Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Ten angry men

A curious thing: eight members of the jury from 12 Angry Men (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1957) appeared on Naked City: Martin Balsam, Ed Begley, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Klugman, Joseph Sweeney, George Voskovec, Jack Warden, and Robert Webber. Klugman made six appearances, more than anyone else. Five of those eight jurors — Balsam, Begley, Sweeney, Warden, and Webber — also appeared on Route 66, as did Edward Binns and E. G. Marshall. Ten angry men.

These names, or at least many of them, point to the work of the casting director Marion Dougherty, a major figure in both series. The DVD of a documentary about Dougherty, Casting By (dir. Tom Donahue, 2012), is out today.

Related reading
All OCA Naked City posts (Pinboard)
All OCA Route 66 posts (Pinboard)

[It’s always a small success to manage one’s Netflix cue so as to get something on its release date. The missing jurors: John Fiedler and Henry Fonda.]

comments: 4

Zhoen said...

Fascinating.

We've been watching the Nero Wolfe series with Timothy Hutton as Archie. Hutton starred in Leverage, and many of the same actors appeared in both.

Zhoen said...

Our local library is getting a copy of
Casting By. Thanks.

Michael Leddy said...

That’s a nice library.

zzi said...

In my mind I couldn't separate Joseph Sweeney and George Voskovec from their faces. But the others I had down; no problem. Next month if you told me Walter Matthau was the one who couldn't wait to go to the ball game I would swear you were right.