How Rasputin Inspired the “Fictitious Persons” Disclaimer Commonly Seen in Movies

“This is a work of fic­tion,” declares the dis­claimer we’ve all noticed dur­ing the end cred­its of movies. “Any sim­i­lar­i­ty to actu­al per­sons, liv­ing or dead, or actu­al events, is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal.” In most cas­es, this may seem so triv­ial that it hard­ly mer­its a men­tion, but the very same dis­claimer also rolls up after pic­tures very clear­ly intend­ed to rep­re­sent actu­al events or per­sons, liv­ing or dead. Most of us would write it all off as one more absur­di­ty cre­at­ed by the elab­o­rate pan­tomime of Amer­i­can legal cul­ture, but a clos­er look at its his­to­ry reveals a much more intrigu­ing ori­gin.

As told in the Ched­dar video above, the sto­ry begins with Rasputin and the Empress, a 1932 Hol­ly­wood movie about the tit­u­lar real-life mys­tic and his involve­ment with the court of Nicholas II, the last emper­or of Rus­sia. Hav­ing been killed in 1916, Rasputin him­self was­n’t around to get liti­gious about his vil­lain­ous por­tray­al (by no less a per­former than Lionel Bar­ry­more, inci­den­tal­ly, act­ing along­side his sib­lings John and Ethel as the prince and cza­ri­na). It was actu­al­ly one of Rasputin’s sur­viv­ing killers, an exiled aris­to­crat named Felix Yusupov, who sued MGM, accus­ing them of defam­ing his wife, Princess Iri­na Yusupov, in the form of the char­ac­ter Princess Natasha.

The film casts Princess Natasha as a sup­port­er of Rasputin, writes Slate’s Dun­can Fyfe, “but the mys­tic, wary of her hus­band, hyp­no­tizes and rapes her, ren­der­ing Natasha — by his log­ic, with which she agrees — unfit to be a wife. Yusupov con­tend­ed that as view­ers would equate Chegodi­eff with Yusupov, so would they link Natasha with Iri­na,” though in real­i­ty Iri­na and Rasputin nev­er even met. In an Eng­lish court, “the jury found in her favor, award­ing her £25,000, or about $125,000. MGM had to take the film out of cir­cu­la­tion for decades and purge the offend­ing scene for all time,” though a small piece of it remains in Rasputin and the Empress’ orig­i­nal trail­er.

Things might have gone in MGM’s favor had the film not includ­ed a title card announc­ing that “a few of the char­ac­ters are still alive — the rest met death by vio­lence.” The stu­dio was advised that they’d have done well to declare the exact oppo­site, a prac­tice soon imple­ment­ed across Hol­ly­wood. It did­n’t take long for the movies to start hav­ing fun with it, intro­duc­ing jokey vari­a­tions on the soon-famil­iar boil­er­plate. Less than a decade after Rasputin and the Empress, one non­sen­si­cal musi­cal com­e­dy pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) opened with the dis­claimer that “any sim­i­lar­i­ty between HELLZAPOPPIN’ and a motion pic­ture is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal” — a tra­di­tion more recent­ly upheld by South Park.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Romanovs’ Last Ball Brought to Life in Col­or Pho­tographs (1903)

Watch an 8‑Part Film Adap­ta­tion of Tolstoy’s Anna Karen­i­na Free Online

Watch the Huge­ly Ambi­tious Sovi­et Film Adap­ta­tion of War and Peace Free Online (1966–67)

An Intro­duc­tion to Ivan Ilyin, the Philoso­pher Behind the Author­i­tar­i­an­ism of Putin’s Rus­sia & West­ern Far Right Move­ments

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.