Trivia for
Romeo and Juliet (1936) More at IMDbPro »

• This was the last film producer Irving Thalberg personally produced before his death in September, 1936.
  
  
• The film's literary consultant was Professor William Strunk Jr., co-author of the famous treatise on the English language, Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style".
  
  
• The role of Mercutio was the only Shakespearean role that John Barrymore ever played complete onscreen. His only other screen appearances in Shakespearean roles were in a screen test for a never-made film version of "Hamlet", a soliloquy as Richard III in the 1929 film "The Show of Shows", and a role in the film "Playmates", as a hammy Shakespearean actor.
  
  
• Contains the only on-screen sword fight that expert swordsman Basil Rathbone won in his entire career.
  
  
• The role of Romeo was turned down by Laurence Olivier.
  
  
• The role of Romeo was turned down by Robert Donat.
  
  
• Basil Rathbone played Tybalt in this film even though he had triumphed in the role of Romeo on Broadway in 1934, opposite the Juliet of Katharine Cornell.
  
  
• Because she wanted to play the Nurse in this film, Edna May Oliver turned down Universal's offer to reprise her stage role of Parthy Ann Hawks in the 1936 film version of Show Boat (1936). The Nurse turned out to be Oliver's only Shakespearean role.
  
  
• An autographed copy of the script adaptation, containing the signatures of 27 cast and crew members (including Rathbone, Howard and Shearer) was donated to the University of Idaho library by Talbot Jennings in 1939.
  
  
• The role of Romeo was originally offered to John Gielgud, who had just had a triumph in a stage production of the play in London in which he alternated the roles of Romeo and Mercutio with Laurence Olivier. Gielgud not only turned the part down (thinking that Shakespeare couldn't effectively be presented on screen), but was so disgusted by the finished film that he walked out of the theater after watching only fifteen minutes of it.
  
  
• William Randolph Hearst campaigned heavily for Marion Davies (Hearst's mistress) to star as Juliet. However, MGM thought Davies would be miscast and should only stick to comedies.
  
  
• Fredric March, Robert Donat and Robert Montgomery all turned down the lead before Leslie Howard was cast.
  
  

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