12 Angry Men

12 Angry Men (1957)

7 corrected entries

(15 votes)

Corrected entry: Juror Robert Webber says 'it's five after six, let's get some dinner.' Yet, 20 minutes later, as Juror Lee J. Cobb breaks down and sobs 'not guilty,' his wristwatch reads 5:10.

Correction: The assertion that there is a continuity error here is not valid. Cobb's watch (as is anyone's anytime in life, movies, or anywhere) could have simply stopped or ran slow. There would have to be another "foundation" present to categorize the 5:10 time as a lack of continuity, so it cannot be regarded as an inconsistency - unless you could establish through the film's circumstances that his watch never slowed or stopped.

Corrected entry: In the scene where one juror starts his racist diatribe and all the others leave the table, the man who is the last to change his vote is missing from the room.

Correction: The man is not missing from the room - he has already got up and stood by the window before the diatribe starts, and is still there throughout the diatribe.

Corrected entry: All of the jurors were talking about how the old witness below heard the body hit the floor, and then at that second, feet running toward the door. However, they also mention how the knife was wiped clean. This just doesn't add up. How could the knife be wiped clean when the killer never stopped to wipe it clean?

alfierudnick617

Correction: Exactly. The story told to the jury by the prosecution doesn't make sense. As for the fingerprints, if the killer wore gloves, there would also be no prints.

Greg Dwyer

Corrected entry: In the bathroom scene, you can see the guy leave before Fonda does. The door swings like one of those western saloons. Then in the next scene, you can see in the background, Fonda opens the door with the knob, walks out, and closes it.

Correction: There are two doors between the bathroom and the jury room. The first door entering the bathroom has a knob. The second door is a swinging door.

Corrected entry: The character played by Jack Warden was making a statement about the defendant being a loser, and playing the part of a real baseball fan, uses the statement "He is 5 for 0". He should have said 0 for 5 referring to no hits in five at-bats. The remake of the movie by Showtime corrected this error.

Correction: Many old-time baseball people say it this way when they really men "0 for 5". I have heard old-time sportswriters and announcers use this terminology also. Modern announcers and writers don't use it as much, hence it not being replicated in the newer version.

Corrected entry: Nowhere in the film or in the original play is it ever indicated that the murder defendant is Puerto Rican.

megamii

Correction: Pointing out what is obvious to anyone watching the film is not trivia.

Corrected entry: Henry Fonda goes into the jury room humming and harring about making a proper decision and talking it through and so on and so on. Then halfway through the film, talking about the unique switchblade that was crucial to the prosecution's case, he pulls a matching knife out of his pocket and sticks it in the table. If he had a duplicate switchblade all along, why didn't he just show it to the court, or to the jurors as soon as they entered the room?

Correction: Jurors are not allowed to introduce evidence, speak up in defense of the defendant, or in attack of same. Counsel for the defense and the prosecution are the only individuals allowed to introduce evidence or present arguments. The jury's sole responsibility is to make what they can out of the evidence they are presented.

Phil C.

Visible crew/equipment: When Juror 8 is approaching Juror 4 following the revelation of the witness across the street's eyesight being put under question, as the camera moves in, its shadow is seen moving across the back of Juror 3. (01:28:55)

RVDDP2501

More mistakes in 12 Angry Men

Juror #3: That business before when that tall guy, what's-his-name, was trying to bait me? That doesn't prove anything. I'm a pretty excitable person. I mean, where does he come off calling me a public avenger, sadist and everything? Anyone in his right mind would blow his stack. He was just trying to bait me.
Juror #4: He did an excellent job.

More quotes from 12 Angry Men

Trivia: This was the only film ever produced by Henry Fonda. The work of both acting and producing was so demanding that he said afterwards that he would never produce another film.

More trivia for 12 Angry Men

Question: Were all-male jury panels the norm in the 1950s?

Answer: Depends where, and the type of case. At the time the film was made, women were still barred from juries in three states (South Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama); it wasn't until 1994 that the Supreme Court ruled that lawyers could not strike women from juries solely on the basis of gender. SCOTUS had ruled in 1942 that all-male juries were constitutionally acceptable. New York State (where the story is set) had granted women the right to serve on juries in 1927, so an all-male jury may not have been the norm across the board, but the nature of the crime (murder) would have, at the time, allowed lawyers to exclude women at the jury selection stage by citing the unsavoury aspects of the crime and arguing that the details of the case were not "suitable" for women to hear (being such delicate creatures, you understand /s).

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