Romeo and Juliet (1916 Fox film) Romeo and Juliet (1916 Fox film) Romeo and Juliet is a 1916 American silent romantic drama film directed by J. Gordon Edwards and starring Theda Bara. The film was based on Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" and was produced by the Fox Film Corporation. The film was shot at the Fox Studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. This film and other Shakespeare-oriented pictures were released in 1916, the 300th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death. This film went up against direct competition from another feature-length "Romeo and Juliet" film from Metro Pictures starring Francis X. Bushman and Beverly Bayne. In a recorded
Romeo and Juliet (1936 film) 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. 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