Nolte: Son of ‘Romeo & Juliet’ Director Ridicules Nudity Lawsuit

Pippo Zeffirelli, the son of Romeo and Juliet director Franco Zeffirelli, ripped into the film’s stars for filing an abuse lawsuit 55 years after the movie’s release.

Franco Zeffirelli died in 2019.

Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, who are collectively 143 years old, have filed a $500 million suit against Paramount Pictures with the absurd claim they were abused during the production.

The lawsuit targets the director and accuses him of the abuse, but since he’s dead, Paramount is the target:

Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, allegedly told the two young actors that they would wear flesh-colored undergarments in the bedroom scene and would use camera angles to obscure the nudity, the suit alleges.

…

Whiting, who played Romeo, and Hussey, who played Juliet, said they were filmed in the nude without their knowledge, in violation of California and federal laws against indecency and the exploitation of children, the suit says.

The two stars said Zeffirelli told them they must act in the nude “or the Picture would fail,” the suit said. He also suggested their careers would be hurt, it added. So, the actors “believed they had no choice but to act in the nude in body makeup as demanded,” the suit said.

As I pointed out last week, this lawsuit is absurd. The nudity involving 15-year-old Hussey (a quick shot of her breasts) and 16 or 17-year-old Whiting (a look at his bum) was, by any definition, artistic. Further, the age of consent in Italy, where the movie was filmed, is 14. As far as I can tell, it was 14 in 1968.

Further, as recently as 2016, both Whiting and Hussey appeared at a Los Angeles screening of the film, where they gushed over their director and described the entire experience as an “inspiration.”

 

On this very day, Hussey’s own website reads, “We invite you to join Olivia and Leonard to celebrate and warmly reflect on their 50-plus years of friendship and the magical ‘Romeo and Juliet’ experience.”

Magical.

The most despicable part of this naked (pun intended) cash grab is that the elder Zeffirelli is no longer around to defend himself. Dead three years, he’s being # MeToo’d 55 years after the fact by two greedy, grasping performers he made famous.

Zeffirelli’s son had this to say:

It is embarrassing to hear that today, 55 years after filming, two elderly actors who owe their notoriety essentially to this film wake up to declare that they have suffered an abuse that has caused them years of anxiety and emotional discomfort.

It appears to me that in all these years, they have always maintained a relationship of deep gratitude and friendship towards Zeffirelli, releasing hundreds of interviews about the happy memory of their very fortunate experience, which was crowned with worldwide success.

Zeffirelli himself was accused of being reactionary precisely because, over and over again, he spoke out against pornography. The nude images in the film express the beauty, the transfer, I would even say the candor of mutual giving and do not contain any morbid feeling.

He also reminded everyone that Hussey was so “traumatized” from working with Zeffirelli in 1968 that she agreed to work with him in 1977 to play Holy Mother Mary in Zeffirelli’s masterful TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth.

How greedy and broken do aging clowns have to be to hurl false accusations at a dead man who made them who they are? Well, I’m glad Pippo is standing up for his dad. That’s not an easy thing to do against the fascist #MeToo movement.

As I said before, I’m not defending filming the naked breasts of 15-year-old girls, but Italy has a right to decide its own consent laws. There was no exploitation, and we have over a half-century of testimony from the two litigants proving there was no trauma or trickery.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.