Will West couldn’t necessarily tell you where he was on the night of September 20 last year, but he could tell you – precisely and emphatically – where he was on that date a half-century ago.

He was sitting in a special hot seat that was then called live television, around an oblong mahogany table with Norman Fell, John Beal, Franchot Tone, Walter Abel, Lee Philips, Bart Burns, Paul Hartman, Robert Cummings, Joseph Sweeney, Edward Arnold, and George Voskovec – in numerical order, Jurors no. 1 through no. 11 – men with numbers instead of names, debating the guilt or innocence of a slum teenager accused of patricide and, in the process, giving the American justice system a vigorous, almost archetypal workout.

Mr. West was the last to make the cut – Juror no. 12 – and is the only original cast member alive.

This was the first gathering of “Twelve Angry Men,” Reginald Rose’s classic take on jury duty, and that particular TV production went on to win 1954 Emmys for best written dramatic material (Rose), best director (Franklin Schaffner) and best actor in a single performance (Cummings as the sole dissenter, Juror #8, who pulls his peers around to his point of view in 50 minutes flat – but not without some brutalizing vocal give-and-take).

Three years later, the teleplay was expanded 45 minutes into a movie that won Oscar nominations for best picture, best adapted screenplay (Rose) and best director (a film-bowing Sidney Lumet). Forty years after that, Rose brought it up to 1997 speed but held the running time to a tight 95 for a Showtime remake by director William Friedkin.

This past weekend Roundabout Theater Company premiered the stage version – credited posthumously to Rose – at the American Airlines Theater. Mr. West attended the opening on Friday night. That, if little else, Mr. West saw coming 50 years ago. “I had no idea the piece would become as famous as it has,” he admits. “Nor did Reginald. Nor did anyone, really. But we were aware of the quality of Reginald’s writing. At the time, most of us were saying it should be made into a play.”

And so it has, completing a cycle of sorts. “CBS shot it on Second Avenue and 12th Street at a legitimate house used for the Phoenix Theater Company,” Mr. West recalls. “It had rehearsal spaces so we rehearsed there, too. We rehearsed at least two weeks – it might have been two and a half or into a third week because of the intricacy of the camerawork.”

In the early palm-sweating days of live television, two cameras were used, both carefully choreographed to avoid colliding or catching sight of the other or crashing into the actors.

But the 83-year-old Mr. West remembers those anxious times fondly. “We were professional actors. This is what we did. Most of us were theater actors. Even the film stars had been. I was just starting out, but I was not in awe of them. I was proud to be in their company.

“After we got into rehearsal, I could see the quality of the work they were doing. I thought probably Edward Arnold was doing the most. It was certainly different from what he did usually. Bob Cummings had done that character before, but he did it well. Joe Sweeney, the elderly juror, was extraordinary. He and George Voskovec were the only ones who got to do the film. I was doing a play, and they wouldn’t let me out even to meet Lumet.”

“Twelve Angry Men” was only Mr. West’s second time at bat in live television. He had done “The Joker” with Eva Marie Saint and Martin Balsam for director Arthur Penn, and that got him the audition. “Frank Schaffner was an excellent director. He really communicated with actors. He cast the show himself. The thing that a director does best – and I know this from having directed myself – is to cast parts so he doesn’t have to do a lot of work with the actor. He’s confident in the actor’s capacity to do what he has to do and do it easily.”

Schaffner instantly sized Mr.West up as a Madison Avenue type, an ad exec who saw people dispassionately as customers, doodled when he thought and tended to “run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it” when he had an idea to present. The part ran only 85 lines, but the constant tic-tac-toeing kept him glib, conspicuous, and always in the game.

Contrary to Schafner’s spot diagnosis, Mr. West went West for the bulk of his career, appearing in “Death Valley Days,” “Gunsmoke,” “Have Gun, Will Travel,” and scores of other small screen sagebrushers – but his name didn’t go with him. “It’s a great name for Westerns, too, but there was already an actor in Equity named Will West, and he was unwilling to give me permission to use my own name, so I went back to my grandfather’s name – Larkin Shackelford – shortened it to Larkin Ford, and that’s how I’ve been billed.”

As Larkin Ford, he has two feature film credits – “Q,” a monster movie about a prehistoric winged thing that roosts on the Chrysler Building, and an even more forgettable flick that he has happily forgotten. Theater has occupied him when he hasn’t been doing television, and his favorite theatrical memory is the rush he got working with Vanessa Redgrave when she and Charlton Heston took on “The Scottish Play” at the Ahmanson in Los Angeles.

Otherwise, his main claim to fame is the hour-long deliberation he put in as Juror no. 12 in that historic “Studio One” telecast – and that has been in serious eclipse. The second half of this program was lost for decades, but last year a complete film recording surfaced in the archives of Marjorie Leibowitz Finch and was presented with much fanfare to the Museum of Television & Radio, where anyone can view it on request. (Recommended!)

The museum celebrated the acquisition May 21,2003,with a screening, and the last angry man standing got to step forth and take a bow. “I was very impressed,” Mr. West says. “Of course, I had never seen it – I was doing it – and I was amazed it stood up so well.”

So was it really, like they say, the Golden Age of Television – or was it work? “Well, to an actor, work is fun. This thing we say to each other – ‘have fun’ – we don’t mean ‘have fun’ in a frivolous way, we mean ‘get joy out of what you do.'” If you do something that has quality, something that means something to you, something that lasts, you get joy.”