Judy Garland @ 100: "Judgment at Nuremberg"

Team Experience is revisiting nine Judy Garland movies for her Centennial. Here's Christopher James on the star's second Oscar nomination.

Judy Garland received a Supporting Actress nomination in 1961 for her three scene performance in "Judgment at Nuremberg."

With a career that spanned over three decades, there were many points in which Judy Garland had to reinvent her image, intentionally or unintentionally. The other articles in this centennial celebration have examined Judy as the child star, the musical superstar and the complicated movie star. In conjunction with Claudio’s piece on A Star is Born, this later period of Garland’s career sought to deflect from her personal life through focusing on her powerful dramatic chops. Stanley Kramer’s Judgment in Nuremberg cast Garland in a new light… a supporting actress. However, her role as Irene Hoffman, a woman imprisoned as a teen for violating “racial pollution” law, is not short on fireworks. Garland delivers an impressive and affecting performance in just three short scenes. It's hard to argue against that year's winner (Rita Moreno for West Side Story), but Garland more than earns her Oscar nomination, the second and final of her career...

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Monty @ 100: The recent documentary "Making Montgomery Clift"

by Sean Donovan

As a kind of epilogue to our Montgomery Clift Centennial series, in which we revisited every film of his, let's discuss a curio that made the festival rounds in 2018 and 2019. The documentary Making Montgomery Clift was co-directed by Hillary Demmon and Monty’s nephew Robert Clift. Robert is very much foregrounded as a protagonist of the film as he attempts to do much of what the Film Experience team has been attempting over the past two and half weeks: to grapple with the legacy of Montgomery Clift and bask in the immortal work he has left behind. Making Montgomery Clift is an imperfect project, and those imperfections arise out of an enormous emotional attachment to the subject that can’t hep but obscure our view of the man and his work.

Making Montgomery Clift provides an overview of the star’s life and career trajectory, the highlights and lowlights that have been gestured to in posts throughout this series: Clift’s struggles with alcohol and pills, his queer sexuality, the traumatic car accident that transformed his career, his reputation as a difficult diva of a movie star, etc. But the film also does the invaluable work of tracing the discourse of our pop culture knowledge of Clift himself: when and how the legend of Monty Clift was written...

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Monty @ 100: Oscar nominated again for "Judgment at Nuremberg"

by Baby Clyde

1961 Monty was a shadow of his former self. Long gone were days of matinee idol status and teeny boppers swooning over his dreamboat looks. As has already been expertly detailed by my colleagues Montgomery Clift’s career is one of two halves. By this point he was deep into the second half and the eventual outcome seemed inevitable, but that didn’t mean he was unable to still produce the goods...

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If you want to honor Judy...

by Cláudio Alves

Within the realm of Oscar races, there are few campaign strategies more annoying than the "honor the movie, honor the man" variety.  It's reserved for biopics, putting forward the idea that to shower a certain production in gold laurels is a way to retroactively reward a dead celebrity. This same logic was somewhat utilized to catapult Renée Zellweger towards her second Oscar win. Let's make one thing clear, Renée's win for Judy is a prize for her bold performance but in no way does this victory actually honor the Oscarless Judy Garland. You don't get to pretend you gave Judy an award Academy -- you lost that chance long ago!

Still, we appreciate that Renée mentioned Garland in her speech and that her movie might inspire people to watch more of the late star's great roles. After all, there's no better way to honor her memory than to explore her wonderful filmography...

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Judy by the Numbers: "Judgment at Nuremberg"

Apologies, gentle Judy fans. While I intended to bring you the usual dose of morning Garland sunshine, I failed in meeting either the requirement for sunshine or the morning deadline. In this case, however, that’s probably for the best. Considering the subject of this film, it is probably better that you have a cup of coffee and a bite to eat before you sit down to watch it. This week, I’m breaking with tradition slightly. While Judy Garland does not sing any numbers in Judgment at Nuremberg, this is a performance and a movie that must be seen.

The Movie: Judgment at Nuremberg (UA, 1961)
The Writer: Abby Mann (screenplay)
The Cast: Maximilian Schell, Burt Lancaster, Spencer Tracy, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Widmark, Judy Garland, directed by Stanley Kramer

The Story: When Stanley Kramer decided to adapt Abby Mann’s dramatization of the Nuremberg trials, Judy Garland was not his first choice for Irene Hoffman, the woman accused of miscegenation under Nazi law. However, after seeing Garland in concert, Kramer was impressed by her emotional range, and agreed to take a risk on the star who hadn’t made a film in over half a decade.

The risk paid off. Judy Garland’s performance, though only 18 minutes long, remains one of the most devastating of the film. While Irene is only one example of the many ways unjust laws persecuted and destroyed lives in Nazi Germany, Judy’s short performance elevates Irene from symbol to human being. Framed in closeup, Judy plays Irene’s grief in many keys: dignified mourning, frustrated confusion, disdain, defensiveness, fear, until it builds to a crescendo of anger and and injustice that almost renders her speechless.

This would be Judy’s only foray into “legitimate” drama (as opposed to the musicals and melodramas of her past), and it stands as a testament to her what might have been. Judy would receive her second and final Academy Award nomination for this performance (losing this time to Rita Moreno in West Side Story). But while Judy’s career in films was waning, her star was about to rise on a new medium: television.

Select Previous Highlights:  
“Zing Went the Strings of My Heart” (1938), "Over the Rainbow" (1939), "For Me and My Gal" (1942), "The Trolley Song" (1944), "On the Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe" (1946), "I Don't Care" (1949), "Get Happy" (1950), "The Man That Got Away" (1954)