The Russian Princess Who Changed the Film Industry Forever
Find out how much it cost Hollywood to blur the line between fiction and reality
When I was little, I never understood why movies about real people featured the following disclaimer: “Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.”
It was a blatant lie.
Of course, Elliott Ness in The Untouchables wasn’t made up. Neither was Mozart in Amadeus.
So why does that disclaimer exist? Because of a series of bad decisions that can be traced back to Rasputin and the fall of the Russian empire.
Lights, Camera, Action
In 1932, MGM Studios released the film Rasputin and the Empress. The only movie to star all three Barrymore siblings (Lionel, Ethel, and John), fictionalized the sinister relationship of the “mad monk” Rasputin to the Russian imperial family. A title card at the beginning of the film promised viewers that what they were seeing had really happened:
“A few of the characters are still alive. The rest met death by violence.” ¹
And parts of the film’s story were true — Rasputin did comfort the Russian empress by easing the pain of her hemophiliac son. He did…
