Cień Ameryki „Zwykła sprawa” Adama Tarna i „Dwunastu gniewnych ludzi” Sidneya Lumeta

The article has an interdisciplinary character. It combines biographical, historical, literary, dramaturgical, and film themes. Adam Tarn’s Common Business (Zwykła sprawa) is a drama which undoubtedly played an important role in the period of socialist realism together with the performance directed by Erwin Axer. In the article, the significance of Tarn’s work, which was awarded at the 1st Festival of Polish Contemporary Arts in the early 1950s, is shown against the background of the cultural policy pursued in the People’s Republic of Poland. The writer’s nine-year stay in America has been presented in the perspective of the emigration-related origin of the Common Business.The proposed juxtaposition of Tarn’s debut drama and Sidney Lumet’s Oscar-winning film Twelve Angry Men (screenplay by Reginald Rose) reveals the complex political context in which each of the works appeared. The 1949 New York Foley Square Trial of 11 members of the National Board of the CPUSA (Communist Party USA), which ‘was the best known legal proceeding against a communist party’, has been indicated as the direct inspiration for Tarn’s play.