# Romeo and Juliet(1968) Actors Sue Paramount for Child Abuse Over Underage Nudity **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 4, 2023, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630 "2023-01-04T06:09:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2023, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/21 "2023-01-04T18:38:05Z")
I knew the Juliet actor was underage, but not the Romeo actor. I remember us talking about why Juliet was played by someone so young, saying she would have actually been 14 or so in the play, somethin most of us had not caught on to. As to how I feel about the suit? The claim that they originally were told they’d be wearing flesh colored suits but then had to go full nude on the day, without having permission from the parents? That seems like something that should be remedied, even if you did think the nudity added to the film. Personally, given how much that scene gets fastforwarded or skipped at schools, I don’t really think it was necessary. And I’m surprised they didn’t release a school cut to capitalize on all the schools showing it. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2023, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/22 "2023-01-04T21:05:12Z")
> [@Seanette](#): > > Sorry, but if it’s suddenly a huge deal well over 50 years after the movie was made, this looks a whole lot more like playing lawsuit lotto than like anything with merit. If they really pulled a switch on the day of the shoot, that’s effed up, but probably on the director. This article references a 2018 interview which makes me inclined to agree with lawsuit lotto. > In a 2018 interview with _Variety_, Hussey defended the nude scene. > > “Nobody my age had done that before,” she said, adding that Zeffirelli shot it tastefully. “It was needed for the film.” > > In another 2018 interview with Fox News, she said that the scene was “taboo” in America, but that nudity was already common in European films at the time. “It wasn’t that big of a deal,” she said. “And Leonard wasn’t shy at all! In the middle of shooting, I just completely forgot I didn’t have clothes on.” [‘Romeo and Juliet’ Stars Sue for Child Abuse Over 1968 Nude Scene - Variety](https://variety.com/2023/film/news/romeo-and-juliet-child-abuse-nude-scene-lawsuit-1235477837/) ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2023, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/23 "2023-01-04T21:19:32Z")
The naked Nirvana baby case got dismissed. I think this one will too. Unemancipated Minors can’t sign contracts. The parents would have signed for them. I suspect Paramount lawyers handled the CYA. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2023, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/24 "2023-01-04T21:35:04Z")
It was the Sixties. Everyone younger than 30 was smugly congratulating themselves on how sexually liberated they were, unlike those evil repressed Victorians. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2023, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/25 "2023-01-04T21:37:28Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > We were shown this version of the movie in 8th grade English class when we were on our Shakespeare unit and the teacher just turned the TV to face the wall during the nude scene, so I don’t actually know how salacious it was. Public school kid here. We were shown it unedited. Everyone got a kick out of it, there wasn’t any scandal, parents were fine, kids were fine, teachers were fine. I think everyone just needs to settle down a bit. This stinks of the satanic panic from the 80s. It was art, not porn. > [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Everybody I saw it with at a 9th grade assembly would have assumed it was two adults if our English teachers didn’t harp on the fact that they weren’t. It’s been a while, but I have no recollection of their age being a topic of discussion at any point. We watched it in Freshman Honors English, so we were all younger than the actors. It’s a pretty recent phenomenon that artistic nudity featuring teens is especially scandalous. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2023, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/26 "2023-01-04T21:40:22Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Juliet looked very spathic. I have a pretty good vocabulary, but this is a new one on me. Fabjoyous day! Edit: Finishing scrolling, and I see I’m not alone. Once again boobs lead to advances in our collective knowledge! ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2023, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/27 "2023-01-04T21:50:08Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > It’s been a while, but I have no recollection of their age being a topic of discussion at any point. This was in class discussion about the play. I think the leads being the same age as the students is one of the reasons it is so often used as an introduction to Shakespeare to young teens. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2023, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/28 "2023-01-04T21:52:28Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > The claim that they originally were told they’d be wearing flesh colored suits but then had to go full nude on the day, without having permission from the parents? Who knows, but this strikes me as implausible if for no other reason than this type of nudity being so blasé and common for the time. I can’t recall ever seeing a film where a “nude” scene included flesh colored body suits. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2023, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/29 "2023-01-04T21:52:54Z")
Exactly. Many of the filmed versions of this play star older actors, so this was a little unusual for how young the actors were. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2023, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/30 "2023-01-04T21:54:42Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > I can’t recall ever seeing a film where a “nude” scene included flesh colored body suits. Movies is magic. You’re not supposed to notice. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2023, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/31 "2023-01-04T22:33:39Z")
One comment in favor of the actors: Just because the edited version of the movie had limited nudity does not mean that the actors had limited nudity on-set. Especially since we know that at the time there wwre a lot of movie people creeping on actresses. For all we know, that two seconds of partial nudity was the edited result of an entire day of making a 15-year-old girl run around nude on set so the director and others could ogle her. It would not be the first time that happened. It’s reminiscent of “Last Tango in Paris” in which Marlon Brando and director Bernardo Bertolucci plotted to withold details of a rape scene from actress Maria Schneider so that she would feel ‘true humiliation’ while filming and turn in a better performance. The scene was an anal rape with butter as a lubricant. All she knew is that it would be a simulated rape scene, but Brando pinned her down and actually used the butter on her. The penetration part was faked, but everything up to it was real, leaving her shaken and humiliated as intended. She had a really hard time after that, turning to drugs and alcohol as she was then considered just a sexual actress because of doing ‘extreme’ things on camera. It ruined her career. Then there was Brooke Shields, who did an entire movie (“Pretty Baby”) as a sexualized 12-year-old, incruding full-frontal nudity of her mid-pubescent body in a sexual context. I’m actually surprised that Shields came out of that experience whole. Even more surprised that her parents allowed it. Hollywood is a cesspool. It was a cesspool long before Harvey Weinstein came along, and it will be as long as there are people willing to do almost anything for fame and fortune mingling with people with immense power and money. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2023, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/32 "2023-01-04T23:24:56Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I remember us talking about why Juliet was played by someone so young, saying she would have actually been 14 or so in the play, somethin most of us had not caught on to. Almost 14. It’s explicitly stated in the play. And either the nurse or her mother (I can’t remember which) says that that means that she’s old enough that she should be getting married. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2023, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/33 "2023-01-04T23:44:50Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And either the nurse or her mother (I can’t remember which) says that that means that she’s old enough that she should be getting married. It’s Lady Capulet: “Younger than you, / Here in Verona, ladies of esteem / Are made already mothers.” (Juliet’s _father_ protests, briefly, that it isn’t good for girls to be mothers so young and Paris should wait a couple of years before they marry, but capitulates as soon as Paris insists.) (I suspect the “in Verona” part is important, by the way; people in early modern Europe were well aware that having babies too young increased the risk of dying in childbirth, and they generally didn’t encourage young couples to consummate their marriages that young, even in aristocratic circles where it was more or less normal to _contract_ marriages at an early age. But Shakespeare consistently portrays Verona as very patriarchal and very fucked up, which would have been typical of English stereotypes of Italians in this period.) ---
**Author:** ![caligulathegod](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/caligulathegod/32/9685_2.png) [@caligulathegod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/caligulathegod)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2023, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/34 "2023-01-05T00:42:18Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Based those ages, the movie scenes must have been shot two years before it was released (he was born July 1950, she was born April 1951). The movie was released October 8, 1968. Not that it matters much legally, they still weren’t 18 when it was shot, but it seems surprising. One wouldn’t think your basic costume drama would require 2 years of post-processing. They are not being accurate. Olivia Hussy was born 17 April 1951. Cast readings were in late May 1967, rehearsals and filming began at the end of June of 1967 and completed in October 1967. So, she was cast when 15, but was 16 during filming. The premiere was in 4-5 March 1968 in the UK. So there was only 5 months after filming to release. it came out in October in the US and Italy. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2023, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/35 "2023-01-05T00:46:04Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > One comment in favor of the actors: Just because the edited version of the movie had limited nudity does not mean that the actors had limited nudity on-set. Especially since we know that at the time there wwre a lot of movie people creeping on actresses. For all we know, that two seconds of partial nudity was the edited result of an entire day of making a 15-year-old girl run around nude on set so the director and others could ogle her. It would not be the first time that happened. An article in The New York Times says, “The scene was filmed on a closed set, Ms. Hussey recalled in the memoir, meaning that only essential crew members were allowed to be present, but there was one incident in which a ‘dirty old man’ on the crew had to be removed, she wrote.” ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2023, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/36 "2023-01-05T00:50:18Z")
> [@caligulathegod](#): > > The premiere was in 4-5 March 1968 in the UK. And Olivia has told the story in interviews that she was denied entrance to the theater because she was underage and there were naked bosoms in the movie. She stopped, shocked, then grabbed her chestal area and wailed “But they’re _mine_!” ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2023, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/37 "2023-01-05T00:53:11Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Then there was Brooke Shields, who did an entire movie (“Pretty Baby”) as a sexualized 12-year-old, incruding full-frontal nudity of her mid-pubescent body in a sexual context. I’m actually surprised that Shields came out of that experience whole. Even more surprised that her parents allowed it. Hell, she did a whole nude “glamour” pictorial when she was 10 or 11. Had it been the 90s instead of the 70s everyone would have got hauled away. But one thing to bear in mind – as mentioned, all this sort of stuff was what many people were telling themselves was artsy or edgy… and _objectively_ the content _was_ artistic. The issue in this case ISTM is of civil liability based on the well-known track record of _exploitive_ conduct in this work. If it comes out that every i was dotted and every t was crossed then the plaintiffs’ hopes may be for the court to follow the legal doctrine of _“eeewwww…”_ ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2023, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/38 "2023-01-05T01:21:44Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Hell, she did a whole nude “glamour” pictorial when she was 10 or 11. Had it been the 90s instead of the 70s everyone would have got hauled away. She later sued for the rights to those photos, and lost. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2023, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/39 "2023-01-05T01:31:12Z")
My parents took my older sister and me to the movie when it came out (I was 12 and had already read the play, which, of course, had no nude scenes but plenty of double entendres.) I loved it. I also developed small crushes on Leonard Whiting and Michael York. My mother would probably have covered my eyes during the nudity, but it went by too quickly. Also, the lightning-brief nudity wasn’t mentioned in the ads, so she wasn’t expecting it. Fast-forward about [mumble-mumble] years. I showed the movie to my frosh English classes in the very conservative high school where I taught. We had an edited version that cut out the blink-and-you-miss-it nudity. We also had the unedited version. Once I somehow put the unedited version in the VCR. I panicked, but even the ultra-conservative LDS kids weren’t fazed. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2023, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630/40 "2023-01-05T01:40:31Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > One wouldn’t think your basic costume drama would require 2 years of post-processing. Movies can get stuck. “Blue Sky,” the movie Jessica Lange won an Oscar for, wasn’t released for four years until after it was shot. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-and-juliet-1968-actors-sue-paramount-for-child-abuse-over-underage-nudity/977630.md?page=3)