Too Much and Too Late: The Hussey/Whiting Lawsuit

Hussey and Whiting as Curmie prefers to remember them.

Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting are suing Paramount Pictures for “more than” $500 million because of “sexual abuse” that occurred over 54 years ago. Yes, really. Their story is that they “suffered emotional damage and mental anguish for decades” because of their treatment surrounding the nude scene in Franco Zeffirelli’s famous film version of “Romeo and Juliet,” in which they played the title characters. 

All this reminds Curmie of the case of the “Nirvana baby,” I wrote about a year and a half ago. You may recall that after years of exploiting his accidental claim to fame, Spencer Elden, whose four-month-old dangly bits appeared on the cover of the “Nevermind” album, would have us believe he was traumatized to the tune of over $2.25 million. Hussey and Whiting, of course, are suing for a couple hundred times that figure and waiting nearly twice as long. That they may have suffered some anxiety over the nude scene is pretty close to undeniable. That they were damaged to the extent of $500 million is laughable. That they’re bringing suit over a half century after the fact is worse. 

The suit is possible because of a recently-enacted California law which suspends the statute of limitations for cases of child sexual abuse. (I confess I’m a little confused here, as I thought the statute of limitations applied only to criminal cases, and this is obviously a civil suit.) Anyway, the actors, now in their 70s (he was 16 and she was 15 when filming began), claim that Zeffirelli had told them that they’d wear flesh-colored underwear for the scene in question, then insisted when they arrived for the shoot that they had to perform in the nude (with body makeup) or “the picture would fail” and there would be fallout for their careers. 

They were assured, they say, that camera angles would be such that nudity would not be shown. (How Zeffirelli could get away with claiming they needed to be nude, then, is not terribly clear. Some kind of bizarre variation on “method” work?) 

There is no compelling reason to disbelieve the actors’ account. Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, was a brilliant director and, apparently, a first-class creep. Curmie has no difficulty believing he would manipulate a pair of teenage actors into doing what he wanted and then lie about it later. What is objectively true is that there is a short sequence in the final cut in which Whiting’s buttocks and Hussey’s breasts are briefly visible. (You can see the moment in question here if you’re curious; that this image is available on imdb tells you pretty much all you need to know.)  

More to the point, that film was seen by literally millions of people, including, no doubt, thousands of law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges, attorneys general, and the like. Oh, and also presumably by the actors’ parents, who certainly granted tacit if not explicit permission for the scene to be shot and released as it was. Yes, people knew of the evanescent nudity, but the portrayal of Mercutio (John McEnery) as having homoerotic feelings for Romeo was perhaps the film’s most controversial element. 

So the argument made by walking lawyer joke Solomon Gresen that “Nude images of minors are unlawful and shouldn’t be exhibited” is severely undercut by the simple fact that no one (or at least no one in a position to take legal action) thought the scene was “unlawful” at the time or, indeed, in the several decades since the film’s release. 

Plus, of course, as recently as 2018, Hussey proclaimed the scene “was needed for the film,” and that “Everyone thinks they were so young they probably didn’t realize what they were doing. But we were very aware. We both came from drama schools and when you work, you take your work very seriously.” In other words, she was either lying about that scene four and a half years ago or she’s lying now. 

Both Hussey and Whiting went on to reasonably successful careers in film and related fields: Whiting also did a fair amount of stage work and sang with the Alan Parsons Project; Hussey was, according to Beloved Spouse, who fit the target demographic, “on every magazine cover” and in a host of cosmetic print ads. Neither, however, has achieved the level of stardom one might have expected; indeed, it would be difficult for the average person to name a single film either has done since “Romeo and Juliet.” 

They claim (now) that the mental anguish caused by that scene between two adolescents who actually did “fancy each other” prevented them from achieving stardom. Curmie is skeptical, to say the least. Fact is, not all dreams come true. To choose a more recent variation on the theme of teenage stars, Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson are now huge attractions, but it would take a real fan to name a single Rupert Grint or Evanna Lynch film project outside the world of Harry Potter. Yet both continue to work, and neither need worry about whether they can afford to Supersize that Big Mac combo. So it goes, sometimes. 

“Romeo and Juliet” offered Hussey and Whiting breakthrough roles, effectively launching their careers, but I have no doubt that they suffered moments of regret and perhaps shame. Certainly Zeffirelli was already internationally famous (mostly as an opera director), and in the position to derail the futures of the teenagers had they not submitted to his demands. It is understandable that they felt something akin to blackmail. They certainly would have had a case against Zeffirelli (and perhaps, but not necessarily, Paramount) back in the ‘60s. Of course, the director’s death a couple of years ago makes it a lot harder for him to rebut their allegations. Coincidence? Perhaps; perhaps not. 

But here’s the thing: it took a change in the California law to allow a lawsuit to go forward. There has never been anything, however, to prevent their going public with their stories ages ago. With the exception of their reunion project, an apparently terrible 2015 film called “Social Suicide,” which, ever-so-coincidentally was, according to imdb, “loosely based on Romeo and Juliet” (get it?), Hussey hasn’t made a film since 2008; Whiting was in a TV series in the ‘90s, but has no film credits since 1975. Their careers have effectively been over for years, so it’s not like they feared they’d lose future projects which weren’t coming, anyway. 

Curmie does not deny that altruism might be a motivation for this suit, but he doubts that it’s, if you’ll pardon the pun, paramount. Rather, the two septuagenarian erstwhile actors seem to have succumbed to the Great God Victimhood, which has now replaced Scientology as the trendiest pseudo-religion amongst the Beautiful People. They certainly have adopted that system’s Holy Trinity of Narcissism, Opportunism, and Greed. In doing so, they have marred both their own legacies and, alas, the movie that made them famous. 

That’s too bad; it’s a good film.