In this and other old movies, it’s not unusual for a jury to be composed entirely of men. Where were the women? Certainly, it had been a few decades since women got the vote, you’d think responsibilities like jury duty came with it. Were women excused from jury duty because most of them were housewives, and needed to be at home?
(I’m assuming this has a factual answer, and belongs in GQ.)
While we’re waiting for the real legal eagles to poke their heads in here, I did a quick search and found an article from Ms. on the history of women & jury duty. Once the article calms down a little, about halfway in, there’s a few summaries of court decisions regarding differential treatment of men & women concerning jury service. Essentially, women could volunteer to be added to the jury pool through most of the 20th century, but obviously not very many did. It wasn’t until 1975 (!) that the Supreme Court required men & women to be considered equally for the purpose of jury duty.
“12 Angry Men” sounds better than “12 Angry Guys and Dolls.”
Jury eligibility has always been determined by state law (except, of course, for the relatively small number of cases tried in federal court), so as with anything determined by states you have a lot of variation and it’s risky to generalize.
Some states made eligibility a concommitant of suffrage, so that women automatically became eligible and began serving when they gained the vote. Other states had separate laws restricting jury service to males and had to change those laws–which some did quickly and others only after a long fight.
Even among states which allowed female jurors, however, it was often easier for a woman to get an exemption. See this article:
For these reasons, in at least some states (I don’t know how many), an all-male jury during the era of Twelve Angry Men would not have been unusual.
Mike S had the basic idea: Until fairly recently, women had to specifically ask to be included in the jury pool, and few did.
Ed
I watched that in high school.
It was black and white… I just looked it up, and it was released in 1957.
That was a while ago. Blacks still went to segregated schools in many places in the US.
Another ‘vintage’ thing about the movie you may notice… EVERYONE seemed to smoke up in the jury room, and no one ever asked “Mind if I smoke?”
When a TV movie was made of 12 Angry Men in 1997, they considered casting some of the parts with women, but they decided that it didn’t work. The film was too obviously about the conflicts of men. I recall from an interview that I read with the director or screenwriter that he said, “The play is all about testosterone, and it wouldn’t work with women on the jury.”
When they do the play now, don’t they sometimes call it “The Jury”?
I’ve seen it as “Twelve Angry Jurors.” Here is one of hundreds of links, this one being a high school production.
True, but imagine the musical possibilities of the latter.
Exclusion of female jurors has happened fairly recently. I was reading recently an issue of Maclean’s from 1979. It featured a story on an Alberta judge who would only let men serve on a jury case. (It involved sexual torture and mutilation, and the judge feared women would be too unsettled to serve effectively.) I know that’s somewhat apples and oranges, but it shows how having an all-male jury in the 1950’s would be entirely feasible.
o/ I hate you, I wish you'd go to heck, I wish you'd go to heck, and I'll slug you in the neck! I'll slug you in the neck and I'll trip you down the street, I'll trip you down the street 'cause I'm ready now to beat... upon you! (Upon you!) Upon you! (Upon you!) o/
Henry Fonda: “Look, we need to examine the testimony carefully…”
All “Sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down - you’re rocking the boat!”
Total hijack here.
When I came upon the movie a few months back, I decided to IMDB it to learn a little about the lesser-known players in the cast. FWIW, it seems that Jack Klugman is the only surviving juror, which is kind of ironic given his severe throat cancer scare from a while back. Heck, he’s even outlived Tony Randel, his sqeaky-clean living Odd Couple co-star.
Keep it up, Jack!
I credit Jack’s longevity to spite. Now that Brett’s gone, I expect he’ll shuffle off this mortal coil right soon.
Please forgive my ignorance, but who is Brett?
Brett Somers was Klugman’s ex-wife and a permanent “celebrity” on the old Match Game TV show.
To respond to the OP, as recently as the 1970s, it was not unheard-of to deliberately excuse housewives with young children at home; this happened to my mother in 1975 or 1976.
Robin
Well, even now you don’t have to serve if you have little kids and you’re their caregiver.
I don’t think Randel is dead. Nothing is mentioned in his Bio.
Tony Randall is most definitely dead.
As for women on jury duty, my mom always asked to be excused when I was growing up (1960s and 1970s), she finally got a summons to serve.
It came a couple of weeks after she passed away in 1993.