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FILM 1264: JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG

TRIVIA: Spencer Tracy's 11-minute closing speech was filmed in one take.

Marlon Brando wanted to play the role of Hans Rolfe, the German lawyer who defends the German judges. Brando, in a rare attempt to garner the part, actually approached Stanley Kramer about it. Although Kramer and screenwriter Abby Mann were very intrigued with the idea of having an actor of Brando's talent and stature in the role, both were so impressed with Maximilian Schell's portrayal of the same part in the original TV broadcast of "Judgment at Nuremberg"--Playhouse 90: Judgment at Nuremberg (1959)--that they had decided to stick with the relatively unknown Schell, who later won the Oscar for Best Actor for that role.

Maximilian Schell's Oscar for Best Actor makes him the lowest-billed lead category winner in history. He is billed fifth, after Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark and Marlene Dietrich.

Montgomery Clift had a habit of cutting his hair very short when he was between films and would not work until it had grown back. In fact, his scene in this film was shot right after getting one of those haircuts. He also had so much trouble remembering his lines, the scene had to be re-shot many times. Director Stanley Kramer finally gave up and told Clift to ad lib his lines, saying that this would help to convey the confusion in his character's mind while he was being questioned on the witness stand. "Monty seemed to calm down after this," Kramer later recalled. "He wasn't always close to the script, but whatever he said fitted in perfectly, and he came through with as good a performance as I had hoped."

By the time this film was finished, all of the men who had been convicted and imprisoned in the real Nuremberg trials had been released.

Marlene Dietrich had a great deal of trouble performing in the scene between Mrs. Bertholt and Judge Haywood when she claims German civilians did not know of the atrocities the Nazi government committed during the war. Dietrich, who during the war had worked for the Allies against the Nazis, found the sentiment so repulsive that she could not keep her concentration. Only after counseling by Spencer Tracy was she able to complete the scene. According to an interview with her grandson Peter Riva on the "Icons Radio Hour", Dietrich would get physically ill (to the point of vomiting) in the evenings over this part. In a conversation with her daughter Maria Riva, Maria told her to "simply play her mother". The fictional Mrs. Bertholt is a representation of the mother of Marlene Dietrich.

Immediately upon hearing his sentence, Emil Hahn (Werner Klemperer) declares, "Today you sentence me; tomorrow the Bolsheviks will sentence you!". Whether intended or not, those words strongly parallel the last words of the notorious Julius Streicher as he was about to be hanged following his conviction at the first Nuremberg Trial. As the black hood was placed over his head, Streicher screamed, "The Bolsheviks will hang you one day!"

The song whose meaning Mrs. Berthold explains to Judge Haywood when they walk past a pub while people in there sing it, is called "Lili Marlene". The song was popular with German and British forces during the war, and was actually recorded by Marlene Dietrich herself in the 1940s and 1950s.

This was the film that the infamous British "Moors Murderers" Ian Brady and Myra Hindley saw on their first date.