bkoganbing — 19 years ago(July 26, 2006 11:10 PM)

After doing a whole lot of television drama, a lot of it live during the Fifties, Jack Warden got to moviegoers attention, particularly this filmgoer in
12 Angry Men. You have to remember him as the jury member who just wanted to
get the deliberation over with so he could get to the Yankee game that night.
The Yanks had a rookie picture who was starting that night and Warden was all
bent out of shape that Henry Fonda was ruining his plans.
Warden, not leading man material in any sense of the word, played a whole lot
everyman type characters, some good some bad, that we could all identify with.
He worked well with a whole range of people. He was good in Donovan's Reef
though he was 13 years younger than John Wayne, he had a daughter who John Wayne
was putting the moves on and Warden and he were shipmates in World War II.
Silly when you think about it, but John Ford made it work.
My two favorite Jack Warden roles were in And Justice for All as the genuinely
certifiable judge who carries a weapon in that Baltimore courthouse and eats his lunch sitting on a window ledge. He was at first funny, but then proves to be quite vicious in trying to put young lawyer Al Pacino in a jackpot.
The other is Warden as a good, but over the hill trial lawyer, in The Verdict
who gives Paul Newman a haven and helps him in winning that civil trial with all the forces of the legal establishment against them. Two very different
lawyers played by the same wonderfully talented man.
Jack Warden, RIP you can plead my case in the heavenly courts anytime.