Live television taught Sidney Lumet to shoot fast, and Hollywood never slowed him
Before his first feature, Sidney Lumet had directed roughly 200 television episodes, many broadcast live, where there was no time for second thoughts. That lightning pace followed him to cinema. His debut, 12 Angry Men, adapted a CBS play and led the first wave of directors who moved successfully from TV to film.
Performance ran in the family. His parents were Polish Jewish immigrants and veterans of the Yiddish theatre, and Lumet, born in Philadelphia in 1924 and raised on Manhattan's Lower East Side, made his radio debut at four and his stage debut at five. As a boy he appeared on Broadway in Dead End in 1935. The Second World War put acting on hold; he spent four years in the Army, repairing radar in India and Burma, then returned to join the Actors Studio, run his own workshop and teach drama at the High School of Performing Arts.
Working as an assistant to his friend Yul Brynner led him into CBS television in 1950. On the weekly series You Are There he chose a young Walter Cronkite as anchorman, reasoning that such an outlandish premise needed the most homespun presence available. A 1960 NBC drama suggesting Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent angered Massachusetts, but the fuss brought him more prestigious film offers than it cost.
Half his films began life on stage, including versions of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and Eugene O'Neill; the four principal actors of his Long Day's Journey into Night swept the acting prizes at Cannes in 1962. He became best known, though, for gritty New York dramas about the working class and institutions that fail people, such as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and Network. He shot on location in natural light to keep things looking spontaneous and resisted the idea of the all-controlling auteur, preferring to share ideas with writers, actors and camera crews.
Having started as an actor, he was prized as an actor's director, drawing strong work from stars such as Henry Fonda and Paul Newman as well as from less experienced performers. He earned four Best Director nominations and one for adapted screenplay without winning, then received an Academy Honorary Award in 2004. He died in 2011.
Source: Sidney Lumet
