50 Fun Facts About 12 Angry Men

Who directed 12 Angry Men, his feature debut?

Fonda hired him because he was proficient and wonderful with actors after years of live TV.

Who wrote the screenplay, adapting his own 1954 teleplay?

He also co-produced the film with Henry Fonda.

In which year was the film released?

It was a box office disappointment in the US until television finally found it an audience.

Who plays Juror 8, the lone initial holdout?

He saw a kinescope of the live TV version and wanted the part for himself.

Who plays the abrasive Juror 3, the last to change his vote?

The role earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Who plays the unflappable, analytical Juror 4?

He later starred in the CBS legal drama The Defenders.

Which actor's breakthrough was Juror 7, the salesman who wants a quick verdict?

Juror 7 would rather be at the ball game.

Who plays Juror 10, whose bigoted rant makes the others turn their backs?

Begley won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar five years later for Sweet Bird of Youth.

Who plays Juror 1, the jury foreman?

Three years later he was the detective Arbogast in Psycho.

Which actor, later the voice of Piglet, plays the meek Juror 2?

He was typecast early for delicate, quiet, nerdy characters.

Which future Odd Couple star plays Juror 5 and was the last surviving cast member?

Juror 5 grew up in a slum and knows how a switchblade is actually used.

Who plays Juror 6, the house painter?

Binns later played General Walter Bedell Smith in Patton.

Who plays the elderly Juror 9, a role he had also played in the 1954 TV broadcast?

He was the only actor to carry his part over from the Studio One production.

Which Czech-born actor plays the polite immigrant Juror 11?

He was born Jiří Wachsmann and was long associated with Czech playwright Jan Werich.

Who plays Juror 12, the advertising man?

Webber later played Cybill Shepherd's father on Moonlighting.

How old is the defendant?

He is characterised in court as a slum kid.

Whom is the defendant accused of killing?

The two key witnesses are neighbours who claim to have seen and heard the crime.

What kind of weapon was found at the scene, wiped of fingerprints?

Juror 8 produces an identical one to show it is not unique.

What sentence would a guilty verdict automatically carry?

The 1997 remake updated it to lethal injection.

Who becomes the second to vote not guilty, in the secret ballot?

He says he simply wants more discussion.

The woman who claims she saw the killing watched through the windows of what?

Juror 8 argues the train's noise would have drowned out what the downstairs neighbour claimed to hear.

What does Juror 9 notice about the woman witness after watching Juror 4 rub his nose?

She had marks on her nose but was not wearing them in court and would not have had them on in bed.

In his final outburst, Juror 3 tears up a photograph of himself with whom?

His broken relationship with his son is revealed as the source of his certainty.

What do Jurors 8 and 9 briefly exchange on the courthouse steps at the end?

It is the only moment anyone in the film is named.

On which CBS anthology was Rose's original teleplay broadcast in September 1954?

Rose cut dialogue to fit a fifty-minute slot, then restored it for the film.

Who played Juror 8 in the live 1954 television version?

Franchot Tone was Juror 3, and Franklin Schaffner directed.

How many Emmys did the 1954 television production win?

They were for acting, direction and writing, out of four nominations.

What experience inspired Rose to write the story?

He realised few people knew what happened inside a deliberation room.

What was the name of the production company Fonda formed in 1955?

It merged with Rose's Nova Productions to become Orion-Nova for the film.

Which studio distributed the film?

It was an independent production made under Fonda's three-year deal with the distributor.

In how many days was the film shot?

It came in $40,000 under its modest budget after two weeks of rehearsal.

Roughly what was the film's production budget?

Rose and Fonda deferred their salaries to make it work.

Who was the cinematographer, fresh from an Oscar for On the Waterfront?

Lumet felt his realist style suited a film set in a single room.

How did Lumet and Kaufman build a sense of claustrophobia as the film goes on?

Wide-angle shots from above give way to telephoto close-ups from below.

Lumet's eyeline diagrams came out right in 396 of how many scenes?

The one mistake had the stockbroker looking the wrong way, and had to be reshot.

Which future Oscar-winning animator was the film's script supervisor?

She and her husband John went on to win three Academy Awards for animated shorts.

For which three Academy Awards was the film nominated?

It won none, in the year of The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Which non-English-speaking Frenchman won that year's adapted screenplay Oscar over Rose?

Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson were later acknowledged as the true winners for The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Which festival prize did Lumet win for the film?

He would be nominated for Best Director four times without winning.

In which year was the film added to the National Film Registry?

The same year legal scholar Michael Asimow argued the jury reached the wrong verdict.

Which film did the AFI rank above it as the greatest courtroom drama?

It sits at number two on AFI's 10 Top 10 courtroom list.

Where did the AFI rank Juror 8 on its list of the 50 greatest movie heroes?

The film itself placed 87th on AFI's 10th-anniversary 100 Movies list.

Which Supreme Court justice said seeing the film in college pushed her toward a legal career?

She was moved by Juror 11's speech, but warned juries not to copy the film's speculation.

Who directed the 1997 television remake?

It made the judge a woman, four jurors Black, and swapped the chair for lethal injection.

Which Russian director's 2007 adaptation, titled 12, put a Chechen teenager on trial in Moscow?

It earned an Academy Award nomination.

What is the title of the 1986 Hindi remake?

The title means a pending decision; a Kannada version, Dashamukha, followed in 2012.

What was the 2015 Chinese adaptation set in contemporary Beijing called?

A South Korean version, Juror 8, followed in 2019.

Which Nickelodeon cartoon parodied the film in a 1996 episode called "False Alarm"?

Arnold is the only classmate who believes Eugene did not pull the fire alarm.

Which Comedy Central series aired a half-hour parody of the film in 2015?

Family Guy and King of the Hill have also riffed on the film.

Which Japanese filmmaker's 1991 homage imagined a Japan with a jury system?

It is titled 12 Gentle Japanese.