Hardly anyone recognizes the name Felix Yusupov. He was a Russian aristocrat and a member of the imperial family, whose place in history was secured by his involvement in the assassination of Rasputin—a fascinating and unique figure well known to history enthusiasts. However, that episode had a curious epilogue years later when Felix, already in exile after the Bolshevik Revolution, engaged in lawsuits against film and television production companies that depicted the events, claiming they defamed him. The outcome of those trials led to the adoption of the now-classic disclaimer in film credits stating that everything shown is fiction, and any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.

Felix Felixovich Yusupov was born in 1887 at the Moika Palace in Saint Petersburg, the family residence named after its location on the river of the same name. It was his favorite among the four palaces they owned in the city, in addition to three others in Moscow. He was the son of Count Sumarokov-Elston, the governor of Moscow, and Princess Zinaida Nikolaevna Yusupova, the last of a Crimean Tatar dynasty and the owner of a fabulous fortune, surpassing that of the Romanovs, as it included dozens of estates, mines, factories, oil wells, and more.

Since his older brother, Nikolai, died in a duel, Felix became the sole heir. Consequently, his youth was frivolous and extravagant, though interspersed with periods of deep religiosity. Between 1909 and 1912, he moved to England to study English and forestry (a fashionable field at the time) at the University of Oxford, where he joined the prestigious and exclusive Bullingdon Club—an elite sports club for wealthy students that later counted figures like David Cameron and Boris Johnson among its members. He also founded his own organization, the Oxford Russian Club.

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Felix Yusupov in 1914. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

During his time in England, Felix lived at 14 King Edward Street and had a large household staff, along with three horses for polo, a bulldog named Punch, and even a macaw. It was a period of indulgence, filled with endless parties alongside his two closest friends, Jacques de Beistegui and pianist Luigi Franchetti, who lived with him. This led to rumors that he was bisexual. Later, he moved to an apartment on Curzon Street in London’s Mayfair district and frequently met with the famous and beautiful Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who lived in Hampstead. Their encounters also fueled gossip.

However, Felix returned to Saint Petersburg in 1913 and, the following year, married Princess Irina Alexandrovna, the only daughter of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and, therefore, the niece of Tsar Nicholas II. (Incidentally, the tsar attended the wedding wearing a veil that had belonged to Marie Antoinette.) It was, in truth, a marriage of convenience—he contributed his wealth, while she brought imperial blood. Yet, they got along well, and the hardships they would later endure never broke their union.

For their honeymoon, they traveled to Cairo, Jerusalem, London, and Bad Kissingen, an Austrian spa town where his parents had retired. Felix was able to avoid military service despite the outbreak of World War I, as he was an only son. In 1915, they had a daughter, whom they named Irina, after her mother.

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Rasputin blessing (between 1914 and 1916). Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

Then came 1916, the year of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin’s assassination. Rasputin was an Orthodox monk, mystic, and healer introduced to the imperial court by Anna Vyrubova, a lady-in-waiting and close friend of Tsarina Alexandra. He gained influence because of his reputed ability to heal through prayer, a quality that deeply interested the empress, as the tsarevich Alexei suffered from hemophilia and she was willing to believe anyone who could help. Whether due to psychosomatic effects or hypnosis, Rasputin indeed seemed to improve the boy’s condition, securing a privileged position in high society—from the imperial family to the broader nobility. However, not everyone accepted him. Many viewed it as disgraceful that an illiterate muzhik (peasant) and alleged member of the flagellant sect khlysty—rumored to engage in orgies—held such sway over the tsarina and, by extension, the tsar himself. His opponents, particularly among the nobility, also accused him of seducing aristocratic women.

Adding to this, Rasputin’s influence over the empress became even more controversial as Russia found itself in dire straits—bogged down in a losing war and facing rising revolutionary tensions. An attempt was made to bribe him into leaving, but he refused, prompting drastic measures. A first assassination attempt failed. A second was then plotted, involving four conspirators: Felix Yusupov, two grand dukes—Dmitri Pavlovich and Nikolai Mikhailovich—and a right-wing member of the Duma, Vladimir Purishkevich, who had publicly called for Rasputin’s death in a speech.

Their plan was to lure the monk to Moika Palace under the pretense of meeting Felix’s wife (who was actually traveling). According to some theories, they exploited the fact that Rasputin had allegedly tried to seduce Felix—adding fuel to rumors about both men’s ambiguous sexualities. Though warned of the trap, Rasputin arrogantly went anyway, arriving at the palace at midnight on December 29.

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The Yusupovs in exile. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

While he waited for his supposed hostess, he was served wine and pastries laced with cyanide. However, the poison had no effect. Felix then shot him with Pavlovich’s pistol, but Rasputin remained alive and attempted to escape by jumping through a snow-covered window. Purishkevich fired two more shots and struck him on the head with a club. They dragged his body to the Neva River, only to be shocked when they realized he was still breathing—he ultimately drowned.

The same revolution that would exhume his remains and burn them to scatter the ashes to the wind overthrew the regime. Felix, who had been arrested during the investigation of the crime and exiled to the Belgorod Oblast, returned to St. Petersburg, gathered as many jewels and works of art as he could, and went into exile with his family; the value of that luggage exceeded a million dollars, as it included a couple of Rembrandt paintings that he would later sell to the National Gallery in Washington. Along with his wife and daughter, he boarded the British ship HMS Marlborough in Yalta, bound for Malta, from where he moved on to Italy, Paris, and London, though he ultimately settled permanently in the French capital.

In the City of Lights, Felix founded a boutique called IRFE and became known for his generosity toward other exiles who had left Russia with fewer resources. That, combined with poor financial management and the 1929 Crash, led the Yusupovs to the collapse of their business and the loss of their fortune. Perhaps for that reason, he had no qualms about taking the step mentioned at the beginning of this article: suing film studios for defamation over movies about Rasputin’s death—a curious move, considering that aboard the HMS Marlborough, he had had no hesitation in boasting about being the mastermind (and, as we have seen, also partially the material author) of the event.

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Poster of the movie Rasputin and the Empress. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

First, he went after Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for its film Rasputin and the Empress, released in 1932, starring three members of the Barrymore acting family (John, Ethel, and Lionel). Although he and his wife’s names were changed to Prince Chegodieff and Princess Natasha, Felix hired New York attorney Fanny Holtzmann, who specialized in entertainment-related cases, to file a lawsuit against MGM in an English court. He argued that the film had distorted the relationship between the monk and his client, invading the privacy of both himself and his wife (who, in the movie, appears as a victim of rape by Rasputin).

After watching the film twice, the jury ruled that Irina had indeed been defamed, as she had never personally met Rasputin. The company was ordered to pay $127,373 in damages for the film’s screening in the United Kingdom. Since this ruling would presumably lead to further payments in other countries, Felix and the studio reached a settlement in which MGM paid him an additional $250,000 (or a million, according to another version) and cut the most controversial scenes involving the princess character. This left the final edit somewhat disjointed, but it didn’t matter much since Rasputin and the Empress was preemptively pulled from circulation for decades (although in its latest and recent edition, it was partially restored).

Moreover, the judge pointed out to MGM that the problem lay in the film’s introduction, which stated that it depicted the destruction of an empire and that some characters were still alive while others had died violently. The magistrate suggested that, in the future, to avoid similar issues, it would be better to say the opposite: that the film was not intended to faithfully portray history or real people. No sooner said than done—the studio decided to include a disclaimer at the end of every subsequent feature film based on real events, a practice that soon spread to other studios and remains in place today: “Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”

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Maria Rasputin interviewed in 1930 by the Spanish magazine Estampa. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

That was in 1934. Exactly thirty-one years later, Felix Yusupov tried to pull the same move by suing CBS in a New York court after the network aired a TV movie about Rasputin’s murder, alleging that some of the reenacted events were fictitious. However, this time, his efforts failed as the judge dismissed the case. This was his last moment in the annals of history, as he passed away in 1968; his wife followed him three years later.

The irony is that in 1953, Felix himself had been taken to court alongside Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich by María, Rasputin’s daughter, who sued them for damages. She claimed compensation because in both the book that the persistent aristocrat had published in 1953, Lost Splendor and the Death of Rasputin, and in the Memoirs Before the Exile that he had released in 1928, he openly admitted to being one of the perpetrators of her father’s murder.

The trial was held in Paris, but the court washed its hands of the matter, declaring that it had no jurisdiction over a political crime committed in Russia, leaving María without the $800,000 in damages she had demanded.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on October 3, 2019: Cuando el asesino de Rasputín demandó a la MGM, el origen de la frase «cualquier parecido con la realidad es mera coincidencia»

SOURCES

Félix F. Yusúpov, Memorias de antes del exilio (1887-1919)

Prince Félix Yusupov, Lost splendour and the death of Rasputin

Douglas Smith, Rasputin, The biograpy

Frances Welch, Rasputin. A short life

Christopher Dobson, Prince Felix Yusupov. The man who murdered Rasputin

Amanda Madru, Romanov family and Rasputin

Wikipedia, Félix Yusúpov

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