Three Substance-Abused Stars
Judgment at Nuremberg is dramatic and memorable for a lot of reasons, certainly starting with the subject matter, and moving on to the truly all-star cast assembled for it.
But three of those stars make it just that much more memorable:
In order: Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland, Spencer Tracy.
The issue is substance abuse, and its impacts on the actors and how they acted.
Clift and Garland were brought in to play "dramatic cameos." Neither is in the film very long. I believe that Clift gets one scene, and Garland two, but I might be wrong. And the film somewhat suggests that in casting these "damaged" people from real life as people who were damaged by the Nazis...their real life debilitation would transfer to their fictional characters.
It did. Especially with Clift, who -- from the combination of heavy drinking and drugging, as well as the 1957 car accident that had frozen and distorted his face -- was in bad shape when he performed this role. The line readings given by his slow-witted character are fitting FOR the character, but there was also something clearly wrong with Clift as he tried to act. The record shows that Clift kept having trouble with his lines AND his ability to "keep it together" on set, and finally Spencer Tracy gently asked Clift to "play the scene to me, Monty, say the lines only to me" -- and that got Clift through it. (Clift evidently also did the whole scene twice..he didn't like his first version.)
Judy Garland's acting is not nearly so out of control as Clift's in Nuremberg, but she came to the set after a long time away from movies and with people worried that she could not handle the role(Julie Harris was considered before Garland was given the role) or would be tempestuous. But she was fine. Her weight and her middle- aged appearance were giveaways of a sort She would lose the weight -- too much -- as drugs kept having their way with her. But Garland's susbstance abuse issues were more "behind the scenes" in this film -- a sense that all was not well with her.
Which brings us to Spencer Tracy. He's fine in the film, and spends much of the first half saying nothing but sometimes conveying great conflict in his silence. He has a long speech at the end that he evidently had entirely memorized and he gives it well.
But a lifetime of very heavy drinking had prematurely aged the man. He was 61 but looked more like 81. Snow white hair. Deep wrinkles. And in Nuremberg, the start of a rather frail appearance(he'd once been a stocky man) that preshadowed his coming death too young at 67. Still, Tracy -- unlike Clift and unlike Garland behind the scenes -- COULD handle what substance abuse had done to him.
Maybe it was even more of a burden then, but we glorify and idolize our movie stars and some of them just can't take it The set of Judgment at Nuremberg must have been an interesting place on the few days that Clift and Garland were there. Tracy was there almost all the time - and kept it together.
Still, a great movie that also stands as a record of how three performers messed themselves up with drink and drugs.