Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [478]
As he spoke of the evidence, how it supported the charges against the defendants and how the “real complaining party” at the bar was civilization, Kramer’s camera trucked slowly to the right, catching the back of Lancaster’s head in the prisoners’ dock.
Men who sat in black robes in judgment of other men. Men who took part in the enactment of laws and decrees the purpose of which was the extermination of human beings. Men who, in executive positions, actively participated in the enforcement of these laws—illegal under even German law.
He spoke of Janning as a tragic figure. “We believe he loathed the evil he did.” Yet compassion for “the present torture of his soul” should not “beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the government of which he was part.” He spoke also of how the trial had shown that “under a national crisis” ordinary and even “able and extraordinary men” could delude themselves into the commission of crimes “so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination.”
Marshall Schlom recalled looking over at Kramer and seeing that he was “getting a little itchy” as the scene progressed. “I think he was a bit worried that maybe Tracy wasn’t going to finish before the camera ran out of film.” Tracy continued, his voice at times betraying the emotional weight of the words he was saying.
No one who has sat through the trial can ever forget them. Men sterilized because of political belief … A mockery made of friendship and faith … The murder of children … How easily it can happen … There are those in our own country, too, who today speak of the protection of country, of survival. A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way … Only the answer to that is: Survival as what? A country isn’t a rock … it’s not an extension of one’s self—it’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult…
Before the people of the world … let it now be noted … that here in our decision, this is what we stand for: Justice … Truth … and the value of a single human being.
Facing the four defendants in the dock, he then proceeded to pass life sentences on Emil Hahn, on Friedrich Hoffstetter, on Werner Lammpe, and, finally, and with difficulty, on Ernst Janning.
“Tracy didn’t read it,” said Marshall Schlom. “Tracy had memorized this whole thing, which was ten minutes long. It was one reel of raw stock going through the camera. He did the wider shot first, take one, which was a print, and then we did his close-up, and take one, and it was a print. And he was just as sly as a fox, because now he had his day in court. He had trumped all the other suits, and it was wonderful to see because he didn’t make anything out of it. But he was lying in wait, he was gonna get everybody. Of course, each one of these people on the stand had done their part, and, sporadically, there had been some applause. But when it got to Tracy, everybody—the entire crew and cast and two hundred extras—were sitting and watching this and when he did take one, letter perfect, without reading it, the applause was thunderous.”
When Kramer felt he had everything he needed—well before noontime—he wrapped the company for the day. “Let’s all go to lunch,” he said, “and then we can go home.” It was at that point that Burt Lancaster approached Tracy. “How did you do that so easily?” he asked.
Tracy took the question in stride. “You practice for thirty-five years,” he said quietly.
When Judgment at Nuremberg finished in California on May 4, 1961, Kramer still had a week’s worth of location work to do in Germany. Tracy wasn’t happy about going.