Stay through the closing credits of almost any film, even those based on true events, and you’ll likely see a familiar disclaimer:
“This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”
Sometimes, the disclaimer even appears at the very start of the film.
It has become so commonplace that most audiences barely notice it. Yet this single sentence owes its existence to one of Hollywood’s most expensive legal mistakes.
The story begins in 1932, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) released Rasputin and the Empress, a historical drama about the final years of Imperial Russia and the notorious mystic Grigori Rasputin.
Producer Irving Thalberg believed the film needed greater dramatic tension. To strengthen the plot, he approved a scene implying that Rasputin had sexually assaulted a character named Princess Natasha.
The problem was that Princess Natasha was not entirely fictional.
She was widely understood to represent Princess Irina Alexandrovna, niece of Tsar Nicholas II and wife of Prince Felix Yusupov, one of the men who helped assassinate Rasputin.
Before the film’s release, playwright Mercedes de Acosta reportedly warned MGM that the scene was historically inaccurate. Prince Felix himself maintained that Irina had never even met Rasputin.
Thalberg’s reported response was blunt: “Who cares? Putting this scene in gives strength to the whole plot.”
The decision proved costly.
When the film reached Britain, Princess Irina sued MGM for libel in 1934. Although the character bore a different name, the court accepted that audiences could clearly identify her as the real-life princess.
The case established an important legal principle: a statement can be defamatory even if it does not accuse someone of wrongdoing.
If it damages a person’s reputation or exposes them to ridicule, social exclusion or humiliation, it may still amount to libel.
That distinction mattered enormously in the aristocratic society of the 1930s.
Princess Irina was not portrayed as guilty of any crime, yet the implication that she had been involved in such an incident was enough to damage her standing.
During the trial, MGM’s lawyers argued that portraying a woman as the victim of sexual assault could not be defamatory because she had done nothing morally wrong.
Lord Justice Scrutton dismissed the argument, remarking that it took “some courage” to advance such a claim.
The jury sided with Princess Irina, awarding her £25,000 in damages -- an extraordinary sum at the time.
MGM appealed, arguing that the award was excessive and that Irina’s reputation had not suffered among those who knew her. The appeal failed.
In delivering his judgment, Lord Justice Scrutton made an observation that would permanently influence the film industry.
Had the film clearly stated that its characters were fictional, he suggested, the outcome might have been different.
MGM quickly took the hint. The studio replaced the film’s original prologue with a new disclaimer declaring that the characters and events were fictional and that any resemblance to real people was purely coincidental.
Other Hollywood studios soon followed.
Nearly a century later, the disclaimer has become one of cinema’s most familiar traditions. It appears so routinely that audiences rarely question it.
Yet every time those words appear on screen, they quietly echo a single courtroom battle: Yusupov v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Ltd, the lawsuit that forever changed how films protect themselves from reality.
Raisa Hasan, an A‑Level candidate at Scholastica, finds poetry a life‑saving force that pulses through every corner of the world.