Romeo and Juliet Stars Sue Paramount for Child Abuse Over Nude Scene in 1968 Film

The suit alleges that Zeffirelli — who died in 2019 — assured both actors that there would be no nudity in the film, and that they would wear flesh-colored undergarments in the bedroom scene. But in the final days of filming, the director allegedly implored them to perform in the nude with body makeup, ‘or the Picture would fail.'”

“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.'”

So why the change in heart? Simple … $$$

“They are seeking damages ‘believed to be in excess of $500 million.’”

15 thoughts on “Romeo and Juliet Stars Sue Paramount for Child Abuse Over Nude Scene in 1968 Film

  1. This is all bullshit. These people want money, plain and simple. Reminds me of when Kim Basinger sued to get out of the movie Boxing Helena supposedly over the nudity in it. She then went on to do The Getaway remake that she produced along with Alec Baldwin where she did nude scenes. Her and Baldwin just wanted to make sure they got a bigger piece of the pie from her nudity.

    In the end, Basinger lost the case and had to pay a lot of money to the makers of Boxing Helena. It pretty much bankrupted her at the time. Greed runs Hollywood, it’s the only reason people take a chance to go out there. They will do whatever it takes to cash in. At least Basinger lost the case which was well-deserved.

    1. This is the story I’d always heard: “Cates decided to try acting, and she made her film debut in 1982’s “Paradise.” Though she was initially uncertain about the job because it required nudity, her father encouraged her to do the movie, telling her, “What are you going to do, model for the rest of your life? What are you so hung up on nudity for?” Right on, Dad! But this was new to me: “Cates alleged that producers of the movie filmed naked close-ups of her character using a body double without her permission, and she refused to do any promotion for the movie.” So the waterfall shower is her, but the butt shots where you can’t see her face are unfortunately BD.

    1. That’s the very reason they filed at the end of the year. California passed a law that temporarily suspended the statute of limitations for older claims of child sexual abuse, which allowed people to sue the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church.

      The temporary suspension ended on midnight December 31, and this lawsuit was filed December 30th. I guess the good news for the industry is that there can’t be any copycat suits from Brooke Shields or Phoebe Cates or others, because the statute of limitations has now been reinstated, but the Paramount lawyers will still have to deal with this one.

      There is at least some chance they will settle, irrespective of the suit’s merits, at least with some modest payoff. There is a good chance that Paramount is up for sale, so the management may want to clear that lawsuit. People are probably going to be reluctant to buy it with that massive lawsuit hanging over its head, and an extended trial could eat up millions in legal fees and take forever, so Paramount may be better off offering a settlement just to get it off the books, especially considering that a settlement would not establish any precedent, now that the statute of limitations has been reinstated.

  2. The timing is interesting. Wait until the director is dead. If you sue while he is alive you are suing him – maybe he has no money – but if you wait until he’s dead, you are suing the studio, which has tons of money?

    Pure speculation; I know nothing about legal matters.

    1. This was some California me-too inspired law for a one-time chance for anyone to sue after the statutory time was up. So they waited to sue until they could. Not a terrible idea, but if they want real justice, they should be suing their parents.

  3. I first saw Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet in 1982 or 1983 in my 9th grade English class after we read the play. I was really surprised that they would show nudity like that in school. The film was rated PG, but my 12th grade social studies teacher censored the PG film she showed us. At the end of The Front, Woody Allen tells the committee investigating communists to go Fuck themselves. But I didn’t actually know that was what he he said until I saw the film again decades later because Mrs. Plavin stood by the TV and turned off the sound just before he said it. I suppose it could be argued that a bad word is worse than a flash of boobs, but it wasn’t as if a class where the youngest person was 17 had never heard that word. Still, I taught high school for a while and I was always careful about anything I showed my students. The difference between how my teachers treated us was probably because my English teacher had been teaching for 30 years, didn’t think the nudity was a big deal, and didn’t care what anyone else thought. I am sure tenure helped in that regard.

    1. I saw it about the same time and same age; I remember that the school sent home a permission slip for parent’s to sign because of the nudity.

      1. It’s kind of amazing what my high school didn’t think parents needed to know. The parents of the students of the Bronx High School of Science tended to be a lot more politically powerful than at the average Bronx high school. For instance my best friends father was chairman of the Assembly Education Committee. But the Board of Education and the Bronx Science administration didn’t feel the parents needed to know that one of our teachers was not only a member of NAMBLA (The North American Man Boy Love Association not the North American Marlon Brando Look-alike Association) he was a member of their national board and founded and edited their newsletter. John Miller, then a reporter for the local NBC station did a story outing Peter Melzer when he managed to get a hidden camera into a meeting where Melzer advised a younger teacher that he shouldn’t let his school know he was a member until he had tenure. Interestingly, after the story aired the Board of Education tried to fire him. But Melzer sued and it was over a decade before they managed to finally fire him. Melzer argued that there was no evidence he ever did anything illegal with a child and had a 1st Amendment right to be a member. The Board argued allowing him to teach (he’d been on sabbatical when the story aired) would be disruptive. The Court of Appeals decision basically said “D’uh” to that.

    2. That’s wild, our middle school French teacher showed Truffaut’s Small Change with the kids looking at the lady showering but laughingly made feeble attempt to block the view

  4. More than likely settlement for aging unemployed actors, but this whole thing is having a moment: Kaya Scodelario just blamed her stage mom for forcing her to do the Skins sex scenes, & Brooke Shields, on her pod, was going over all the well-trod weird shit on Blue Lagoon – sex scenes when she’s 14 is def lawsuit-worthy, even tho she obviously had BD for skinny-dipping in it (rather than Pretty Baby – yikes)

    1. This one, yeah, they were likely very underpaid at that time and had the money taken by parents. Still not the way to handle it.

      Didn’t know about Scodelario.

      As for Shields, that really wasn’t the point of that episode. She had Chris Atkins on and they talked about the experience making the movie. Briefly, they talked about it in a “they couldn’t make that movie today” kind of way. There were things that made both of them uncomfortable. Atkins was 18, Shields 14, and the whole deal was chock full of awkward “oh shit they’re really gonna have us do this” situations.

      She wasn’t outraged, or claiming abuse. In fact, she was talking about how innocent she was…which, given Pretty Baby two years prior…that’s a strange thing to say. The situations in PB demanded of Shields were WAY more extreme than Blue Lagoon, what with actual nudity and suggested sexual situations, where BL was about 99% innocent and just hair plastered to boobs frolicking and some close contact with a nude Atkins.

      Given that this was, to my memory, the first time Shields had really gone in depth about this period of her career, it’s interesting. I’m wondering if she’ll have Sarandon on and address Pretty Baby. Sarandon has said some conflicting things about Shields in that film before, so it’d be interesting to hear the truth.

      1. Then there is “Paradise.” From IMDb: “Cates was 17 years of age when she starred in this movie and did the nude scenes. The film was one of two movies that Cates starred in 1982, the other was Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). Cates not only is one of the film’s two leads but was also selected as a performer to sing the movie’s theme song, the “Paradise Theme”. Cates refused to promote the film due to the depiction of nudity in the movie. According to Willie Aames, Cates was very upset by this.”

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