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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West Side Story's Oscar journeys (then & now)

by Nathaniel R

3 of West Side Story's Oscar wins: SUPPORTING ACTOR (Chakiris), DIRECTOR (Robbins & Wise), SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Moreno)

The original West Side Story, which premiered on October 18th, 1961, and which we've discussed in great detail here, was a true four-quadrant blockbuster. It was not only the top-grossing film of its year but an all out Oscar smash. By the spring of 1962 West Side Story was so popular that it did a near complete sweep at the 34th annual Academy Awards ceremony, losing in only one of its categories: Best Adapted Screenplay (which went to the Holocaust courtroom drama Judgment at Nuremberg). But that wasn't all in terms of West Side Story mania. The very next month it competed for "Album of the Year" at the 4th Annual Grammys Awards (it had to settle for winning Best Soundtrack Album since "Judy at Carnegie Hall" took the top prize) and stayed at #1 on the Billboard album charts for almost an entire year (no joke).

How well will the new West Side Story fare? That's a difficult question because a lot of things have changed since West Side Story's initial movie run 60 years ago, including the popularity of musicals within mainstream culture, the number of Oscar categories, the nature of both Oscar campaigns and moviegoing, and even one role within the famous musical...

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