 Shearer and Leslie Howard , with a combined age over 75 , played the teenage lovers in George Cukor 's MGM 1936 film version . Neither critics nor the public responded enthusiastically . <unk> considered the film too " arty " , staying away as they had from Warner 's A Midsummer Night Dream a year before : leading to Hollywood abandoning the Bard for over a decade . Renato Castellani won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival for his 1954 film of Romeo and Juliet . His Romeo , Laurence Harvey , was already an experienced screen actor . By contrast , Susan <unk> , as Juliet , was a secretarial student who was discovered by the director in a London pub , and was cast for her " pale sweet skin and honey @-@ blonde hair " . 
