> During rehearsals, Sidney Lumet and cinematographer Boris Kaufman set up their shots in an actual NYC jury room, blueprinting 365 separate takes from every aspect of the claustrophobic set. The end result, after only 17 days of shooting, is a masterful job of spare, lean black and white filmmaking, crafted in an era when big screens, big locales and bold color were deemed an absolute necessity.

> First-time producer Henry Fonda and first-time director Lumet had their share of tensions, as Lumet recounted for Howard Teichmann, co-author of Fonda: My Life (New American Library, 1981). Before the first day's shooting, Fonda blew up over the quality of the painted backdrop that represented the room's view onto Foley Square, and the first shot taken - an overhead through the blades of a ceiling fan - turned out to be an all-day affair. "We went to the rushes the next noon," Lumet recalled, "and he said, 'Sidney, what am I going to do? I can't stand seeing myself on the screen. I never go to rushes, and sometimes I wait two years to see a finished film I've made'... Hank steeled himself, walked into the projection room and sat down behind me. He watched for a while, and then he put his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed so hard I thought my eyes would pop out. He leaned forward and said quietly, 'Sidney, it's magnificent.' Then he dashed out and never came to the rushes again."

> Fonda's ambition for 12 Angry Men was to open the film small, and watch it build from art-house to popular success in an arc similar to that of another acclaimed adapted TV play, Marty (1955). The front office at United Artists, pleased as they were with the quality of the finished project, opted instead for a wide release on Easter Week. Fonda grimly recalled in his autobiography how New York's now-gone Capitol Theatre "had over forty-six hundred seats. The opening day 12 Angry Men barely filled the first four or five rows. They pulled it after a week."

> While 12 Angry Men didn't even recoup its modest production costs in its theatrical run, the film went on to (fittingly) see some measure of justice in its uniform critical praise, its capture of First Prize at the Berlin Film festival and other international awards, its Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay, and its enduring acknowledgment as a classic of cinema.