Origins
The disclaimer originated with the 1932 MGM movie, Rasputin and the Empress, which insinuated that the character Princess Natasha had been raped by Rasputin. Princess Natasha's character was supposedly intended to represent Princess Irina of Russia, and the real Princess Irina sued MGM for libel. After seeing the film twice, the jury agreed that the princess had been defamed. Princess Irina and her husband Felix Youssoupoff were reportedly awarded $127,373 in damages by the English Court of Appeal in 1934 and $1 million in an out-of-court settlement with MGM. As a preventive measure against further lawsuits, the film was taken out of distribution for decades. Prompted by the outcome of this case many studios began to incorporate an "all persons fictitious" disclaimer in their films in order to try to protect themselves from similar court action.
Read more about this topic: All Persons Fictitious Disclaimer
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)