Sidney Lumet

He was nominated five times for Academy Awards: four for Best Director for the legal drama 12 Angry Men (1957), the crime drama Dog Day Afternoon (1975), the satirical drama Network (1976) and the legal thriller The Verdict (1982), and one for Best Adapted Screenplay for Prince of the City (1981). Other films include A View from the Bridge (1962), Long Day's Journey into Night (1962), The Pawnbroker (1964), Fail Safe (1964), The Hill (1965), Serpico (1973), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Equus (1977), The Wiz (1978), The Morning After (1986), Running on Empty (1988) and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007). He received the Academy Honorary Award in 2004. A member of the inaugural class at New York's Actors Studio, Lumet started acting Off-Broadway and made his Broadway acting debut in the 1935 play Dead End. He went on to direct the Broadway plays Night of the Auk (1956), Caligula (1960) and Nowhere to Go But Up (1962). Lumet is also known for his work on television. He received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series nomination for NBC Sunday Showcase (1961). He also directed for Goodyear Television Playhouse, Kraft Television Theatre and Playhouse 90.

Sidney Lumet studied at Columbia University, Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre and Professional Children's School. The recorded working language is English. Places of work recorded in the authority are United States. Work by Sidney Lumet is recorded in the collections of Museum of Modern Art and Harvard Film Archive. Distinctions recorded are Golden Globe Awards, Golden Bear, Blue Ribbon Awards for Best Foreign Film and Bodil Award for Best American Film.

• Name — Sidney Lumet • Birth Name — Sidney Arthur Lumet • Born — 25 June 1924 • Birthplace — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. • Died — 9 April 2011 • Place of death — New York City, New York, U.S. • Education — Columbia University • Years Active — 1930–2007 • Occupation — * Film director • screenwriter • producer • actor • Works — Full list • Father — Baruch Lumet • Children — 2, including Jenny • Relatives — Jake Cannavale (grandson) • Awards — Full list

• Illustration — Lumet as a child, photographed by Carl Van Vechten • Illustration — Lumet in the 1940 play Journey to Jerusalem Lumet was born in Philadelphia and grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He studied theater acting at the Professional Children's School of New York and Columbia University. Lumet's parents, Baruch and Eugenia (née Wermus) Lumet, were Jewish and veterans of the Yiddish theatre; they had immigrated to the United States from Poland. His father, an actor, director, producer and writer, was born in Warsaw. Lumet's mother, who was a dancer, died when he was a child. He had an older sister. Lumet made his professional debut on the radio at age four and his stage debut at the Yiddish Art Theatre at age five. As a child, he also appeared in many Broadway productions, including 1935's Dead End and Kurt Weill's The Eternal Road. In 1935, aged 11, Lumet appeared in a Henry Lynn short film Papirossen (meaning "Cigarettes" in Yiddish), co-produced by radio star Herman Yablokoff. The film was shown in a theatrical play with the same title, based on the song "Papirosn". The play and short film appeared at the Bronx's McKinley Square Theatre. In 1939, at age 15, he made his only feature-length film appearance in...One Third of a Nation.... World War II interrupted Lumet's early acting career and he spent four years in the U.S. Army. After returning from service as a radar repairman stationed in India and Burma (1942–1946), he became involved with the Actors Studio, then formed his own theater workshop. He organized an Off-Broadway group and became its director, and continued directing in summer stock theatre while teaching acting at the High School of Performing Arts. He was the senior drama coach at the new 46th Street building of "Performing Arts". The 25-year-old Lumet directed the drama department in a production of The Young and Fair.

Lumet began his directorial career with Off-Broadway productions and evolved into a highly efficient television director. He began directing television in 1950 after working as an assistant to friend and then-director Yul Brynner. He soon developed a "lightning quick" method for shooting due to the high turnover required by television. As a result, while working for CBS, he directed hundreds of episodes of Danger (1950–1955), Mama (1949–1957) and You Are There (1953–1957), the latter a weekly series that featured Walter Cronkite in one of his early television appearances. Lumet chose Cronkite for the role of anchorman "because the premise of the show was so silly, was so outrageous, that we needed somebody with the most American, homespun, warm ease about him", he said. He also directed original plays for Playhouse 90, Kraft Television Theatre and Studio One, directing approximately 200 episodes, which established him as "one of the most prolific and respected directors in the business", according to Turner Classic Movies. His ability to work quickly while shooting carried over to his film career. Because the quality of many television dramas was so impressive, several of them were later adapted as motion pictures. • Illustration — Directing Anna Magnani in The Fugitive Kind (1960) His first movie, 12 Angry Men (1957), a courtroom drama centered on a tense jury deliberation that was based on a CBS live play, was an auspicious beginning for Lumet. It was a critical success and established him as a director skilled at adapting properties from other mediums to motion pictures. Fully half of Lumet's complement of films originated in the theater. Following his first film, Lumet divided his energies among political and social drama films, as well as adaptations of literary plays and novels, big stylish stories, New York-based black comedies and realistic crime dramas (including Serpico and Prince of the City). As a result of directing 12 Angry Men, he was also responsible for leading the first wave of directors who made a successful transition from TV to movies. A controversial TV show that he directed in 1960 gained some notoriety: Sacco-Vanzetti Story on NBC. According to The New York Times, the drama drew flack from the state of Massachusetts (where Sacco and Vanzetti were tried and executed) because it was thought to postulate that the condemned murderers were, in fact, wholly innocent. However, the resulting controversy did Lumet more good than harm, sending several prestigious film assignments his way. He began adapting classic plays for both film and television, directing Marlon Brando, Joanne Woodward and Anna Magnani in the feature film The Fugitive Kind (1959), based on the Tennessee Williams play Orpheus Descending. He directed a live television version of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, which was followed by his film A View from the Bridge (1962), another psychological drama, from the play written by Arthur Miller. This was followed by another Eugene O'Neill play-turned-to-cinema, Long Day's Journey into Night (1962), with Katharine Hepburn earning an Oscar nomination for her performance as a drug-addicted housewife; the four principal actors swept the acting awards at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.

Film critic Owen Gleiberman observed that Lumet was a "hardboiled straight-shooter" who, because he was trained during the Golden Age of Television in the 1950s, became noted for his energetic style of directing. The words, "Sidney Lumet" and "energy", he added, became synonymous. "The energy was there in the quietest moments. It was an inner energy, a hum of existence that Lumet observed in people and brought out in them...[when he] went into the New York streets...he made them electric." He also wrote:

• Illustration — Describing scene with Treat Williams in Prince of the City (1981) "Lumet generally insisted on the collaborative nature of the film, sometimes ridiculing the dominance of the 'personal' director," wrote film historian Frank R. Cunningham. As a result, Lumet became renowned among both actors and cinematographers for his openness to sharing creative ideas with the writer, actors and other artists. Lumet "has no equal in the distinguished direction of superior actors", added Cunningham, with many coming from the theater. He was able to draw powerful performances from actors, such as Ralph Richardson, Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Katharine Hepburn, James Mason, Sophia Loren, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Blythe Danner, Rod Steiger, Vanessa Redgrave, Paul Newman, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Dustin Hoffman, Albert Finney, Simone Signoret and Anne Bancroft. "Give him a good actor, and he just might find the great actor lurking within," wrote film critic Mick LaSalle. When necessary, Lumet chose untrained actors, but he stated that "over ninety percent of the time, I want the best tools I can get: actors, writers, lighting men, cameramen, propmen". Nonetheless, when he did use less experienced actors, he could still bring out superior and memorable acting performances. He did with Nick Nolte, Anthony Perkins, Armand Assante, Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway, Timothy Hutton and Ali MacGraw, who referred to him as "every actor's dream". In Jane Fonda's opinion, "He was a master. Such control of his craft. He had strong, progressive values and never betrayed them." Lumet believed that movies are an art, and "the amount of attention paid to movies is directly related to pictures of quality". Because he started his career as an actor, he became known as an "actor's director" and worked with the best of them over the years, a roster probably unequaled by any other director. Acting scholar Frank P. Tomasulo agreed and pointed out that many directors who are able to understand acting from an actor's perspective were all "great communicators". According to film historians Gerald Mast and Bruce Kawin, Lumet's "sensitivity to actors and to the rhythms of the city have made him America's longest-lived descendant of the 1950s Neorealist tradition and its urgent commitment to ethical responsibility". They cited his film The Hill (1965) as "one of the most politically and morally radical films of the 1960s". They added that beneath the social conflicts of Lumet's films lies the "conviction that love and reason will eventually prevail in human affairs", and that "law and justice will eventually be served – or not". His debut film Twelve Angry Men was an acclaimed picture in its day, representing a model for liberal reason and fellowship during the 1950s. The film and Lumet were nominated for Academy Awards, and he was nominated for the Director's Guild Award. The Encyclopedia of World Biography states that his films often featured actors who studied "Method acting", noted for portraying an earthy, introspective style. A leading example of such "Method" actors would be Al Pacino, who, early in his career, studied under Method acting guru Lee Strasberg. Lumet also preferred the appearance of spontaneity in both his actors and settings, which gave his films an improvisational look by shooting much of his work on location.

Lumet was a strong believer in rehearsal and felt that if an actor rehearsed correctly, the actor would not lose spontaneity. According to critic Ian Bernard, Lumet felt that it gives actors the "entire arc of the role", which gives them the freedom to find that "magical accident". Director Peter Bogdanovich asked him whether he rehearsed extensively before shooting, and Lumet said that he liked to rehearse a minimum of two weeks before filming. During those weeks, recalls Faye Dunaway, who starred in Network (1976), he also blocked the scenes with his cameraman. As a result, she added that "not a minute is wasted while he's shooting, and that shows not only on the studio's budget, but it shows on the impetus of performance". She praised his style of directing in Network, in which she won her only Academy Award: Sidney, let me say, is one of, if not, the most talented and professional men in the world...and acting in Network was one of the happiest experiences I have ever had...He's a really gifted man who contributed a good deal to my performance. Partly because his actors were well rehearsed, he could execute a production in rapid order, which kept his productions within their modest budgets. When filming Prince of the City (1981), for example, although there were over 130 speaking roles and 135 different locations, he was able to coordinate the entire shoot in 52 days. As a result, wrote historians Charles Harpole and Thomas Schatz, performers were eager to work with him, for they considered him to be an "outstanding director of actors". The film's star Treat Williams said that Lumet was known for being "energetic": He was just a ball of fire. He had passion for what he did and he "came to work" with all barrels burning. He's probably the most prepared director I've ever worked with emotionally. His films always came in under schedule and under budget. And everybody got home for dinner. Harpole added that "whereas many directors disliked rehearsals or advising actors on how to build their character, Lumet excelled at both". He could thereby more easily give his performers a cinematic showcase for their abilities and help them deepen their acting contribution. Actor Christopher Reeve, who co-starred in Deathtrap (1982), also pointed out that Lumet knew how to talk technical language: "If you want to work that way – he knows how to talk Method, he knows how to improvise, and he does it all equally well". Joanna Rapf, writing about the filming of The Verdict (1982), states that Lumet gave plenty of personal attention to his actors, whether listening to them or touching them. She describes how Lumet and star Paul Newman sat on a bench secluded from the main set, where Newman had taken his shoes off, to privately discuss an important scene about to be shot. Lumet's actors walked through their scenes before the camera rolled. This preparation was done because Lumet liked to shoot a scene in one take or two at the most. Newman liked to call him "Speedy Gonzales", adding that Lumet did not shoot more than he had to. "He doesn't give himself any protection. I know I would," Newman said. Film critic Betsy Sharkey agreed, adding that "he was a maestro of one or two takes years before Clint Eastwood would turn it into a respected specialty". Sharkey recalls, "[Faye] Dunaway once told me that Lumet worked so fast it was as if he were on roller skates. A racing pulse generated by a big heart."

Biographer Joanna Rapf observes that Lumet had always been an independent director, and liked to make films about "men who summon courage to challenge the system, about the little guy against the system". This includes the women characters, as in Garbo Talks (1984). Its star Anne Bancroft embodied the kind of character portrayal that attracted him: "a committed activist for all kinds of causes, who stands up for the rights of the oppressed, who is lively, outspoken, courageous, who refuses to conform for the sake of convenience, and whose understanding of life allows her to die with dignity... Garbo Talks in many ways is a valentine to New York". In an interview in 2006, Lumet said that he had always been "fascinated by the human cost involved in following passions and commitments, and the cost those passions and commitments inflict on others". This theme is at the core of most of his movies, notes Rapf, such as his true-life films about corruption in the New York City Police Department or in family dramas such as Daniel (1983).

Film historian Stephen Bowles believes that Lumet was most comfortable and effective as a director of serious psychodramas, as opposed to light entertainments. His Academy Award nominations, for example, were all for character studies of men in crisis, from his first film, Twelve Angry Men, to The Verdict. Lumet excelled at putting drama on the screen. Most of his characters are driven by obsessions or passions, such as the pursuit of justice, honesty and truth, or jealousy, memory or guilt. Lumet was intrigued by obsessive conditions, writes Bowles. Lumet's protagonists tended to be antiheroes, isolated and unexceptional men who rebel against a group or institution. The most important criterion for Lumet was not simply whether the actions of the people are right or wrong, but whether they were genuine and justified by the individual's conscience. Whistleblower Frank Serpico, for example, is the quintessential Lumet hero, who he described as a "rebel with a cause". An earlier example of psychodrama was The Pawnbroker (1964), starring Rod Steiger. In it, Steiger plays a Holocaust survivor whose spirit has been broken and who lives day-to-day as a pawn shop manager in Harlem. Lumet used the film to examine, with flashbacks, the psychological and spiritual scars with which Steiger's character lives, including his lost capacity to feel pleasure. Steiger, who made nearly 80 films, said during a TV interview that the film was his favorite as an actor.

Serpico (1973) was the first of four "seminal" films that Lumet made during the 1970s that marked him as "one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation". It was the story of power and betrayal in the New York City police force, with an idealistic policeman battling impossible odds. Lumet was a child during the Depression, and grew up poor in New York City, witnessing poverty and corruption. It instilled in him at an early age a belief in the importance of justice for a democracy, a subject that he tried to put in his films. He admitted, however, that he did not believe that the movie business itself has the power to change anything. Rapf writes, "There is, as he says, a lot of 'shit' to deal with in the entertainment industry, but the secret of good work is to maintain your honesty and your passion." Film historian David Thomson writes of his films:

Lumet preferred to work in New York City and shunned the dominance of Hollywood. Despite praising the abundance of large sound stages within Hollywood that New York City lacked, he called the studio system overbearing due to its many department heads presiding throughout all stages of production, especially in the 1950s. As a director, he became strongly identified with New York City. "I always like being in Woody Allen's world," he said. He claimed that New York City's ethnic diversity and its stark urban contrasts, encompassing art and crime, sophistication and corruption, and beauty and ugliness, were his primary sources of inspiration. He felt that in order to create, it is important to confront reality on a daily basis; in 1960, he stated that "New York is filled with reality; Hollywood is a fantasyland." Lumet also found that the Screen Actors Guild union had less stringent rules in New York City, allowing extras to have speaking roles without having to paying them higher rates. He often used New York City as the backdrop—if not the symbol—of his "preoccupation with America's decline", according to film historians Scott and Barbara Siegel. Lumet was attracted to crime-related stories in New York City urban settings, where the criminals get caught in a vortex of events that they can neither understand nor control but are forced to resolve.

Like other Jewish directors from New York, such as Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Paul Mazursky, Lumet's characters often speak overtly about controversial issues of the times. They felt unconstrained as filmmakers, and their art became "filtered through their Jewish consciousness", wrote film historian David Desser. Lumet, like the others, sometimes turned to Jewish themes to develop ethnic sensibilities that were characteristic of American culture, by dynamically highlighting its "unique tensions and cultural diversity". This was partly reflected in Lumet's preoccupation with city life. A Stranger Among Us (1992), for example, is the story of a woman undercover police officer and her experiences in a Hasidic community in New York City. The subject of "guilt", explains Desser, dominates many of Lumet's films. From his first feature film, 12 Angry Men (1957), in which a jury must decide the guilt or innocence of a young man, to Q&A (1990), in which a lawyer must determine the question of guilt and responsibility of a maverick policeman, guilt is a common thread that runs through many of his films. In Murder on the Orient Express (1974), all of the suspects are guilty. His films are also characterized by a strong emphasis on family life, often showing tensions within the family. This emphasis on the family included "surrogate families", as in the police trilogy consisting of Serpico (1973), Prince of the City (1981), and Q&A. An "untraditional family" is also portrayed in Dog Day Afternoon (1975).

Directed features • Year — Film — Distributor • 1957 — 12 Angry Men — United Artists • 1958 — Stage Struck — RKO Pictures • 1959 — That Kind of Woman — Paramount Pictures • 1960 — The Fugitive Kind — United Artists • 1962 — A View from the Bridge — Continental Film • Long Day's Journey into Night — Embassy Pictures • 1964 — The Pawnbroker — Paramount Pictures • Fail Safe — Columbia Pictures • 1965 — The Hill — Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer • 1966 — The Group — United Artists • 1967 — The Deadly Affair — Columbia Pictures • 1968 — Bye Bye Braverman — Warner Bros. • The Sea Gull • 1969 — The Appointment — Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer • 1970 — Last of the Mobile Hot Shots — Warner Bros. • 1971 — The Anderson Tapes — Columbia Pictures • 1972 — Child's Play — Paramount Pictures • 1973 — The Offence — United Artists • Serpico — Paramount Pictures • 1974 — Lovin' Molly — Columbia Pictures • Murder on the Orient Express — Paramount Pictures • 1975 — Dog Day Afternoon — Warner Bros. • 1976 — Network — Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / United Artists • 1977 — Equus — United Artists • 1978 — The Wiz — Universal Pictures • 1980 — Just Tell Me What You Want — Warner Bros. • 1981 — Prince of the City — Warner Bros. / Orion Pictures • 1982 — Deathtrap — Warner Bros. • The Verdict — 20th Century Fox • 1983 — Daniel — Paramount Pictures • 1984 — Garbo Talks — Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer • 1986 — Power — 20th Century Fox • The Morning After • 1988 — Running on Empty — Warner Bros. • 1989 — Family Business — Tri-Star Pictures • 1990 — Q&A • 1992 — A Stranger Among Us — Buena Vista Pictures • 1993 — Guilty as Sin • 1996 — Night Falls on Manhattan — Paramount Pictures • 1997 — Critical Care — LIVE Entertainment • 1999 — Gloria — Columbia Pictures • 2006 — Find Me Guilty — Freestyle Releasing • 2007 — Before the Devil Knows You're Dead — ThinkFilm Bibliography * * *

• Illustration — Lumet at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival Lumet was married four times; the first three marriages ended in divorce. He was married to actress Rita Gam from 1949 to 1955; to artist and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt from 1956 to 1963; to Gail Jones (daughter of Lena Horne) from 1963 to 1978; and to Mary Bailey Gimbel from 1980 until his death. He had two daughters by Jones: Amy, who was married to P.J. O'Rourke from 1990 to 1993, and actress and screenwriter Jenny, who had a leading role in his film Q&A. She also wrote the screenplay for the film Rachel Getting Married (2008), as well as co-creating two television series with Alex Kurtzman: The Silence of the Lambs sequel Clarice and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Lumet died from lymphoma at age 86 on April 9, 2011, in his residence in Manhattan. When asked in a 1997 interview about how he wanted to "go out", Lumet responded, "I don't think about it. I'm not religious. I do know that I don't want to take up any space. Burn me up and scatter my ashes over Katz's Delicatessen." A few months after Lumet's death, a retrospective celebration of his work was held at New York's Lincoln Center with numerous speakers and film stars. In 2015, Nancy Buirski directed By Sidney Lumet, a documentary about his career that aired in January 2017 as part of PBS's American Masters series.

The authorities additionally record the heading Sidney Arthur Lumet. His recorded language was English. He was the child of Baruch Lumet and Eugenius Wermus. He married Gloria Vanderbilt, Rita Gam and Gail Lumet Buckley. 2 children are recorded: Jenny Lumet and Amy Lumet.

Sidney Lumet is recorded as having studied at Columbia University, Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre and Professional Children's School.