Martin Balsam

A Thousand Clowns won Martin Balsam the supporting actor Oscar. In 12 Angry Men, Sidney Lumet's first job as a film director, he played Juror Number One, who chairs the jury; Henry Fonda had hired Lumet for his wide television experience and his name for holding to a schedule and a budget, and Fonda and the writer Reginald Rose deferred their fees. The film opens as the jury withdraws at the end of a murder trial, having been reminded that a guilty verdict means an automatic death sentence for the defendant. The twenty-three films the catalogue holds under his name run between 1957 and 1976; Psycho, All the President's Men, Little Big Man and Murder on the Orient Express are among them.