But our boy gives me trouble lately. Yeah, really. He’s at the age now. He copies everything. He sees something, he copies. You know, this kid imitates everything. Yeah. That’s why we got rid of the dog. You all right? Rodney Dangerfield’s ability to make Johnny Carson fall out of his chair laughing is what made him one of his funniest guests.

Hey, big girl. You’re kidding. She was standing alone. A cop told her, “Break it up.” You know, [laughter] these are Rodney Dangerfield’s funniest moments on Johnny Carson. My mother never fed me. What a childhood I had. My mother never breastfed me. She always had a headache. And my old man, he didn’t like my looks either.

He carried around a picture of the kid who came with the wallet. Said my old [applause] man. And my old man, he made me sleep in the kitchen naked to get rid of the roaches. [laughter] And I was ugly when I was a kid and never got any girls either. Now, one girl told me, “Come on over. There’s nobody home.” home. I went over, but there was nobody home.

He turns a basic childhood line into something twisted and silly in one fast move, saying it with total coolness. The sperm bank joke. I’m not at all like the sperm bank to use my sperm to get a woman pregnant. I had to get her drunk first. Even at the sperm bank. That’s right. I’ll tell you, it’s rough.

They’re not easy. All I get is fat girls. You kidding? Took out one girl. Who was she fat? How fat? She was so fat her bathtub has stretch marks. Okay. And he’s fat. A fat girl. Fat chick. You kidding? While she was standing alone, a cop told her to break it up. Dangerfield starts by putting himself down, then makes it even worse, keeping the joke getting more wild right up to the last word.

The birds and the bees line. I tell you what’s more important than lips is love. You got to have love. And I got plenty of love in me, Johnny. Plenty. I love a lot of things. I love sports. I love music. And one of my kids. [laughter] How many kids you have? I got two kids. I love my kids. You know, I know that kids, of course.

But our boy gives me trouble lately. Really? He’s at the age now. He copies everything. He sees so he copies it. You know, this kid imitates everything. Yeah. That’s why we got rid of the dog. You [laughter] know, they’re very impressionable at that age. The peculiar feeling is your son standing there with one leg up.

Yes, I know what you mean. Of course. No offense. But how do I? The joke starts like a normal family talk. Then Rodney turns it into something much messier and much funnier. Women always gave me a hard time. I tell you, since I’m a kid, women always gave me a hard time. My mother never breastfed me.

She told me she liked me as a friend. [cheering and applause] I mean, are you kidding? Oh, my mother had morning sickness after I was born. I tell you, when I was a kid, I got no respect at all. You kidding? No respect from anybody. Anybody? You kidding? [applause] The time I was lost in a beach and a cop help me look for my parents.

I said to the cop, “You think we’ll find him?” He said, “I don’t know, kid. There’s so many places I could hide.” [laughter] Rodney makes his bad luck with women sound like a lifelong curse, keeping the tone flat, which makes the pain sound even funnier. Why? He feels sorry for short people. But I’ll tell you, nobody has it easy in life. Nobody.

I talk to people all over the place. Nobody. A lot of I feel sorry for short people. Well, when it rains, they’re the last ones TO KNOW ABOUT. OH, I TELL you sometimes around short people I get very uncomfortable. Very very uncomfortable. Like the last time I went to a health spa, I was standing there naked and a very short guy told me I looked terrific.

Very short guy. In a health spa naked. I’m happy you didn’t shake hands with me. I [cheering] That’s a good line. Wish I had more. Rodney takes a random subject and acts like he has deep feelings about it, making the idea sound serious just long enough. Carson recalled years later. That one was one of my favorite jokes ever told by him. Bad luck with girls.

Had any luck with girls either. You kidding? Never had luck with it. By the time I was 16 years old, I had sex once and VD twice. Never had when I was a kid. I never got girls. Never. My friends didn’t know though. I fooled them. You know, I used to go to drive in movies alone and do push-ups in the backseat of my car.

You know, I mean, I got a girl here and there, but nothing, you know. Yeah. Well, one time I took out a real fat girl. Who was she fat? Girl fat out there. She was so fat. I mean, during guys directions, you know, I mean, [laughter] she That’s a big girl. Big girl. Big girl. The fat is no got to lose some weight myself, Johnny.

It’s all the whole thing. Look thin. Look thin. You know, I found out the best way to look thin. You hang out with fat people. It’s the only way I come. You know, he sounds like he’s already accepted defeat before the story even starts making every dating problem sound normal in his world. Dangerfield talks about his rough days.

I get some rough days, Johnny. Rough days. Oh, some days I start drinking early. I’ll tell you that. Oh, boy. The other night in Las Vegas, I tell you, I got loaded on what I’m doing. I played dice. I lost a,000 bucks. I got even though I stole 400 Sweet and Lowe’s. [laughter] But drinking’s bad, Johnny.

I tell you not good. I got to watch my health. That’s what’s important. Health, Johnny. Health. Health. I mean, I’m getting old. I’m not a kid anymore. I know I’m getting old. In Vegas, I played a slot machine. Three prunes came up. [laughter] This one feels broader because Rodney jokes about life falling apart in general, making everyday misery sound like a full disaster movie while insinuating terrible luck is just a part of everyday life.

The girls that are attracted to him. Now, I tell you, girls who like me are getting older and older, older. And I took out one girl. Oh, she was old. How old? How old? I’ll tell you how old. She was so old when she went to school. They didn’t have history. Ugly. I want to tell you one thing. [applause] This girl here. Let’s hear.

How ugly? She was so ugly. How ugly. You look in a dictionary under the word ugly. You see her picture. Dangerfield makes attraction seem to sound like another thing that goes wrong for him. Never turning it into a sweet story, but pushing it toward embarrassment instead. Finding the right woman. You got to have the right woman, boy.

That’s the answer. The right woman. Until you make love to the right woman, Johnny. Yes. Beautiful. Beautiful. I mean, the last time I made love to my wife, it was ridiculous. [laughter] Nothing was happening. I looked around. So, what’s the matter? Can’t you think of anyone either? [laughter] [applause] Well, that’s enough talk about.

Okay. I tell you, all you hear is I had it up to here. Yeah. Not lately though, you [laughter] know. Rodney acts like he’s about to say something warm and hopeful, then turns it back into failure almost right away, making that switch the entire engine of the joke. The count your blessings bit. Got to count your blessings though, Johnny. You got to count your blessings.

I I’m doing okay today. I’ve been broke all my life. You know, money. I’m doing okay. Holding my own. Doing all right. You know what I mean? But I was a kid. I had nothing. I was poor. Oh, was I poor. And I was a kid. I got no idea. I was so poor my rich uncle died in the will. I owed him $20. [laughter] That’s poor.

Yeah, my uncle. He was a lazy guy, though. Oh, was he lazy? Oh, jeez. He was so lazy. He married a girl who was pregnant. Lazy. Lazy. That’s too lazy. That’s too lazy. Too lazy. And lazy is no good. It’s not healthy. This one’s hilarious because Rodney sounds like he’s giving real life advice, then bends it back into his usual no respect world with expert precision.

The delivery is iconic because he briefly sounds wise before he ruins it completely, showing Johnny always laughed hard when Rodney played fake philosopher. Rodney shows up without his famous suit. Oh, wait. Holy. [applause] Come here. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait. I’m not booked here. How the moair suit. Look at this.

I’m trying to get a new image going. Are you out of show business? Beautiful. Rodney, somebody stole Rodney’s blue suit. Guys, sit down a second just for a moment. I know you got so many wonderful acts waiting in the wings here, you know, [laughter] and I mean, you know, great axe.

Nelson’s boxing cats are back there, you know. This moment works because Rodney’s disheveled suit with loosen tie was his trademark look. So appearing without it instantly becomes funny, while Johnny’s reaction helps sell the bit immediately. And Weinstein’s dancing ducks there waiting to come on too.

And what a great act. For one moment, just say hello cuz I always have a lot of fun out here, you know. Just how you doing? I’m just kind of here to get some respect. I missed you in New York when you were there. So, I just sort of hanging around just for a few moments. And uh this don’t help. I still got no respect. I don’t recognize you.

I’m trying to get a new image going. You know, they talking about I was oldfashioned. My question mark haircuts over here and everything else. I’m just trying to get But uh I’ll tell you true no respect. I never tell true things, but uh what are the chairs dirty? But [laughter] it feels like Rodney is breaking his own rules just to get another laugh.

As that small visual change turns into a full comic moment with legs, health and dating chaos. I told you before and I’m going to tell you again, Johnny. Health and the whole thing is health. You got to take care of long as you have your health. Carrie, you got to think young. Hobbies, interests.

You have to think young, right? I try to think young all the time. You know what I mean? Always do that. Can I have a cigarette, too? Certainly. It’s not good for your health though. I got a crazy doctor told me to keep smoking if I want to stop chewing gums. So what do I do? [laughter] Is that the same doctor you uh Dr.

Vinnie Boombot? Vinnie Boombot. Uh health is important. I got into astrology lately. They got a new interest. Oh, astrology is very good. You meet girls. That’s [laughter] all they talk about. It’s astrology. Astrology. Sure. Astrology. What sign are you one? Do you know that’s all they talk about? The girls I meet.

They’re all born under the same sign. Oh, what’s that? For rent. I [laughter] This Tonight Show moment became iconic among viewers because Dangerfield jumps from one topic to another without losing control, making health, astrology, and dating all sound equally miserable through his unique perspective. The relentless pace is what makes it work as it feels like Johnny is just trying to hang on while Rodney keeps firing jokes like a machine gun.

He moves between subjects so quickly Carson can barely ask follow-up questions before the next disaster arrives. Each topic receives the Rodney treatment, transforming ordinary subjects into personal catastrophes and cosmic injustices. His health complaints sound like medical mysteries no doctor could possibly solve with current science.

The astrology material becomes another excuse for predetermined bad luck and celestial disrespect. Dating stories pile up so fast the individual jokes blur into one sustained comedic assault. Johnny’s role becomes simply pointing Rodney toward the next subject and getting out of the way.

The energy level stays consistently high throughout, preventing any lulls in momentum or dead air. Rodney never pauses long enough for applause to interrupt his rhythm. Maintaining breakneck speed, each transition happens organically as one disaster reminds him of another, creating natural segways. His facial expressions match the manic energy shifting rapidly between disgust, resignation, and mock surprise.

The crowd gets him all worked up. Pogenic girls who like me are getting older and older, older. And I took out one girl. Who was she? Oh, she was old. How old? How old? I’ll tell you how old she was. So old when she went to school, they didn’t have history. [laughter] Oh, [applause] I’ll tell you something.

[cheering] I’ll tell you something now. She was fat, too. She was fat. She was so fat she got in the scale. A card came out, said one at a time. This moment is strong because Rodney feeds off the room’s energy and gets even more animated as the audience helps push the bit higher through their enthusiastic response.

Johnny loved watching Rodney ride the laughter instead of just delivering prepared lines, making the whole clip feel fast, live, and genuinely dangerous. The audience’s escalating energy becomes fuel for increasing intensity, creating a feedback loop neither can escape. Rodney’s delivery speeds up dramatically as the laughs grow louder with each successive punchline.

He abandons whatever structural plan existed and starts free associating pulling material from pure instinct. Now I’ll tell you this girl was old fat and ugly. Yeah, ugly too. How ugly? I’ll tell you. She was so she was known as a two beggar. That’s a girl who’s so ugly you go out with her you put a bag over your head in case the bag over her head breaks ugly. I want to tell you one thing.

[applause] This girl here. Let’s hear how ugly is so ugly. How ugly? You look in a dictionary under the white ugly, you see her picture. I’ll be right back. The jokes come faster with minimal setup as he chases the building momentum wherever it leads. His body language switches up over time, becoming more physical and animated with wild gestures.

Johnny watches with visible delight as Rodney enters a comedic zone few performers ever reach. The studio audience senses they’re witnessing something special beyond a typical talk show appearance. Rodney’s usual hang dog expression gives way to manic energy that’s almost scary in intensity. He sweats profusely, tugs his tie repeatedly, and wipes his forehead between rapidfire punchlines.

The material gets raw and more desperate, matching the amped up energy filling the studio. Carson occasionally tries slowing things down, but Rodney’s too far gone to pull back now. The segment demonstrates why live television could be magic when performer audience and moment aligned perfectly. Rodney thrived in these uncontrolled moments when the room’s collective energy took over completely.

By the end, he’s nearly breathless from the sustained intensity, barely able to continue. The clip captures lightning in a bottle, showing what made Rodney special on tonight’s show. Jokes about Las Vegas. I love it out here. You know, I like to go to Vegas, too. You know, I’m going to Vegas for a couple of days. I always go over there.

You meet so many wonderful, wonderful people in Vegas. No idea. Can you Can you tell us about a few of them? Well, [laughter] last time I was there, I met a lovely girl. Oh, a lovely girl. Valerie Dubois. Valerie Dubois. Lovely girl. Valerie Dubois. In fact, you told me to call a VD for sure. I didn’t. Rodney transforms Las Vegas into a nightmare destination full of odd characters and terrible decisions, painting the scene quickly before dropping the punch perfectly.

It feels like authentic Carson material, demonstrating his ability to turn location specific observations into universal comedy everyone understands. Wonderful people out in Vegas. Really nice. Oh, Vegas really swings. They got the gambling there, the big hotels and nightclubs. Oh, they have what big nightclubs they got there.

It isn’t really so different than the places I worked when I broke in. You know, tough places. You walk in little joints, right? Oh, I tough place, you know, places like Rosario’s Rocket Room. You know, Rosario’s Rocket Room. Tough tough tough. Dominic’s Atomic Bar and Grill. That was another one.

Oh, Dominic, he was tough. Who was tough though? Tough owner. During the show, he used to yell at the axe all the time. You had a guy was singing Why was I born? He not to sing. You know, [laughter] he describes Vegas personalities with specific details that make them feel like real people. He actually encountered the wonderful people turn out to be exactly the opposite in typical Rodney fashion subverting expectations.

He captures the desperate energy of Vegas nightife through comic exaggeration that rings true. Casino workers, dealers, and lounge entertainers all become part of his no respect universe where everyone ignores him. The material works because Vegas already has a well-earned reputation for excess failure and broken dreams.

Rodney amplifies those qualities, making the city sound like his spiritual home where losers gather. He describes interactions with locals that follow familiar patterns of humiliation and casual disrespect. Johnny knows Vegas well from performing there, making his reactions to Rodney’s descriptions even funnier. The strip hotels and shows all receive the Rodney treatment, becoming monuments to disappointment.

He makes gambling losses sound inevitable rather than unlucky, as if the city actively works against him. The people he meets are either ignoring him completely, insulting him directly, or pitying him openly. His descriptions of Vegas entertainment make shows sound simultaneously spectacular and soul crushingly depressing.

The specific details prevent it from feeling like generic road material comedians always do. By the end, Vegas sounds like the perfect city for someone who gets no respect anywhere. Rodney Dangerfield’s jokes about getting no respect with iconic jokes and flawless delivery created the funniest moments on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

He spent decades proving that starting comedy at 40 years old doesn’t matter when you’ve got a bulletproof persona and the ability to make the audience laugh harder than almost anyone else who ever sat on that couch. Which Rodney Dangerfield Tonight Show moment do you think was the funniest? Let us know in the comments.

Rasputin’s Forgotten Daughter

Before he died, Rasputin reportedly ate sweet cakes laced with cyanide. But the autopsy showed no poison in his system. Shockingly, it was Rasputin’s daughter, Maria, who held the key to this unsettling mystery. Maria Rasputin grew up in the eye of the storm. While her father, Gregory Rasputin, remains one of history’s greatest mysteries, Maria had a privileged look into his notorious life, and she was right there with him in both his rise to infamy and his brutal downfall.
But in the end, Maria would also pay dearly for her forbidden knowledge. When Maria was born, notoriety had yet to hit her family. Rasputin had married her mother, the peasant girl Prescovia Duplovina, at a young age, and they lived in a remote village far away from any drama. Soon they had three children, Maria, her older brother Dimmitri, and her younger sister Vavvara.
While Maria was still in her mother’s womb, her father made a historyaltering decision. Prodded by some emotional or spiritual crisis, Rasputin had a religious reawakening and went on a pilgrimage. Though some say his reasons for this trek were as earthly as evading punishment for stealing a horse. Regardless, it was the beginning of Rasputin as we now know him.
When Maria’s father came back to see his newly born daughter, he was a changed man. After staying with monks at the St. Nicholas Monastery, he appeared disheveled and strange. He also, seemingly temporarily, became a vegetarian and reportedly swore off drinking. Yet though he now repelled some of their neighbors, Rasputin’s effect on others was much more disturbing.
By the early 1900s, when Maria was a toddler, Rasputin was running his own makeshift chapel in a root cellar, holding secret meetings where reportedly his avid female followers would ceremonally wash him before each congregation. Just as Maria began walking and talking, Rasputin began gaining a reputation in the larger cities of Russia, and he traveled to places like Kazan.
Dark rumors followed him. Despite Rasputin gaining powerful friends during these trips, there were persistent whispers even then that he was sleeping with his followers. For now, though, the gossip hardly seemed to matter. Rasputin headed to the then capital of St. Petersburg, and nothing would ever be the same again.
In late 1905, thanks to his friendships with the black princesses, cousins to the imperial royal family, Rasputin met Zar Nicholas II and his wife Zarina Alexandra in person. In a very short time, he was a close confidant of the entire royal family, particularly since the Zarina believed that he was the only one who could heal her hemophiliac son, Alexi.
With such power swirling around him, Rasputin brought Maria right into the fray. At this point, Rasputin began not only to have a high opinion of himself, but also started to dream bigger for his own family. And in 1910, he brought Maria and her sister to St. Petersburg to live with him in the hopes that they would turn into little ladies and eventually do credit to his rising fame.
Maria’s given name was actually Matriiona, but her father evidently felt this was too backwoods and unsophisticated for the more European St. Petersburg. When he brought his daughter to live with him, he changed her name to the more French and worldly sounding Maria. For the Rasputin, any price seemed worth the entrance into the glittering world of the Romanoffs. It just didn’t work out.
When Rasputin sought to enter his girls to study at the legendary Smoly Institute, the school refused Maria and her sister enrollment on no uncertain terms. Instead, Rasputin was forced to settle for a second choice preparatory school. Then again, Rasputin’s list of enemies was building. Many relatives of the Zaran Zarina were appalled at the power Rasputin had over the rulers and were especially disturbed at the liberties he took with the young Romanoff princesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia.
At one point, a governness even complained that he was romping around the nursery with the girls in their night gowns. Strangely, Maria’s home life was much different. In contrast to the playful, even inappropriate energy Rasputin brought to the royal family, he treated his daughters something like inmates.
As Maria later described, “We were never allowed to go out alone. Rarely were we permitted to go to a matinea.” In addition, Rasputin would insist they kneel in prayer for hours every Sunday. And when he did let them go out, he chose their company very carefully. Maria and her sister were of an age with the Romanoff daughters, and they soon met the young princesses.
As Maria recalled, the girls were almost unbelievably graceful and often entered rooms so quietly that Maria couldn’t even hear their feet on the floor. With these companions, Maria and Vavara were soaring far beyond their station, and Rasputin was obsessed with ensuring they didn’t fall. As Maria turned into a teenager, young man began showing interest in the holy man’s daughter, and Rasputin’s response was control.
Maria, even in her nostalgic recollection of her father, called him the strictest of mentors. And after just a half an hour of any conversation with a boy, he would burst into the room and show the poor lad the door. Rasputin’s hold over the Zar and Zarina grew with the supposed miracles he was performing on Alexi.
But so too did civil unrest. Soon rumors about his intimate relationships with his followers grew to include accusations that he had seduced Zarina and even the four young Romanoff girls. The reality though was even worse than all that. Maria later admitted that as a young girl, she didn’t always have a clear idea of what was happening in her father’s adult world.
The truth may have broken her. There’s evidence that Rasputin’s religious worship was little more than drunken realry, and that if the rumors about the royal family weren’t true, he was nonetheless carrying on affairs with women from every corner of society. Indeed, several women who knew him accused him of assault.
In the face of this, Rasputin only clung harder to his control. To the extent that Maria was aware of the controversy around her father, it was mostly from Rasputin himself, insisting that he wouldn’t have people uttering the filth about you that they do about me. Rasputin took refuge in making his daughters unimpeachable and continued controlling the minutiae of their existence and reputations.
Yet even he couldn’t stave off disaster. In the summer of 1914, a woman acting on the hatred of Rasputin spreading through Russia stabbed him in the stomach while he was leaving his home. It took seven long weeks for Rasputin to recover enough to go back to St. Petersburg, but he could never be completely healed. According to Maria, her father was permanently affected both mentally and physically from the attempt on his life.
She claimed that the stress on his nerves also made him develop acid reflux to the point where he began avoiding sugar. But Rasputin would get little peace from now on. The year of Rasputin’s attempted assassination was also the year Russia entered World War I, hurling the country into turmoil. This did Rasputin no favors.
Over the coming months, Russia’s economy plummeted and it lost soldier after soldier to the conflict, further stirring the opposition to the Romanoffs and their adviser Rasputin. In December 1916, the single worst event of Maria’s young life took place. Prince Felix Yusupov, one of Rasputin’s acquaintances and it would turn out his most bitter enemy, lured the holy man to his house and then assassinated him with the help of several other discontented Russian aristocrats.
The manner of Rasputin’s end is now the stuff of legend. Yusupov later claimed that he first poisoned Rasputin with cookies laced with cyanide to no avail. Shocked at Rasputin’s otherworldly constitution, Yusupov had to resort to beating him with his co-conspirators, then shooting him and dumping him finally in a frozen lake.
As we’ll see, it may have been more complicated than this, but with her father gone, it was Maria who had to deal with the fallout. The day after Rasputin went over to Yusupovs and never came home, Maria knew in the pit of her stomach that something was deeply wrong. She and her sister went right to the royal family, reporting him missing to one of Zarina Alexandra’s closest confidants.
By now, all of St. Petersburg was a buzz with the supposed murder of the evil Rasputin. But Maria was simply missing and worried for her father. As the investigation started, her dread increased. Officers found traces of blood on the Bojoy Petroski bridge, indicating the point where the conspirators had thrown him off, and showed Maria a boot that she identified as her father’s.
From then on, it was just a matter of confirming the worst. A couple of days after Rasputin’s brutal end, they finally found his body in the frozen river below the bridge. When the city’s surgeon performed the autopsy, he found traces of that night’s trauma on Rasputin’s body, including three gunshot wounds, a slicing wound, and other injuries, some of which the surgeon believed happened postmortem.
Incredibly, there was no evidence that he’d been poisoned, but this was cold comfort to Maria, and so was her father’s funeral. Maria maintained that she attended Rasputin’s funeral, and her memories are harrowing. She claimed that many places in the little chapel were empty, for the crowds that had knocked at my father’s door while he still lived to ask some service of him neglected to come and offer up a prayer for him once he was dead.
However, other accounts suggest that neither Rasputin’s children nor his wife were permitted at the service. If so, they did get one consolation. Whether or not Maria attended her father’s funeral, the Imperial family did rally around the remaining Rasputans. After the small service, which took place in a lady in Wading’s garden, Maria and her family met with the Romanovs in the lady’s home, where they offered their friendship and protection.
The trouble was the Romanoff’s protection was about to mean nothing. Within months, the simmering unrest throughout Russia boiled over into a civil war, forcing Zar Nicholas to abdicate in March of 1917. Even Maria wasn’t safe. That April, she was locked up in a palace for questioning. She eventually gained release thanks to one of her father’s old followers, Boris Solovv.
But this was no mere altruistic act. After her father’s death, Boris, who was considered by many to be Rasputin’s spiritual successor, seemed like a natural option for a husband. He likewise considered her the smart option to be his wife, despite the fact that neither of them even liked the other. But in these last days of the Russian Empire, bizarre forces began drawing them together.
Maria and Boris, like good students of Gregory Rasputin, often participated in seances with a group of other like-minded people in an attempt to commune with the dead. Naturally, Maria sought to speak with her late father. And when she finally got him, according to Maria, Rasputin’s ghost kept insisting she love Boris. Eventually, Maria gave in.
trying to survive in her rapidly decaying world, Maria married Boris in October 1917, making good on her father’s seance predictions. In his diary, Boris would go on to note that Maria wasn’t even really that useful to him in the bedroom since he was so much more attracted to women who weren’t her. The die was cast, however, and it was only going to get darker from there.
The next months of Maria’s life passed by in a blur, and she clung to the imperial family and her home of St. Petersburg as best she could. It was all just delaying the inevitable, and everyone knew the end was near. On her final visit to the Romanoffs, Maria recalled the last words the Zarina would ever speak to her. Go, my children.
Leave us. Leave us quickly. We are being imprisoned. But it was Maria’s own family who would help hand over the Romanoffs to their tragic fate. With Russia falling apart at the seams, Maria’s husband began scrambling for power. And he hit devastating lows. Believing him to be a trusted friend, the royal family went to Boris and asked him to take some jewels for safekeeping in the event they needed quick cash for an escape.
He promptly proved he wasn’t worthy of that trust. In the most generous interpretation, Boris lost the funds, but according to some, he outright embezzled them. By the time that news came out, he made sure he was far, far away. By 1918, not even Boris Solovv could stand to be in St. Petersburg anymore. And he and Maria fled first to her hometown where her mother currently was and then hopped around various other out of the way towns, hoping to wait out the storm of civil unrest that was now fully raging through Russia as the Bolevixs took
over. Still, this wasn’t enough for Maria’s husband. In choosing to lose the Romanoff jewels, Boris had made a bet on himself, and it was a bet he kept making no matter who it hurt. Some even accused Boris of turning in some pro-Imperial officers who had been planning to help the Romanoff’s escape, apparently deciding that if he wasn’t going to save the royal family, no one was.
To add insult to injury, Boris soon paraded Romanoff imposters around Russia, ironically asking for money to help them escape, a feat he refused to perform for the real Romanoffs so he could keep lining his own pockets. It was a hint of what was to come in the next decades with Romanoff impersonators popping up everywhere. But it was no less cowardly.
If this upset Maria, it was nothing compared to what was to come. In the summer of 1918, she received devastating news. The Romanoffs never did make it to safety, and the Bolevixs eventually imprisoned them. Then, one July night, the revolutionaries brought royal parents and children alike into a basement to face a firing squad, killing them all.
In a further tragedy, both Maria’s mother and brother disappeared into the Soviet gulogs. With her old world gone, Maria knew she needed to start again. Barely 20 years old at the time of the Romanoff’s end and half of her family’s disappearance, Maria now tried desperately to build her life back up. By 1922, she and Boris had two daughters, Tatiana and Maria, who were named after the Romanoff princesses.
They ended up settling in Paris and for a time took on a mundane existence with Boris working in a soap factory and doing various odd jobs around town. But Maria Rasputin was never meant for a normal life. And in the mid1 1920s, tragedy caught up with her again. In 1924 or 1925, her younger sister Vavara died while still in Moscow.
Then just a year or two later, so too did her husband Boris, slipping away in a Paris hospital of tuberculosis. Alone, except for her two girls, she was forced to plunge back into a life of danger. After her husband’s death, her infamous name got her a job as a cabaret dancer, where she traveled around as the daughter of the mad monk.
Her dancing act was biographical, and Maria described the anguish she felt every time she had to go on stage and confront the tragedy of my father’s life and death. Her itinerate performing life soon led her to a job in the circus. And not just any job. She took up work as an animal trainer, taming lions and performing with bears.
As she Riley told an interviewer, “They ask me if I mind to be in a cage with animals, and I answer, why not? I have been in a cage with bolshviks.” Her life as a performer lasted until 1935, and it ended with a horrific moment. While traveling with an American circus, she was mauled by a bear.
Although she held it together for most of the rest of the run, she eventually quit by the time they reached Miami, Florida. She had, after all, already swallowed enough trauma to last a lifetime. Maria settled in America in 1937 without her daughters who were denied entry and married her childhood friend Gregory Burn a few years later, taking up residence in Los Angeles.
However, when they divorced in 1946, Marie admitted to a judge that Gregory had verbally bered her, hit her, and then just deserted me. Her final years weren’t any less dramatic. She became a US citizen in the 1940s and even worked as a riveter during World War II to help support the American effort.
for all that and despite her imperial Romanoff background, when the Red Scare came, people began whispering she was a communist, prompting Maria to write to the Los Angeles Times and unequivocally deny the rumors, which went against her entire upbringing. By the late 1950s, Maria was too old for her machinist work and instead cobbled together money from hosting Russian lessons, babysitting, and giving interviews to people still interested in her past.
In these conversations, although possibly to keep people interested, she would sometimes make bizarre admissions, including her confession that she was a psychic and that Richard Nixon’s wife had come to her in a dream. As rumors swirled in the next decades that one or more Romanoffs had survived the firing squad, Maria was asked to weigh in on whether Anna Anderson, perhaps the most famous Romanoff impostor, was really the Grand Duchess Anastasia.
Maria initially supported Anderson, but later recanted. It has since been proven that Anderson was not Anastasia and that all the Romanoffs did perish in July 1918. Anastasia was not the only ghost from Maria’s old life to come back to haunt her. Much of her life in exile was devoted to remembering her father and reinstating his image.
So when Felix Yusupov, her father’s asalent, came out with a memoir in 1928 detailing Rasputin’s end, Maria unsuccessfully sued him for damages. Soon after, she presented her own memoir, The Real Rasputin, and would follow it up with two more, in addition to sneeringly naming her dogs, Yuso and Pov, after Yusupov. It was in these writings that Maria put forward a bombshell accusation.
According to Maria, the motive behind Rasputin’s demise was nothing like what they teach in history class. In one of her memoirs, Maria insisted that her father’s murder was personal, not political. She claimed that Yusupov had made romantic advances toward her father and that the prince had lashed out and killed the monk because Rasputin had spurned these attempts.
Although most historians dismissed this claim, Maria stood by it. Maria also disputed the common account of her father’s death, which claimed that he had eaten cyanide lace sweets and been eerily completely unaffected by the poison. Instead, according to Maria, her father didn’t like sweet things and would have never eaten the offered cakes, meaning he was never poisoned in the first place.
This may have seemed like a small point to some, but it meant everything to Maria. Instead of some superhuman evil being, Rasputin was just a man, and he was murdered like one. Maria Rasputin lived to nearly 80 years old, dying in 1977 in the Russian-American Silverlake community of Los Angeles. She kept going until the very end.
Her third and last book, Rasputin: The Man Behind the Myth, which continued her efforts to humanize her father’s legacy, was published right around her passing. Through blood and exile, Maria Rasputin was nothing if not a survivor. Thanks for watching History Expose. If you love uncovering the best stories in history, hit like and subscribe to keep exploring with us.
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