Sidney Lumet: A Life

Columbia University professor Spiegel traces the storied career of director Sidney Lumet (1924–2011) in this insightful debut. Relying on Lumet’s unfinished memoirs and interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, Spiegel reveals in this first full-length biography facets of his subject’s life, from growing up in New York City’s Lower East Side (his parents, both Polish immigrants, worked in the Yiddish theater) to acting on Broadway by age 10 and eventually to becoming involved in the Group Theatre with such colleagues as Stella Adler, Lee J. Cobb, and Elia Kazan. Beginning his career directing off-Broadway in the 1940s, Lumet evolved quickly into a highly respected television director renowned for his “lightning quick” style, directing socially conscious plays for Playhouse 90, You Are There, and Omnibus with actors Walter Bernstein, James Dean, Tab Hunter, and Rod Steiger, among others. As Spiegel details in workmanlike prose, with Lumet’s first feature film in 1957, 12 Angry Men, Lumet found his calling as a director of “stories of ordinary people trying to cope with something bigger than themselves.” Creating a cinematic world featuring morally conflicted, flawed characters facing urban realities, Lumet achieved his greatest success with 1970s classics Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network. This revealing and entertaining biography provides a sensitive look at one of Hollywood’s most humanistic and socially aware filmmakers. (Dec.)