Television
He sold his first teleplay, Bus to Nowhere, in 1950 to the live CBS dramatic anthology program Studio One, for which he wrote Twelve Angry Men four years later. This latter drama, set entirely in a room where a jury is deliberating the fate of a teenage boy accused of murder, was inspired by Rose's service on just such a trial.The play was later made into a black-and-white movie.
The Internet Movie Database quotes Rose's memories of this experience: "It was such an impressive, solemn setting in a great big wood-paneled courtroom, with a silver-haired judge, it knocked me out. I was overwhelmed. I was on a jury for a manslaughter case, and we got into this terrific, furious, eight-hour argument in the jury room. I was writing one-hour dramas for Studio One then, and I thought, wow, what a setting for a drama."
Rose received an Emmy for his teleplay and an Oscar nomination for its 1957 feature-length film adaptation. Rose wrote for all three of the major broadcast networks of the 1950-80 period. He created and wrote for The Defenders in 1961, a weekly courtroom drama spun off from one of Rose's episodes of Studio One; The Defenders would go on to win two Emmy awards for dramatic writing.
Read more about this topic: Reginald Rose
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religion—or a new form of Christianity—based on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.”
—New Yorker (April 23, 1990)
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labour in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.”
—Frederic Raphael (b. 1931)