FAVORITE ANGRY MAN #4: Juror 9 (Joseph Sweeney)

The oldest member of the panel, Juror 9 (Joseph Sweeney) has probably seen it all and, because of that, he offers wisdom, compassion and understanding to an otherwise hostile and tense room. Though he is one of the most unassuming jurors as the film goes on, he is poignantly the second one to change his vote from ‘guilty’ to ‘not guilty’, after witnessing Juror 8 (Henry Fonda) stand up for what he believes in, something Juror 9 can definitely appreciate. Symbolically, in the film’s last scene, the two formally introduced themselves to each other.

SCREENPLAY BY: Jules Furthman

One of only six screenwriters to feature on one of my t-shirts (Big Sleep poster, woop!), Jules Furthman remains one of the most underrated screenwriters of his generation.

Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1888, he started his writing career as a magazine and newspaper writer under the name Stephen Fox. Throughout the 1910s and 20s, he wrote a ridiculous amount of screenplays, adaptations and scenarios, including The Way of All Flesh (1927, dir. Victor Fleming) and The Docks of New York (1928), the latter marking the beginning of his collaboration with director Josef von Sternberg. A writer-director duo that is often overlooked, they worked on such films as Morocco (1930), Blonde Venus (1932) and Shanghai Express (1932), among others. In 1935, he received his only Oscar nomination for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, dir. Frank Lloyd), losing to Dudley Nichols, whom we covered here. In the late 30s and throughout the 40s, he often wrote for Howard Hawks, including Only Angels Have Wings (1939), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946) and Rio Bravo (1959), his last screenplay. Hawks supposedly said of him, ‘If there are five ways to play a scene, Furthman will find a sixth.’ Jules Furthman passed away from a brain hemorrhage in Oxford, England in 1966 at the age of 78.