve Angry Men" broadcast live on Sept. 20, 1954 (Twelve Angry Men) was thought to survive, and had been in the possession of the Museum of Television and Radio since 1976. In 2003 a complete 16mm kinescope was discovered in the collection of Samuel Leibowitz (former defense attorney and judge) and was also acquired by the museum.
In 12 Angry Men Lee J. Cobb's character was played by George C. Scott. Making it the second time Scott followed Cobb in portraying the same character. He did it previously, playing the character of "Lt. Kinderman" in The Exorcist III, the same character Cobb played in the original film The Exorcist.
In 1957, United Artists distributed this film on a double bill with Five Steps to Danger starring Ruth Roman and Sterling Hayden.
In the jury room, the characters are identified by their numbers as they are seated around the table. Only two have their surnames revealed. In an epilogue, Henry Fonda (Juror #8) and Joseph Sweeney (Juror #9) meet briefly on the courthouse steps. Fonda introduces himself as "Davis", Sweeney as "McCardle".
June 2008 Ranked #2 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Courtroom Drama".
Most of the hard-working (relatively inexperienced) crew were longshoremen. Because there wasn't enough movie work to feed them all year, they'd have two union cards: their Local 52 cards and their ILA cards.
Nominated for 3 Oscars, the film lost out in all its categories to The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Only two jurors are ever identified by name: #8 Mr. Davis and #9 Mr. McCardle. And all but two are identified by job or profession: #1 High School Football Coach, #2 Bank Teller, #3 Owns Messenger Service, #4 Stock Broker, #6 Painter, #7 Salesman, #8 Architect, #10 Garage Owner, #11 Watch Maker, and #12 Advertising Exec.
Shot in a total of 365 separate takes.
The "unusual-looking knife" in this movie is an Italian stiletto switchblade with a Filipino-style Kriss blade.
The film received a personal recommendation from Eleanor Roosevelt.
The jurors who believe the boy to be not guilty in order are: Juror #8 (Henry Fonda), Juror #9 (Joseph Sweeney), Juror #5 (Jack Klugman), Juror #11 (George Voskovec), Juror # 2(John Fiedler), Juror #6 (Edward Binns), Juror #7 (Jack Warden), Juror #12 (Robert Webber), The Foreman (Martin Balsam), Juror #10 (Ed Begley), Juror #4 (E.G. Marshall), and finally Juror #3 (Lee J. Cobb)
The melody juror #7 whistles before juror #8's reenactment of the handicapped man walking to the door is "Dance of the cuckoos", which is also the theme song for the "Laurel & Hardy" series.
The movie is commonly used in business schools and workshops to illustrate team dynamics and conflict resolution techniques.
Though the final scene in the film primarily involves Juror #8 and #9, the other 10 jurors can all be seen descending the courthouse steps and going their own separate ways.
Upon its release, the film generated enough buzz to warrant a spread in Life magazine.
When first broadcast as a teleplay on TV's "Studio One" on 20 September 1954, the jurors were Norman Fell, John Beal, Franchot Tone, Walter Abel, Lee Philips, Bart Burns, Paul Hartman, Robert Cummings, Joseph Sweeney, Edward Arnold, George Voskovec, Will West. Joseph Sweeney and George Voskovec were the only two actors to reprise their roles for the film.
With the death of Jack Warden (Juror #7) on July 19, 2006, Jack Klugman (Juror #5) is the only one of the twelve stars of 12 Angry Men who is still alive.