Īs in most Shakespeare-based screenplays, Cukor and his screenwriter Talbot Jennings cut much of the original play, using around 45% of it. The shoot extended to six months, and the budget reached $2 million, MGM's most expensive sound film up to that time. In consequence, actors previously noted for naturalism were found to give more stage-like performances. In addition to such noted Shakespearean actors as Howard and Barrymore, Thalberg cast many screen actors and brought in East Coast drama coaches (such as Frances Robinson Duff who coached Shearer) to teach them. Thalberg's vision was that the performance of Norma Shearer, his wife, would dominate the picture. Thalberg had only one choice for director: George Cukor, who was known as "the women's director". John Barrymore, Leslie Howard and Basil Rathbone from a lobby card. of Cornell) were flown to the set, with instructions to criticise the production freely. Thalberg's 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 film's 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. On the stage Tybalt was played by nineteen year old Orson Welles. Rathbone is the only actor from the 1934 revival to appear in the film, albeit in the role of Tybalt rather than Romeo. It starred Katharine Cornell as Juliet, Basil Rathbone as Romeo, Brian Aherne as Mercutio, and Edith Evans as The Nurse. The success of a 1934 Broadway revival also encouraged the idea of a film version.
that Mayer, not to be outdone, gave Thalberg the go-ahead. Warner announced his intention to film Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream at Warner Bros. Mayer believed that the mass audience considered the Bard over their heads, and also he was concerned with the studio's budget constraints during the early years of the Great Depression. Producer Irving Thalberg pushed MGM for five years to make a film of Romeo and Juliet, in spite of studio head Louis B. See also: Romeo and Juliet on screen: George Cukor (1936) Development
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