William Shatner says Judy Garland was ‘very fragile’ after they labored collectively

William Shatner is reflecting on his time working with Judy Garland.

The Star Trek actor crossed paths with the Wizard of Oz icon after they each acted in Stanley Kramer’s Oscar-winning drama Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961. “She was very fragile,” Shatner remembers throughout a dialog with Leisure Weekly.

The Boston Authorized star, who performed younger Captain Harrison Byers reverse Spencer Tracy’s Chief Choose Dan Haywood, says that he was a longtime admirer of Garland’s.

“As a teen from Montreal, now and again I would go down with my dad and mom to New York and go to the theater,” he recollects. “And I noticed her on stage in Instances Sq. doing a live performance — however she was drunk.”

On the time, Shatner was unaware that Garland had a protracted historical past of habit, which made her inebriated state a shock. “I stored taking a look at her considering, ‘My God, she’s my heroine. And I feel she’s drunk,'” he remembers. “I used to be a teen. I believed, ‘Why, she will’t probably be drunk on stage!’ And, properly, she was, and made no sense. And I used to be so disillusioned.”

Shatner later realized extra about Garland’s struggles. “I started to examine her issues and what she was coping with.”

The actor remembers his transient time working with the Star is Born actress fondly. “She was an unlimited expertise,” Shatner says. “And when she got here on to do her scene, I hadn’t seen something of her since that have so a few years in the past. There she was, doing her fragile bit. And it was a part of a continuity that I treasure.”

Within the movie, Garland portrayed Irene Hoffmann, a German girl who is named to the Nuremberg trials as a witness to testify about her alleged romantic entanglement with a Jewish service provider. Garland breaks down into tears as her character recollects her former acquaintance being delivered to trial for allegedly breaking racial purity legal guidelines.

Garland’s flip within the movie earned her an Oscar nomination for Greatest Supporting Actress, although she finally misplaced to Rita Moreno in West Facet Story. Her costar, Maximilian Schell, gained the award for Greatest Actor (beating out Tracy, who was additionally nominated in the identical class), and screenwriter Abby Mann gained the award for Greatest Tailored Screenplay.

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Kramer additionally obtained the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at that ceremony, and the movie obtained nominations for Greatest Image, Greatest Director, Greatest Supporting Actor (for Montgomery Clift), and Greatest Movie Enhancing, in addition to nods for its Cinematography, Artwork Route, and Costume design, which have been then separated into black-and-white and shade classes.

“It was a fabulous, astonishing expertise for a younger actor,” Shatner says of the movie. “I used to be new to the film recreation then, and right here I used to be amongst all these giants who’d are available for a day or two and be filmed and depart. It was a journey. It was stunning.”