Romeo and Juliet (1936 film)

Romeo and Juliet is a 1936 American film adapted from the play by Shakespeare, directed by George Cukor from a screenplay by Talbot Jennings. The film stars Leslie Howard as Romeo and Norma Shearer as Juliet, and the supporting cast features John Barrymore, Basil Rathbone and Andy Devine.

Producer Irving Thalberg pushed MGM for five years to make a film of Romeo and Juliet, in spite of studio head Louis B. Mayers resistance. Mayer believed that the mass audience considered the Bard over their heads, and also he was concerned with the studios budget constraints during the early years of the Great Depression. It was only when Jack L. Warner announced his intention to film Max Reinhardts A Midsummer Nights Dream at Warner Bros. that Mayer, not to be outdone, gave Thalberg the goahead. The success of a 1934 Broadway revival also encouraged the idea of a film version. It starred Katharine Cornell as Juliet, Basil Rathbone as Romeo, Brian Aherne as Mercutio and Edith Evans as The Nurse. Rathbone is the only actor from the 1934 revival to appear in the film, albeit in the role of Tybalt rather than Romeo. On the stage Tybalt was played by nineteen year old Orson Welles.Thalbergs stated intention was to make the production what Shakespeare would have wanted had he possessed the facilities of cinema. He went to great lengths to establish authenticity and the films intellectual credentials researchers were sent to Verona to take photographs for the designers the paintings of Botticelli, Bellini, Carpaccio and Gozzoli were studied to provide visual inspiration and two academic advisers John Tucker Murray of Harvard and William Strunk, Jr. of Cornell were flown to the set, with instructions to criticise the production freely. ........

Source: Wikipedia