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Playwright Reginal Rose originally wrote TWELVE ANGRY MEN as a teleplay for CBS’ Studio One in 1954. He, along with other well-known authors, directors, producers and actors helped to shape the look and feel of television in its infancy and “Golden Age.” The decade of the 1950s is often referred to as the “Golden Age” of television, largely because thousands of original and classic live dramas were produced and broadcast during America’s postwar years. These dramas supplemented the standard television fare of variety shows, game shows, westerns, and soap operas. It was during this period that television replaced radio and film as the chief medium of entertainment for the American family. The live programs were in the form of drama anthologies, such as NBC’s Kraft Television Theater and Goodyear Television Playhouse and CBS’s Studio One. Rose explained in an interview the challenging but rewarding nature of television drama in the 1950s: “It was a terrifying experience, but very exhilarating. But there were always mistakes. I don’t recall a show I ever did when something didn’t go wrong” (quoted in “Reginald Rose: A Biography,” in Readings on Twelve Angry Men). He recalled cameras breaking down and shows that ran either too long or too short to fill the exact time slot allocated. Most of the scripts in the live television dramas were original teleplays or works adapted from the stage, ranging from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh to classic literary adaptations of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Othello, among many others. This wide range of live television dramas, especially when compared with popular Hollywood films, legitimate theater, or commercial radio, presented American audiences with an extraordinary choice of viewing experiences in a solitary entertainment medium, and this was occurring in the comfort of the new mass audiences’ brand new suburban living rooms! While the classics and some contemporary popular writers provided material for the teleplays, they were not enough for the networks’ demanding weekly program schedules. The networks began cultivating original scripts from young, sometimes even unknown writers. Eventually, the majority of the dramas on the anthology shows were original works. The constant demand for new teleplays provided a fruitful creative outlet for actors, writers, and directors in the new medium. Television dramas often offered neophyte actors their first national exposure; additionally, it was the sometimes obscure but professionally trained theater personnel from summer stock and university theater programs who were responsible for the innovative broadcasts. In 1949, 24-year-old Marlon Brando starred in I’m No Hero, produced by the Actors’ Studio. Other young actors, such as Susan Strasberg (1953), Paul Newman (1954), and Steve McQueen (1955) made noteworthy appearances on Goodyear Playhouse. Among some of the most prominent writers of “Golden Age” dramas were Rod Serling, Paddy Chayevsky, Gore Vidal, Tad Mosel, and Reginald Rose. Rod Serling stands out for special consideration because in addition to winning the 1955 Emmy for “Best Original Teleplay Writing” (Patterns on Kraft Television Theater), Serling also won two teleplay Emmys for Playhouse 90 (1956 & 1957) and two “Outstanding Writing Achievement in Drama” Emmys for Twilight Zone (1959 & 1960) and for Chrysler Theater in 1963. Serling’s six Emmys for four separate anthology programs over two networks place him firmly in the top ranks of “Golden Age” writers. Writer Gore Vidal summed up the opportunity that writing for television dramas represented in this way: “One can find better work oftener on the small grey screen than on Broadway.” Paddy Chayevsky was even more cheerfully optimistic in his assessment when he said that television presented “the drama of introspection,” and that “television, the scorned stepchild of drama, may well be the basic theater of our century.” In addition to actors and writers, some of the most renowned Hollywood directors got their big breaks on television’s anthology dramas. John Frankenheimer directed for Kraft Television Theater, Robert Altman for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Yul Brynner and Sidney Lumet for Studio One, Sidney Pollack for The Chrysler Theater (1965 Emmy for “Directorial Achievement in Drama”) and Delbert Mann for NBC’s Television Playhouse. Live drama began to die out in the early 1960s; in present times only the Hallmark Hall of Fame survives from the heyday of television’s “Golden Age.” New technology enabled productions to be filmed, producing higher-quality technical work since mistakes could be edited out and scenes could be re-shot. The social upheavals of the 1960s, poor ratings, and changing tastes spelled further doom for the drama anthologies, but many of the pioneer actors, writers, and directors bemoaned the loss of the excitement and intimacy of live drama.
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