Jane Fonda Sues Over Eight-Story Nude Drawing

Mar. 15, 1965 - A Times Square theater draped a canvas today over an eight-story drawing of a nude, reclining Jane Fonda that advertised her latest film, “Circle of Love.”

A spokesman for Miss Fonda, who is now in Hollywood, said that the actress had suffered “anguish” and “shame” because of the unauthorized picture. Miss Fonda has engaged the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison to sue for compensatory and punitive damages amounting to a total of $3 million. 

The sign is over the DeMille Theater on 47th St. and Seventh Ave., where the film opens on Mar. 24. The theater operators, Walter Reade-Sterling, Inc., were served with a summons today.

Mr. Reade said he could not understand what “the fuss is all about.”

“We are not in the pornography, cheap and salacious business,” he declared. “The artist worked from picture stills, and the concept was in very good taste.”

In the film, directed by Roger Vadim, a bed-hopping coterie of soldiers, prostitutes, maids, actors, and aristocrats swap lovers amid the opulence of pre-World War I Europe. Miss Fonda’s nude scene in the film is the first by a major American actress in a foreign film.

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