Teenage nudity suit isn't relitigating the past

More than half a century after the release of Franco Zeffirelli’s blockbuster rendition of Romeo and Juliet, the now-septuagenarian stars, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, are suing the film’s distributor, Paramount Pictures, for sexually exploiting them and distributing nude images of adolescent children.

In accordance with California law extending the statute of limitations for child sex abuse, Whiting and Hussey, who were 16 and 15 years old respectively when filming the Shakespearean tragedy, allege that the late Zeffirelli reneged on his promise that the pair would wear flesh-colored undergarments when filming intimate scenes, threatening on set that “the Picture would fail” without nudity.