Romeo and Juliet (Paramount Pictures) (1968)

Teenaged “Unknowns” Are “Star-Crossed Lovers” In Zeffirelli’s Romeo And Juliet Italian director Franco Zeffirelli stunned the screen world when he cast two virtual unknowns to play the “star-crossed lovers,” in Zeffirelli’s ROMEO AND JULIET, a BHE Film for Paramount Pictures, opening .... From 300 youngsters auditioned during more than three months, the director chose 17-year old Leonard Whiting and 15-year old Olivia Hussey who became the youngest performers ever to play the roles professionally. Whiting is a handsome London lad who finished school only two weeks before beginning the film. He played the Artful Dodger in the long-running London musical “Oliver!” for 18 months, and for 13 months appeared in the National Theatre production of Congreve’s “Love for Love,’ which toured Moscow and Berlin. Miss Hussey, age 15, is the daughter of an Argentine opera singer and an English mother. She has been in England for seven years, and until a week before starting Zeffirelli’is ROMEO AND JULIET was playing a schoolgirl in the London stage hit, “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” “They are exactly what Shakespeare would have wanted,” according to Zeffirelli. “This is a young persons’ ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ The kids in the story are like teenagers today: they don’t want to be, and yet they are, involved in adult hates and wars.” “Zeffirell’s ROMEO AND JULIET is an English language film, photographed in Technicolor. Franco Brusati adapted Shakespeare’s play for the screen, retaining all the great moments and speeches but translating much of the rest—particularly dialogue which makes Shakespeare difficult for audiences—into action. “It is the essence of Shakespeare, told in film terms,” explains the Mat 1B Still #R&I10 LEONARD WHITING is a young Londoner, who although only 17 years old, had four years of experience on the London stage and in television. The Franco Zeffirelli Production of ROMEO & JULIET, a BHE Film for Paramount Pictures, which opens ........ at the sts aeeemereke theatre, is his first motion picture. It is a resound© ing success. gen erleeree BU ENG iisscsestsvierce 2d NEALE, director, ‘what Shakespeare might have done himself had he been able to visualize his play in the quick-moving medium of the cinema.” The Italian nature of the story of Romeo and Juliet is emphasized by the settings by Renzo Mongiardino and costumes by Danilo Donati. Long before Shakespeare’s tragedy was first performed in 1597, the names of the youthful lovers first appeared in a story told in Italy by Luigi da Porto about 1530, and later, in 1554 in one by Matteo Bandello. A French version of the latter gave rise to Arthur Brooke’s long poem “The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet” which appeared in England in 1562 and was known to Shakespeare. In choosing his backgrounds, Zeffirelli shot exteriors in the Da Porto-Bandello periods, in the Romanesque church of Tuseania and in the Tuscany hill town of Pienza, built by Pope Pius II in the mid-16th Century to memorialize the village of his birth. Zeffirelli, himself a talented designer, is an authoritv on Shakespeare. He directed a celebrated “Romeo and Juliet” at London’s Old Vic in 1960, which crossed the Atlantic and delighted the United States. Next came “Othello” at Stratford-on-Avon, with John Gielgud, Verdi’s opera “Falstaff,” based on Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” staged for the Metropolitan Opera, New York; his Italian-language “Romeo and Juliet” staged in Rome; and two years ago “Much Ado About Nothing” for England’s National Theatre. Stil F#R&I4L Mat 1C OLIVIA HUSSEY, at the tender age of fifteen, a shy petite brunette beauty of ArgentineEnglish parentage. Chosen for international screen stardom by director Franco Zeffirelli from more than 300 eandidates to portray Juliet in his new Technicolor English language Production of ROMEO & JULIET, a Paramount Pictures Presentation of a BHE Film. In Technicolor it opens Sifeaousties at the ...... theatre. “Youngest” To Portray “Romeo And Juliet” The stars of the Franco Zeffirelli Production of ROMEO AND JULIET, a BHE Film for Paramount Pictures, features the youngest performers ever to professionally play Shakespeare’s starcrossed lovers. Starring in the motion picture, which opens ................. Oe RD ha ean Theatre are 17-year-old Leonard Whiting and 16-year-old Olivia Hussey. The young British performers are the latest in a long line of distinguished actors and actresses to play on stage and screen in what is one of the most popular tragedies in the history of theatre. Shakespeare Is A Modern Playwright by Leonard Whiting Everybody thinks that life must be totally different now that I had this great break in the Franco Zeffirelli Production of ROMEO AND JULIET. The great break is true enough and it was a wonderful opportunity. Especially since I never thought of myself as a romantic actor. But what always puzzles me is the way people think and talk about Shakespeare. A sort of veneration cult. Above the world and above the clouds. I don’t think Shakespeare would have liked that. He must have been a very earthy, human man along with his great dramatic gift. I think he would have liked the way Franco Zeffirelli made ROMEO AND JULIET. Zeffirelli often said to me that Shakespeare is such a genius that the biggest mistake is to make some kind of stone effigy of him— ee his work must pulsate with life. I used to sing with a group called the Four Tunes when I was twelve. I liked it then. I wouldn’t like it now. There’s so much more in acting. I want to get back to the stage sometime soon and learn a_ lot more than I know now. One thing that most people misunderstand is that acting is a job like everything else. For a film you get up at six, like you might be going to a factory. You have got to keep in shape to make it. I love parties but it knocks me out if I stay up late if there is work the next. morning, so I have cut that out. One other thing. It would have been harder if somebody other than Olivia Hussey had been playing Juliet. She was a big help. We understood each other and got along perfectly, even when we had spats. “Romeo and Juliet” a Paramount Picture in Technicolor opens Nae Serene ane at the ........ Theatre. Playing Juliet Fantastic Experience by Olivia Hussey It’s hard to believe that playing Juliet is something that was real. When I showed up for the first audition with Franco Zeffirelli and there was a room filled with pretty blue-eyed blondes, I wanted to leave. I was so nervous I fluffed everything—and I only had eight lines to do. It was the death scene in the play, and I just couldn’t remember anything. I had a sort of relieved feeling when I knew my chances were gone. I couldn’t believe it when I was called back. This time I had to do the baleony scene. That’s when I met Leonard Whiting. I thought, “Oh, he would make a_ nice Romeo.” But I knew I wouldn’t be playing with him even if he was lucky and got the part. Then it all happened, and suddenly I was working in Italy. Zeffirelli is a lovely man. He used to bully me and I would bully him back. We had a fight when he gave me a 75-year-old chaperone in Rome, and stopped me from ever going out at night. Then he wouldn’t let me go swimming if the sun was out. He said one speck of tan would spoil everything. It was maddening to squat under an umbrella and watch other people in the water. But I found I would rather have Zeffirelli say “You’re stupid” than for any other director to say “You’re wonderful.” Visiting America was great fun. t was what I have always wanted. I haven’t thought much yet about a Hollywood picture, but I wouldn’t mind. I don’t want to do another classic sort of role, not for a long time. Something very modern, and maybe something with music. “Romeo and Juliet” a Paramount Picture in Technicolor opens............ Oe Tee sos pueseame Theatre. Zeffirelli’s Romeo And Juliet Filmed In Historic Italian Church In Franco Zeffirellli’s Production of ROMEO AND JULIET, a BHE Film for Paramount Pictures opening ................ at the dissetieseeee Theatre, the star-crossed lovers are married in a beautiful Romanesque church set amid the rolling hills and farms of Tuscany. Director Franco Zeffirelli first saw the church of San Pietro in the town of Tuscania, near Viterbo, when, as a student of architecture at the University of Florence, he bicycled there to study it. His new film version of the Shakespeare tragedy has decor and costumes of the mid-15th Century Renaissance period. Before the High Altar of San Pietro, Friar Laurence played by Milo O’Shea, unites Romeo, portrayed by 17year-old Leonard Whiting and Juliet, played by 15-year-old Olivia Hussey. Outside the church’s ruined walls, Zeffirelli filmed the scene in which Romeo comes at dawn to Friar Laurence, who is tending his herb garden, to ask that he marry him to Juliet, and a scene in which the Friar walks Romeo through his vineyard. An estimated 80,000,000 televiewers saw Zeffirelli rehearse the wedding sequence in San Pietro on the evening of June 25, 1967, as part of a global “Our World” satellite telecast, one of RAI’s (Italian Television) two live telecast episodes from Italy. The sequence, lasting six minutes, meant two separate days of rehearsals for directors and actors, and preparations before that involving tons of camera equipment, cables, lights, generators, and dozens of technicians. But the global preview was a perfect occasion for Zeffirelli finally presents the young performers to the world. The Church of San Pietro is regarded by historians as an admirable example of Roman-Lombard architecture of the 7th Century. It is considered a work of the “Comacini,”’ direct descendants of the Byzantine school, who formed a colony at Lacio in the Viterbo region. According to tradition construction was begun by Saint Deodato in the middle of the Third Century and continued in the 11th and 12th Centuries. The facade, composed of three arched doors facing East, has been restored several times— under Popes Eugene IV in 1448, under Nicholas V in 1450, under Julius II in the early 1500’s, under Clement XII in 1734, and under Pius VII in the 1800’s. The Central door, above which is an elegant false balcony, is decorated with Arabic-style mosaics. Still #R&JI55 Mat 1A SHAKESPEARE WOULD HAVE APPROVED the stars of the Franco Zeffirelli Production of ROMEO AND JULIET, a BHE Film for Paramount Pictures, features the youngest performers ever to professionally play Shakespeare’s star crossed lovers. ROMEO & JULIET opens ...... at the Paiva theatre. The huge circular window high over the main door has symbolic angels surrounding it. Inside the circle are Roman-Arabic figures of monsters and animals in grotesque, fantastic profusion. The two small windows alongside are surrounded with floral decorations. Under the left window there is a relief figure, probably Etruscan, of a man dancing. The long aisle of San Pietro, is divided on each side by three simply built arches mounted on bases of Roman style, but mysterious origin. The arches have an unusual design of fruit. The floor is a stupendous mosaic in the Comacini style. A faded fresco on plaster by unknown medieval artists is behind the High Altar. The wooden roof is being restored. Now an Italian Government museum, San Pietro on its commanding hilltop site outside the walls of the old town of Tuscania is a serene resting place for the student of religion and of ancient design. Still #R&I56 Mat 2A PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW whispers Romeo (Leonard Whiting) as he leaves Juliet’s (Olivia Hussey) baleony. Paramount Pictures presents the Franco Zeffirelli production of ROMEO & JULIET, a BHE film in Technicolor opening ........ ALMENE ss SePotR theatre.