Key points
William Shatner worked with Judy Garland on the 1961 drama Judgment at Nuremberg.
The Star Trek actor says that his costar was “very fragile” when she shot her Oscar-nominated performance.
Shatner also remembers seeing Garland on stage prior to working with her: “She was drunk.”
William Shatner is reflecting on his time working with Judy Garland.
The Star Trek actor crossed paths with the Wizard of Oz icon when they both acted in Stanley Kramer’s Oscar-winning drama Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961. “She was very fragile,” Shatner remembers during a conversation with Entertainment Weekly.
The Boston Legal star, who played young Captain Harrison Byers opposite Spencer Tracy’s Chief Judge Dan Haywood, says that he was a longtime admirer of Garland’s.
“As a teenager from Montreal, every so often I’d go down with my parents to New York and go to the theater,” he recalls. “And I saw her on stage in Times Square doing a concert — but she was drunk.”
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At the time, Shatner was unaware that Garland had a long history of addiction, which made her inebriated state a shock. “I kept looking at her thinking, ‘My God, she’s my heroine. And I think she’s drunk,'” he remembers. “I was a teenager. I thought, ‘Why, she can’t possibly be drunk on stage!’ And, well, she was, and made no sense. And I was so disappointed.”
Shatner later learned more about Garland’s struggles. “I began to read about her problems and what she was dealing with.”
The actor remembers his brief time working with the Star is Born actress fondly. “She was an enormous talent,” Shatner says. “And when she came on to do her scene, I hadn’t seen anything of her since that experience so many years ago. There she was, doing her fragile bit. And it was part of a continuity that I treasure.”
In the film, Garland portrayed Irene Hoffmann, a German woman who is called to the Nuremberg trials as a witness to testify about her alleged romantic entanglement with a Jewish merchant. Garland breaks down into tears as her character recalls her former acquaintance being brought to trial for allegedly breaking racial purity laws.
Garland’s turn in the film earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, though she ultimately lost to Rita Moreno in West Side Story. Her costar, Maximilian Schell, won the award for Best Actor (beating out Tracy, who was also nominated in the same category), and screenwriter Abby Mann won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
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Kramer also received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at that ceremony, and the film received nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (for Montgomery Clift), and Best Film Editing, as well as nods for its Cinematography, Art Direction, and Costume design, which were then separated into black-and-white and color categories.
“It was a marvelous, astounding experience for a young actor,” Shatner says of the film. “I was new to the movie game then, and here I was amongst all these giants who’d come in for a day or two and be filmed and leave. It was a journey. It was beautiful.”
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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