Henry Fonda 12 Angry Men (1957)

Henry Jaynes Fonda (1905–1982) starred as Juror 8 (Davis) in 12 Angry Men (1957). He also produced the picture through Orion-Nova Productions, the one-shot company he formed with screenwriter Reginald Rose (in 12 Angry Men).

Fonda was 51 and at a career crossroads

By 1957, Fonda had been a leading man for two decades. The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), My Darling Clementine (1946), Mister Roberts (1955), and War and Peace (1956) were behind him. He had spent the early 1950s on Broadway in Mister Roberts and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, returning to film with the Tolstoy adaptation. He was a respected name without a single iconic role to anchor the second half of his career. Juror 8 became that role.

Fonda saw the teleplay and decided to make it the film

Fonda watched the original 1954 Studio One broadcast and approached Reginald Rose immediately afterward about turning it into a feature.

"I knew this was a film I had to make. The script was the most exciting reading I had had in years. I gambled my own money to get it made." — Henry Fonda, Fonda: My Life (with Howard Teichmann) (1981) (book; archive.org scan)

Fonda put up roughly $100,000 of his own money (Rose put up the rest). They formed Orion-Nova Productions, sold the package to United Artists, and Fonda took an executive-producer credit (uncredited on most prints) in addition to playing the lead. He never produced another film. The experience, by his own account, was so unpleasant he swore off the business side permanently.

"Producing is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week thing, and I just didn't want to do it again." — Henry Fonda, The Dick Cavett Show (1973 interview, archived clip)

See Henry Fonda as Producer.

Fonda hired Lumet on faith

Fonda had worked with strong studio directors all his career — John Ford, Preston Sturges, Anatole Litvak, William Wyler, King Vidor — and chose for his first independent venture a man with no feature credits. Sidney Lumet (in 12 Angry Men) had directed Reginald Rose teleplays at Studio One and was Rose's recommendation. Fonda agreed on a single meeting. The bet paid off — Lumet went on to one of the great American directing careers — and Fonda later credited Lumet's preparation as the reason the film worked.

The performance avoids the obvious choices

Juror 8 could have been played as a heroic outsider — a man with a moral cause arguing against eleven smaller men. Fonda refused that read.

"I felt that the character had to be ordinary. He could not be a saint. If he came across as a saint, the picture would not work. So we played him as a man who simply was not sure, and who said so." — Henry Fonda, Fonda: My Life (1981) (book)

The performance is built on small things — listening rather than speaking, asking questions rather than making speeches, allowing pauses where another actor would press. Roger Ebert later wrote that Fonda's stillness was the film's structural device:

"Fonda's gift in this film is to be the still center while the other men circle. He listens. The other actors get the speeches; he gets the silences. The film belongs to the silences." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times — "Great Movies" (2002)

What he brought to the picture

Fonda's screen authority by 1957 was a particular kind — Midwestern, plainspoken, slightly diffident, impossible to read as either glib or self-righteous. Tom Joad, Wyatt Earp, Mister Roberts, Pierre Bezukhov: he had spent twenty years training audiences to trust quiet men with steady eyes. Juror 8 leverages that trust. The audience never has to be told why eleven men should listen to one. Fonda's face does the work the script doesn't.

Career after Red October — er, after 12 Angry Men

Fonda followed 12 Angry Men with The Tin Star (1957), Stage Struck (1958, also Lumet), Warlock (1959), and a long run including Advise & Consent (1962), Fail Safe (1964, Lumet), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), The Boston Strangler (1968), and finally On Golden Pond (1981), for which he won his only competitive Oscar five months before his death. He had received an honorary Oscar earlier in 1981 — a tacit acknowledgment that 12 Angry Men and several other defining performances had gone unrewarded in their time.

Selected filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1940	The Grapes of Wrath	Tom Joad	Oscar nomination
1946	My Darling Clementine	Wyatt Earp	John Ford
1955	Mister Roberts	Lt. Roberts	After 1948 Broadway run
1956	War and Peace	Pierre Bezukhov	King Vidor
1957	12 Angry Men	Juror 8 (Davis)	Producer; Lumet's debut
1962	Advise & Consent	Robert Leffingwell	Otto Preminger
1964	Fail Safe	The President	Lumet
1968	Once Upon a Time in the West	Frank	Sergio Leone
1981	On Golden Pond	Norman Thayer	Best Actor Oscar