"12 Angry Men," A Film Classic

The playwright Reginald Rose's jury room drama, 12 Angry Men, began as a one-hour play performed live on network television in 1954. When it became a feature-length movie, released in 1957, it was a box office flop, despite receiving widespread critical acclaim.

Decades later, writes Phil Rosenzweig, in his book, 12 Angry Men: Reginald Rose and the Making of an American Classic (Fordham University Press, 2021), it "is revered as one of America's greatest motion pictures," written by one of television's Golden Age writers.

The stage play version, popular with both professional and amateur productions, caused one current critic to note that the play "still manages to grip an audience as though it were ripped from today's headlines." One New York Times writer, however, called attention to the "legal and social anachronisms" present in the play (and the movie) such as an all-white, all-male jury, the allowing of jurors to smoke in the jury room, and the mandatory death penalty (in New York State). There is one other anachronism, Juror #8 (Henry Fonda's character in the movie) brings a switchblade knife to the jury room that's similar to the one used as evidence in the murder trial. Today, with metal detectors present at the courthouse entrance, the knife would have been immediately confiscated by court officers.

Otherwise, I agree with the Times writer's assessment that "the play [as well as the movie] remains fresh, engaging, and powerful."

AIDS Hysteria In The 1980s

I recently leafed through the June 25, 1988 issue of TV Guide (when it was pocket-size and cost 75 cents). Before tossing it out, I tore out the "Cheers 'N' Jeers" column and put it in a folder marked "LGBTQ." Under "Jeers" was an item about how the openly gay AIDS activist Michael Callen, now deceased, was treated, or more accurately put, mistreated by the staff members at a New York television station where he was scheduled to be interviewed about being a person with AIDS.

According to TV Guide, based on information from the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), "a technician tossed him a microphone and refused to help him adjust it" and "the make-up artists refused to work on Callen."

I wonder if he pointed out this bad behavior to his interviewer when he went on-camera. If he didn't, he should have. There was a lot of misinformation and fearmongering in the media and elsewhere back then about how AIDS was transmitted.

When I met and spoke with Michael Callen at an AIDS forum held at Hunter College here in New York, I gladly and fearlessly shook his hand. This was back in the early nineties. After that handshake, I've lived to tell the story.

What was their problem?

Note: This blog post originally appeared on my Facebook page on March 27, 2023. I've made a few minor changes.

A TV Script About Aphra Behn, Britain's First Female Playwright

The first time I encountered the name Aphra Behn (1640-1689), Britain's first female playwright, was in a book one of my aunts gave me more than fifty years ago. The book is called English Literature: From the Beginnings to the End of the Eighteenth Century, Volume One by Bernard D. N. Grebanier (Barron's Educational Series, Revised Edition, 1959). (Grebanier was a professor of English Literature at Brooklyn College, in New York City.) I still have the book, although it's no longer in excellent condition, the result of numerous readings.

What brought the book to mind was an article I saw on the website Deadline.com about the unproduced film and TV scripts selected for the Brit List, a list, reported the website, "compiled each year from recommendations by British production companies, talent agencies, sales companies, financiers, distributors and broadcasters."

Out of nearly 300 scripts submitted, 18 were selected. Among those selected was the TV historical drama script Aphra by Jessica Lambert (it received eleven recommendations; a minimum of seven recommendations was needed to be included on the list). 

In the summary, Aphra Behn is described as "a bisexual libertine who lived an incredible double life as a 17th century spy." Professor Grebanier, with obvious distaste and disapproval, called Behn "the author of many novels, plays and poems, nearly all astoundingly indecent for a woman." 

I hope Aphra gets made into a television film real soon. From its description, it sounds like a fascinating script about a fascinating woman.

Must-See Television Shows

Once in a while a show will come on that's must-see TV. For me, it was Dallas in the 1970s and '80s; Lou Grant in the '70s, a series about reporters at a Los Angeles daily newspaper; City of Angels, a 2000 series set in an urban hospital, with a mostly African-American cast (it lasted two seasons); and Smash (2012-2013) which concerned itself with the behind-the-scenes drama of  mounting a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe called Bombshell. Other shows in the must-see category are Monk, Mad Men, and the reality shows Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (the original version) and Shark Tank.

Lately, it's been the weekly night time soap opera Saints & Sinners on the Bounce channel. When I began watching it last year, I thought it was a new series. Consulting the entertainment website IMDb, I learned it debuted in 2016.

Set in a Georgia town called Cypress, the mostly African-American characters are every bit as corrupt, conniving, backstabbing, adulterous, and homicidal as any characters in a white night time or daytime soap. And each week I'm glued to my TV set eager to find out what happens next.

I'm not sure if Saints & Sinners is a candidate for an NAACP Image Award. After all it does depict African-American characters unfavorably. But let's face it, black people in real life are not angels. And there are people in the black community who are corrupt, ruthless, greedy, and murderous. In other words, not nice people. It's foolish to pretend that such people don't exist among us. In fact, it's good to see a show about African-Americans that's not a clown show, that shows us as being human, warts and all, like every other ethnic group in America.

Revisiting TV's First Golden Age

 Ben Brantley, a New York Times drama critic, wrote an article that appeared in the Arts & Leisure section (August 30, 2020) with the headline, "Enjoying Live Theater, Decades Old."

Since Broadway shows are shutdown until January due to COVID-19, Brantley has had to content himself with watching plays that were originally broadcast live in the 1950s during what has been called the Golden Age of Television, via YouTube.

He recalled when he was five years old walking into his family's living room in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and seeing what he later learned was the tail end of Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House," starring Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer. He remembered their characters arguing which left him "both upset and enthralled by what I had witnessed."

No doubt this televised performance planted the seed of theatregoing in his mind that later blossomed into a (so far) 27-year career as a drama critic.

His depiction of the racial landscape on television in those long ago days caught my attention: "...the faces on the screen are still overwhelmingly white, a reminder that the United States was still very much a culturally segregated nation."

I think it was the black writer John Oliver Killens who wrote that blacks on TV were so rare that whenever a black performer came on the screen, black people all over America would race to their TV sets to see them.

Accompanying the article were three black-and-white photos (one of them of writer Rod Serling) from the 1950s. The photo I found the most arresting was the one of the actors seated around a table during a rehearsal of "Twelve Angry Men" in 1954. The photo caption says the rehearsal was for CBS's Playhouse 90. Actually, it was for Studio One. According to The Complete Directory to Prime Network TV Shows, 1946-Present by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh (Ballantine Books, 1979), "Reginald Rose contributed teleplays for Studio One and it was Rose's 'The Twelve Angry Men' in 1954 that won Emmys for writing (Rose), direction (Frank Shaffner), and performance by an actor in a drama (Bob Cummings)." 

Behind the actors are three cameras and crouching down behind one of the cameramen is a black man in short sleeves and wearing a headset. Although television back then was "overwhelmingly white," here was this black man (and possibly a second one in a far corner holding what looks like a still camera). But definitely the one behind the white cameraman is black.

Who was he? What was his job title? How did he get hired as a crew member on a major network show? What became of him? Did he encounter racial discrimination and racist comments while on the job? Does his name appear in the end credits? I have so many questions.

Just seeing him in the photo was a pleasant discovery. Who knew there was at least one black person among the crew members working on plays for the anthology series Studio One? He would have been, to reference a James Baldwin essay, a fly in buttermilk.

Hollywood Honesty

From among some old newspaper and magazine clippings, I came across this quote that appeared in a brief news item in TV Guide (December 10, 1988) about actor Scott Valentine, who was a cast member of NBC's Family Ties.

In the article he stated that "Men run the studios and the networks, and that makes it easy to be a white male in this world."

More than thirty years later, people in Hollywood are still talking about the lack of racial and gender diversity, especially behind the camera and in the executive suites.

Books Are Still Valued

The coronavirus pandemic has forced many television interviews to take place via Zoom or Skype videoconferencing from the homes of both the interviewer and the interviewee instead of in a broadcast studio. This offers viewers a small glimpse into the home decor of all those involved.

As a book lover, the one thing that caught my attention are the many bookshelves that appear in the background, filled with rows of books. If the physical book is on its way out, you wouldn't know it judging by the screen images shown each night. For example, Judy Woodruff, the anchor of the PBS News Hour, sits each night with her bookcases behind her and Rafael PiRoman, one of the co-hosts of the evening news program, Metrofocus on New York's WLIW, Channel 21, has a massive wall of books that towers behind him. (And I thought I had books.)

True, these bookshelves are in the homes of journalists, politicians, professors, scientists, and others considered as members of the elite. But still it sends a clear message to the rest of America and the world that the printed word in book form continues to have value.

Gays And Lesbians Were A Part Of "The Twilight Zone" Series

In one biography of television writer Rod Serling, it was stated that he was homophobic.If that was true, he obviously didn't let that keep him from hiring for his iconic science fiction/fantasy series The Twilight Zone those who were either gay or lesbian.

For example, Justis Addiss directed episodes for The Twilight Zone and Keogh Gleason designed sets for them. (Addiss's life partner was actor Hayden Rorke of the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie.)

Among gay and lesbian actors who appeared in the show were Richard Deacon, Agnes Moorehead, James Daly, James Milhollin, Alan Sues, and Cesar Romero.

So if Serling was homophobic, he was a benevolent homophobe.

Note: Today is the beginning of Black History Month. 

A TV Program About Blacks In Latin America

In the fourth and final episode of historian Henry Louis Gates's PBS program, Black in Latin America, which dealt with the African diaspora in Mexico and Peru, Gates neglected to mention that the Mexican painter Diego Rivera had a black grandmother, per Langston Hughes biographer Arnold Rampersad.

Furthermore, it would be interesting to see if Gates does a  Black in Europe series on PBS. That would be an eye-opening program, revealing how much influence African descended individuals have had in various European countries throughout the centuries up to present times.

Note: Today is National French Fry Day!

Some Wise Words

In a 1950s Person to Person interview on television, the actress Gertrude Berg (of The Goldbergs TV and radio series), recounted to Edward R. Murrow, the host, a conversation between her character Molly Goldberg and Jake, Molly's husband: "One day, Molly," promised Jake, "we will eat from golden plates." To which Molly replied, "Jake, dear, would the food taste any better?"


Note: I hope everyone had an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend.

Classic TV Shows On YouTube

One advantage to watching YouTube is the opportunity to see, in whole or in part, old 1950s and 1960s  television shows, like the police dramas The Naked City and NYPD, Johnny Staccato, a half-hour drama starring John Cassavetes, and the one-hour social-issues drama East Side/West Side*, starring George C. Scott and a young, Afro-coiffed Cicely Tyson. (Some of the shows included commercials for cigarettes and other products.)

I was also able to see several opening and closing credit sequences (along with the theme music) from Perry Mason, Route 66, 77 Sunset Strip, The Naked City, and The Twilight Zone.

It was obvious that many of these episodes were taped off the TV and posted to YouTube. The logos of the cable channels appeared in the lower right hand corner of the computer screen.


*According to The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows,1946-Present (Ballantine Books, 1979), the critically acclaimed East Side/West Side's "downbeat subjects proved deadly with viewers and it was dropped after a single season."

The Return Of "The Twilight Zone"

An update of the iconic sc-fi anthology series The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) will be available for viewers via the CBS Access streaming service, according to Browbeat, Slate's cultural blog. It will be executive produced by Jordan Peele, the director of the hit movie, Get Out. (At this writing I have not seen the movie yet.)

"Peele will be a great fit for a show that blends sci-fi and social commentary," wrote Marissa Martinelli on the blog.

I hope the reboot will be far superior to past Twilight Zone reboots that weren't as good as the original series created by Rod Serling, who wrote most of  the show's scripts.

One suggestion: There is a young African-American writer of  several horror/fantasy books named Brandon Massey, who lives in Georgia. When I was given his book, The Other Brother, to proofread I thought it was another badly written urban-lit book. I was taken by surprise by the quality of the writing as well as the fact that it was in the horror/fantasy genre. I admit that I have not read Mr. Massey's other books but I am looking forward to doing so. In the meantime, I hope Mr. Massey is considered for a writing job on the Twilight Zone reboot.

Spike Lee's Film Debut Cast, Where Are They Now?

There's been a lot of hoopla in the press about Spike Lee turning his 1986 debut film, She's Gotta Have It, into an updated, half-hour, ten-episode television series. (The show premieres on Netflix on Thanksgiving Day.)

We all know what became of Spike Lee, who played Mars Blackmon, one of Nola Darling's three boyfriends. But what about Lee's three co-stars--Tracy Camilla Johns (Nola), Tommy Redmond Hicks (Jamie), and John Canada Terrell (Greer)? Where are they today and what are they doing?

Since they helped make She's Gotta Have It a cinema classic, they deserve some attention, too. Maybe not as much as the actors who have taken over their roles for the upcoming series, but at least tell us what's happened to them over the past three decades.

Cherokee Bill, Wild West Outlaw

The first time I learned of the outlaw Cherokee Bill was in The Adventures of the Negro Cowboys by Philip Durham and Everett L. Jones (Bantam Books). The paperback edition was published in 1969.

Years later while watching on DVD an episode from Season Five (1961-1962) of  Have Gun Will Travel, Cherokee Bill's name was mentioned among the names of other outlaws by a character speaking to Paladin (played by Richard Boone). I replayed that part of the episode to confirm what I thought I heard. No further information about him was offered.

According to Durham and Jones, Cherokee Bill (1876-1896) "was part Indian, part Negro" and was "an outlaw who fascinated women, murdered countless men for fun and profit, and died on the gallows only a month after his twentieth birthday."

His criminality terrified the Indian Territory, today known as the state of Oklahoma.

Surprisingly, no one, as far as I know, has made a movie or a miniseries about him.

Rod Serling's Rejected Teleplay

Rod Serling's daughter, Anne, wrote a foreword to Mark Dawidziak's Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press). It's a fascinating self-help book that reveals the life lessons to be learned in various episodes of The Twilight Zone, Serling's iconic science-fiction/fantasy television series that ran on CBS from 1959 to 1964.

Ms. Serling writes that the 1955 murder of  the Chicago teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi "profoundly affected my father." So much so that he wrote a television script called Noon on Doomsday, "his first attempt," she further writes, "to tell the story and it was turned down by the sponsors who were afraid it might offend their southern customers."

Lately there have been live telecasts on network TV of musicals such as Peter Pan and Hairspray. Wouldn't it be wonderful if one of the networks decided to air a live telecast of Rod Serling's rejected teleplay? It's probably as relevant today as it was back then.

Is There A Trump Sitcom In Our Future?

Entertainment Weekly's April 7/14, 2017 Double Issue is devoted to "Hollywood's Greatest Untold Stories," from the 1970s to the early 2000s. (A great idea!)

One of the stories is about the 1990 British sitcom Heil Honey, I'm Home! that was canceled after one episode. It became "the most controversial TV show ever" because it depicted Adolf Hitler and his wife living next door to a Jewish couple named the Goldensteins.

Geoff Atkinson, its creator, told EW that "I've never felt embarrassed by it, because I know the motives were good. If we were trying to make fun of the Holocaust, we'd deserve [the hate].I never felt we were trying to belittle that at all. But to not get it right, that was frustrating. It was fun, but it came at a price, and I wish I could do it again."

Atkinson also told the magazine this: "As we speak, somebody's probably writing a Trump sitcom. I would love to write a Trump sitcom." And I would love to see a Trump sitcom on TV. Maybe with Alec Baldwin as Trump. It would help us all get through the next four years. No doubt Trump would tweet up a storm complaining about it.

A Movie Studio Grows In The South Bronx

On December 27, 2012, I posted on this blog an unpublished letter-to-the-editor that I wrote in July 1977 in which I suggested that the abandoned buildings in the South Bronx be torn down and replaced by "a huge television and motion picture sound stage."

Forty years later, that sound stage in the South Bronx has come into existence and is called Silvercup Studios North.

My suggestion was way ahead of its time.

Looking For Work Via Television

On city-owned WNYE/Channel 25 in New York, there was a weekly program called Job Hunt that aired right after the 2008 financial crisis that caused mass layoffs and housing foreclosures across the country.

Each week different guests would discuss a particular job-search topic and critique the job-search strategy of that week's job seeker who was someone the New York Daily News had profiled in its Monday career section.

As the job seeker spoke of his or her job search goals, they would appear on-camera from different angles. This approach reminded me of the time my mother went on TV seeking employment as a domestic worker. This was in the early 1960s when we were living in Los Angeles.

She went on the John J. Anthony Show, which was an advice show broadcast from a studio at 1313 North Vine Street in Hollywood. I think the show was on Channel 9, KHJ-TV. As I sat in the studio, I could see her image on the black-and-white monitors. They wouldn't show her whole face, unlike the Job Hunt broadcasts. The camera would focus on her hands, her mouth, maybe a side view as she was being interviewed by John J. Anthony's wife. Mrs. Anthony was so short that she had to sit on a telephone book behind a large desk.

In a far corner of the studio was the psychic Criswell, who might have been a regular feature of the show. His famous line before each prediction was "I predict...." Years later when I saw the biopic Ed Wood, about the world's worst film director, and starring Johnny Depp as Wood, the actor portraying Criswell brought me back to the time I saw him in the flesh.

After my mother's TV appearance, I vaguely recall her receiving a few job offers. You could say that John J. Anthony (1902-1970) whose real name was Lester Kroll and who at one time had been an actor, was doing back then a forerunner to today's video resume.

I often wonder if that particular show was recorded and if so, does it exist in some vault somewhere? For all I know, it might be on YouTube, like everything else these days.

A Gay American In Paris

The format of the following script was based on CBS News' American Treasury 60-second between-daytime-program spots that were broadcast in the late 1980s. They highlighted famous American men and women and Americana.

I wrote this script and one other nearly ten years ago with the then-new gay channel LOGO in mind. I don't recall if I actually submitted  them to the cable channel. I do recall talking to someone at LOGO's California offices via phone about writing such scripts.

LOGO like CBS is owned by Viacom.

American Outlooks--Program 2

Writer: Charles M. Smith

June 18, 2005

OPENING LOGO AND THEME:

            (CELEBRITY NAME):

             I'm______with American Outlooks. His book be-                                                                                    came the first of its kind by a black American author.

             Who he was, after this.

COMMERCIAL: 15 SECS:

            (CELEBRITY NAME): CONTD:

           James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room is the story of two 

           gay lovers, one American, the other Italian, in post-war

           Paris. Baldwin was advised not to publish the ground-

           breaking novel for fear that its homosexual theme 

           would ruin his career. Baldwin ignored the advice and                                                                            the book, published in 1956, became a gay American

           classic.

CLOSING LOGO: :02 SECS:                  
            Learn more about James Baldwin in your local 

            library.

Note: I had to change the formatting of the script to make it more readable on the blog.

                                                                            

Queen Latifah As Bessie Smith In A Made-For-TV Biopic

The multi-talented Queen Latifah stars as blues singer Bessie Smith in the biopic Bessie. It premieres tonight  on HBO. (Mo'Nique co-stars as Smith's fellow blues singer Ma Rainey.) I learned of the film several weeks ago when I saw an ad for it on the side of a city bus.

Bessie Smith, who was called "The Empress of the Blues," died in a car accident in 1937 at the age of  43.

Unfortunately I won't be able to watch the film because I don't subscribe to cable TV. But I look forward to seeing it when it comes out on DVD.