Felix Yusupov

He was born in the Moika Palace in Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire. His father was Count Felix Felixovich Sumarokov-Elston, the son of Count Felix Nikolaievich Sumarokov-Elston. Zinaida Yusupova, his mother, was the last of the Yusupov line, of Tatar origin, and very wealthy. For the Yusupov name not to die out, his father (1856, Saint Petersburg – 1928, Rome, Italy) was granted the title and the surname of his wife, Princess Zinaida Yusupova, on 11 June 1885, a year after their marriage, but effective after the death of his father-in-law in 1891.

The Yusupov family, one of the richest families in Imperial Russia, had acquired their wealth generations earlier. It included four palaces in Saint Petersburg, three palaces in Moscow, 37 estates in different parts of Russia, in the Crimea (at Koreiz, Kökköz and Balaklava), coal and iron-ore mines, plants and factories, flour mills and oil fields on the Caspian Sea. His father served between 1886 and 1904 as an adjutant to Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich the General-Governor of Moscow (with the support of Grand Duke Nikolas Nikolaevich).

Felix led a flamboyant life. As a young man, he cross-dressed habitually, beginning from birth to age five, and continuing on and off into adolescence. He later recalled crossdressing in his teen years to get into cabarets, which denied entrance to those in school uniforms. His brother's mistress Polya had helped him out by giving him her clothes which were a perfect fit. Dressed as a young woman, Yusupov gave six performances as a cabaret soprano, earning the acclaim of audiences, but on the seventh performance was discovered by friends who recognized him by means of his mother's jewelry, which he was wearing. Yusupov was upbraided by his family for this behavior, but the crossdressing did not stop. He continued dressing as a woman by night, while living as a student by day, even going so far on one occasion as to accept an invitation from a noted 'Don Juan' in the Guards, who, along with three other men, escorted Yusupov to a private dinner at the nightclub in St. Petersburg known as The Bear. There, the guardsmen made many advances on Yusupov habillé en femme, and the young prince was forced to smash a mirror with a bottle of champagne and shut off the lights in order to escape the men's attentions. From 1909 to 1913, he studied Forestry and later English at University College, Oxford, where he was a member of the Bullingdon Club, and established the Oxford Russian Club. Yusupov was living on 14 King Edward Street, had a Russian cook, a French driver, an English valet, and a housekeeper, and spent much of his time partying. He owned three horses, a macaw, and a bulldog called Punch. He smoked hashish, danced the tango, and became friendly with Luigi Franchetti, a piano player, and Jacques de Beistegui, who both moved in. At some time, Yusupov became acquainted with Albert Stopford and Oswald Rayner, a classmate. He rented an apartment in Curzon Street, Mayfair, and met several times with the ballerina Anna Pavlova, who lived in Hampstead.

In 1913, Yusupov became engaged to Princess Irina of Russia, the emperor's only biological niece, in the Yusupov Palace in Koreiz. They were married in the Anichkov Palace in St. Petersburg on 22 February 1914, and the bride wore a veil that had belonged to Marie Antoinette. The Yusupovs went on honeymoon to the Crimea, Italy, Egypt, Jerusalem, London, and Bad Kissingen in Germany, where his parents were staying.

In 1932, he and his wife successfully sued American film company MGM, in the English courts, for libel and invasion of privacy in connection with the film Rasputin and the Empress. The alleged libel was not that the character based on Felix had committed murder but that the character based on Irina, called "Princess Natasha" in the film, was portrayed as having been seduced by the lecherous Rasputin. In 1934, the Yusupovs were awarded £25,000 damages, an enormous sum at the time, which was attributed to the successful arguments of their barrister, Patrick Hastings. The disclaimer that now appears at the end of many American films, "The preceding was a work of fiction, any similarity to a living person...", first appeared as a result of the legal precedent set by the Yusupov case.

In 1965, Felix Yusupov also sued CBS in a New York court for televising a play based upon the Rasputin assassination. The claim was that some events were fictionalized, and under a New York state statute, his commercial rights in his story had been misappropriated. The last reported judicial opinion in the case was a ruling by New York's second-highest court that the case could not be resolved upon briefs and affidavits but must go to trial. According to an obituary of CBS's lawyer, Carleton G. Eldridge Jr., CBS eventually won the case.

In 1928, after Yusupov published his memoir detailing the killing of Rasputin, Rasputin's daughter, Maria, sued Yusupov and Dmitri in a Paris court for damages of $800,000. She condemned both men as murderers and said any decent person would be disgusted by the ferocity of Rasputin's killing. Maria's claim was dismissed. The French court ruled that it had no jurisdiction over a political killing that had occurred in Russia.