Elvis Asked “What’s Wrong With Your Mama?” — The Answer Made Him Shock Everyone HT

 

The 12-year-old had a cardboard sign next to his guitar case. Playing for mama’s medicine. $17 needed. Elvis saw the sign, saw the kid’s worn guitar, saw the empty case. He knelt down and asked, “What’s wrong with your mama?” The kid’s answer made Elvis do something that shocked everyone on that street. It was a Tuesday afternoon in October 1971, about 300 p.m.

 on a street corner in Memphis near a small pharmacy. The weather was getting cooler, fall settling in, and people were going about their business. On the corner outside, Benson’s pharmacy sat a boy who looked about 12 years old. He had a battered acoustic guitar too big for him, playing simple chord progressions, singing in a thin but earnest voice.

Next to his open guitar case was a piece of cardboard with careful child’s handwriting, playing for Mama’s Medicine. $17 needed. The guitar case was nearly empty. a few coins, maybe a dollar total. The boy had been there since noon, 3 hours. His name was Tommy Richardson. His mother, Linda, had been sick for 2 weeks with what started as a bad cold, but turned into something worse.

 She had finally gone to the doctor that morning who wrote a prescription for antibiotics, strong ones, expensive ones. Linda went to the pharmacy to fill the prescription and discovered it cost $17. She had $8 in her purse. The pharmacist, Mr. Benson, was kind but firm. He couldn’t give medicine without payment. He’d hold it until tomorrow.

 Linda went home defeated and frightened. Single mother, working two part-time jobs, barely keeping things together. She didn’t have $17 to spare. She didn’t have anyone to borrow from. Tommy overheard his mother on the phone trying to call her sister in another state, asking for help, trying not to cry. He’d seen how sick she was, how she could barely get out of bed.

 So Tommy took his guitar, the one his father left behind when he abandoned them 3 years ago, and walked to the pharmacy. He sat up on the corner and started playing. He made that sign on cardboard he’d found. 3 hours. People walked by. Some smiled, some ignored him. A few dropped coins in his case, but he was nowhere near $17.

Elvis was driving through Memphis running errands. He needed to pick up a prescription himself. He pulled up to Benson’s pharmacy and parked his Cadillac. As he got out, he heard guitar music. Simple, struggling playing of someone just learning. But there was something persistent about it. Determined.

 Elvis looked over and saw the boy with his guitar. Then he saw the sign. Playing for mama’s medicine. $17 needed. Elvis stopped. He looked at the sign at the kid’s guitar case with barely any money at the boy’s face. Young, scared, trying to be brave. Elvis walked into the pharmacy, got his prescription, came back out. The boy was still playing, still singing, still hoping.

Elvis walked over and stood listening. After a minute, the boy noticed him and looked up nervously. “That’s real good playing,” Elvis said gently. Thank you, sir,” the boy said quietly, then went back to playing. Elvis knelt down so he was at eye level with the boy. “What’s wrong with your mama?” The boy’s voice wavered. “She’s real sick.

 Doctor says she needs medicine or it might turn into pneumonia. Cost $17 and we don’t have it.” “How long have you been out here?” “Since lunch.” “About 3 hours.” Elvis looked at the guitar case. “How much have you made?” “About a dollar,” the boy said, his voice small. Elvis felt something break inside his chest. 3 hours trying to earn $17 to save his mother’s life, and he’d made a dollar.

What’s your name, son? Tommy. Tommy Richardson. Well, Tommy, I’m Elvis. Elvis Presley. The boy’s eyes widened slightly, but he didn’t seem starruck, just tired and scared. The singer? That’s me. Elvis reached into his wallet and pulled out a $100 bill. He put it in the guitar case. Tommy stared at it. Sir, that’s too much.

 I only need I know what you need, Elvis said gently. The $17 is for your mama’s medicine. The rest is so you and your mama can have groceries this week, and so you don’t have to sit out here in the cold trying to earn money. Tommy’s eyes filled with tears. I can’t. My mama would say, I can’t take this much from a stranger. Then let’s go inside and get your mama’s medicine, and you can tell her Elvis Presley insisted.

 What’s your mama’s name? Linda Richardson. Elvis stood up. Come on, Tommy. Let’s go talk to Mr. Benson. Tommy carefully put his guitar in its case and followed Elvis into the pharmacy. The few people inside did a double take seeing Elvis, but he ignored them and went straight to the counter. “Mr. Benson,” Elvis said.

 “This young man’s mother, Linda Richardson, has a prescription waiting. I’d like to pay for it.” Mr. Benson, recognizing Elvis, immediately nodded. “Of course, Mr. Presley. He went to the back and returned with a white paper bag. That’ll be $17. Elvis handed him a 20. Keep the change. Then he turned to Tommy. You got the medicine now, but I want to talk to you about that guitar.

 It’s pretty beat up. It was my dad’s, Tommy said quietly. He left it behind when he left us. Elvis felt another pang. Well, it’s good you’re taking care of it. But a young man willing to sit on a street corner for 3 hours trying to help his mama deserves a better instrument. There’s a music shop on Union Avenue. Carter’s Music Shop. You know it.

 Tommy shook his head. I’ll write down the address. Elvis borrowed a pen from Mr. Benson and wrote on paper. Take this to Mr. Carter. Tell him Elvis sent you. Tell him to let you pick out a guitar that fits you properly. Tell him to put it on my account. Mr. Presley, I can’t. Yes, you can, Elvis said firmly but kindly. You can and you will.

 You’ve got heart, Tommy. You love your mom enough to do something hard to try to help her. That’s worth more than any guitar. Now, where do you live? I’m driving you in that medicine home to your mama. You don’t have to. I know I don’t have to. I want to. Come on. Elvis drove Tommy home in his Cadillac. The boy was quiet, clutching the medicine bag, still processing what had happened.

 They pulled up to a small apartment building. Tommy led Elvis up to a second floor apartment. He knocked before opening the door. Mama, I got your medicine. Linda Richardson came to the door, mid-30s, wearing a bathrobe, looking exhausted and sick. When she saw her son with a strange man, her expression changed to concern. Tommy, who is this? Mama, this is Mr.

Elvis Presley. He helped me get your medicine. Linda’s eyes went wide. She looked at Elvis at her son at the medicine bag. Mrs. Richardson, Elvis said respectfully. Your son’s been sitting outside Benson’s pharmacy for 3 hours trying to earn money for your prescription. I happened to be there and I saw him. I paid for your medicine.

Tommy’s been very brave today. Linda started crying. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to thank you. Tommy, you went to the pharmacy alone. You sat on the street. I had to, mama. You need your medicine. Linda pulled her son into a hug, then looked at Elvis. Mr. Presley, I can’t. We don’t have money to pay you back right now, but if you give me an address, you don’t owe me anything, Elvis said.

 Take care of yourself. Take your medicine. Get better. That’s all the thanks I need. And Mrs. Richardson, your son is remarkable. He loves you very much. I know he does, Linda said, wiping tears. He’s a good boy. The best, Elvis agreed. He turned to Tommy. You remember what I said about Carter’s music shop? Tommy nodded. You go there this week.

 Get yourself a proper guitar. Promise me. I promise. Elvis left. As he walked to his car, he could hear Linda through the door, asking Tommy to tell her everything. Elvis sat in his Cadillac before starting the engine. He thought about that kid sitting on a cold street corner for 3 hours trying to earn $17. How many people had walked past him? The next morning, Elvis called Mr.

Benson. Mr. Benson, this is Elvis Presley. How often do you have customers who can’t afford their prescriptions? More often than I’d like, Mr. Presley, especially the working poor. They’re not poor enough for government assistance programs, but they’re not making enough to cover unexpected medical costs.

 I see it every week. People having to choose between medicine and rent, medicine and groceries. Some of them just go without. Elvis was quiet for a moment, thinking about how many Tommy Richardsons might be out there. How many kids sitting on street corners trying to help their families? How many parents lying in bed sick worrying about money? If someone came in and couldn’t afford medicine, and you called me, could you trust me to cover it? There was a long pause. Mr.

Presley, are you saying I’m saying set up an account in my name? If someone can’t pay for necessary medication, antibiotics, heart medicine, insulin, diabetes medication, blood pressure pills, whatever they need to live, you fill it and charge my account. Don’t make a big deal. Just tell them someone covered it.

 Don’t use my name unless you have to. Can you do that? I can do that, Mr. Benson said, voice thick with emotion. Mr. Presley, that’s incredibly generous. Do you have a limit you want me to stay under? No limit, Elvis said. If they need medicine to live, they get it. Keep track of what it costs. Send me a bill monthly. I’ll cover it.

 Just make sure people get what they need. I will, Mr. Benson promised. Thank you for doing this. You’re going to save lives. I’m just paying for medicine, Elvis said. That’s all it is. But it was more than that. Over the next several years, Elvis kept that account active at Benson’s pharmacy. Mr.

 Benson used it carefully only for people who genuinely couldn’t afford their medications. A single mother with asthma medication for her child. An elderly man on a fixed income who needed heart medication. A laid-off factory worker who needed insulin. People who were working, trying, doing everything right, but still couldn’t make the numbers work.

 Elvis kept that account at Benson’s pharmacy until he died in 1977. He never talked about it publicly. Mr. Benson never advertised it. But quietly, dozens of people had prescriptions filled by that anonymous account. People who, like Linda Richardson, were working hard, but didn’t have enough. People who would have gone without medicine, gotten sicker, maybe died if that account hadn’t existed.

 Tommy Richardson did go to Carter’s music shop that week. His mother, Linda, feeling better after 2 days of antibiotics, walked with him. She wanted to make sure this wasn’t some kind of misunderstanding. But when they mentioned Elvis’s name, Mr. Carter’s face lit up. Elvis called me yesterday, Mr. Carter said.

 Told me a young man named Tommy would be coming in and that I should fit him with a proper guitar. Said to spare no expense. Let’s see what we can find. Mr. Carter spent an hour with Tommy teaching him how to hold different guitars, how to test the action, how to listen for tone quality. Finally, Tommy found one that felt right.

 A smaller acoustic that suited his size and skill level with a warm sound that made even his simple chord progressions sound beautiful. “This one,” Tommy said, his eyes shining. “Good choice,” Mr. Carter said. “That’s a fine guitar. It’ll serve you well.” He also gave Tommy a set of spare strings, a tuner, and a beginner’s instruction book. Compliments of Mr.

Presley. Tommy practiced every day after school. The new guitar made such a difference. Notes rang out clear and true. His fingers found the frets more easily. He started learning more complex songs, teaching himself from books and the radio. He never became professional, but music became a source of joy, a way to express himself, a skill that brought confidence.

 In high school, he played in the school band. In college, he played at coffee shops and open mic nights. As an adult, he taught guitar lessons to kids in his neighborhood, often charging whatever families could afford, sometimes teaching for free. Elvis taught me that, Tommy would say. He showed me that when you have the ability to help someone, you do it.

 You don’t calculate whether they deserve it or whether you’ll get credit. You just help. Years later, in 1995, Tommy, now an adult with children, was interviewed about that day. I was terrified, he said. My mama was so sick and I knew we didn’t have money for medicine. I was just a kid. I didn’t know what else to do except try to earn it.

 I sat on that corner for 3 hours and made a dollar. I was starting to panic. He paused, voice getting emotional. Then Elvis Presley knelt down next to me and asked what was wrong. He didn’t just give me money and walk away. He took me into the pharmacy. He drove me home. He made sure my mama got her medicine. He bought me a guitar I still have today.

He saw a scared kid and he helped. Not because cameras were watching, just because it was right. Tommy’s voice broke. And I found out years later that he set up an account at that pharmacy for anyone who couldn’t afford medicine. That’s who Elvis was. He saw a problem and he fixed it. Not just for me, for everyone who came after me.

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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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