Michael Romanoff, pseudonym for Harry F. Gerguson, born Hershel Geguzin, was a American-Lithuanian restaurateur, conman, and actor in Hollywood
He is known as the owner of the Romanoff's, a Beverly Hills restaurant
Background
According to U. S. A Confidential while Romanoff pretended to be Russian royalty, he was actually a former Brooklyn pants presser. Later in his life he fought for years with the United States Immigration Service about his birthplace; neither he nor they could produce documentation. His original name may have been Harry F. Gerguson, but even that is in dispute. His immigrant parents were poor, and he was turned over to the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children at an early age. He spent his youth in orphanages in New York City, with a detour to rural Illinois around 1904 as part of a program to get children out of the city. Even then, one biographer claims, he was assuming names and attempting confidence games. According to Romanoff, he stowed away on a ship sailing to Great Britain around 1910. His next few years, like his first, are foggy.
Education
He later claimed to have attended Eton, Cambridge, and Oxford. The upper-class British accent he adopted from the time of his trip to the United Kingdom served to charm naive Americans.
Career
The nature of his activities during World War I varied according to his mood and persona during the telling. Richard Gehman later noted in Cosmopolitan (January 1959), "It seems probable he is the only veteran who served, simultaneously, as a British lieutenant on the Western Front, as a Cossack colonel on the Eastern Front, as a Foreign Legionnaire, and as a member of Allenby's forces in Palestine. " Gerguson/Romanoff first attracted the attention of the press around 1922 when he announced that he was Prince Michael Alexandrovitch Dmitri Obolensky Romanoff, a close relative of the late Tsar Nicholas II. On the basis of this aristocratic claim, he ran up large bills in stores and hotels in England and France, landing occasionally in jail when he was unable to pay. Romanoff returned to the United States in 1922 and began a ten-year battle with Immigration authorities. He claimed American citizenship, but the government contested the claim and tried to keep him on Ellis Island. He escaped from the island (by swimming, so he said, but the authorities maintained he stowed away on a ferry), and continued his career as a con artist. According to one source, he attended Harvard in 1923 but was expelled as a fraud, and he found himself apprehended again by the government in 1924. This time, officials could not decide to what country they should deport him, however, and released him. His next run-in with the Immigration Service came in April 1932. After another trip to Europe he stowed away on the Ile de France and returned again to New York. He was deported to France but returned once more as a stowaway on the Europa in December. This time his case went to court, and the judge allowed him to remain in the United States, although he decreed that Romanoff had to cancel a vaudeville tour he had arranged focusing on his experiences as a stowaway and aristocrat. Using a variety of names, Romanoff criss-crossed America after his return in 1932, leaving behind him a string of bad checks. His charm was such that some of his victims apparently enjoyed the compliment his cheating bestowed upon them. In the late 1920's, he made his first visit to Hollywood, attracting stars and movie moguls with his glitzy image and offering to serve as an expert on Russian affairs in films. After living and "working" briefly in New York City and Virginia in the mid-1930's, he entered business in Los Angeles in 1939. Financed by admiring friends - including Robert Benchley, Darryl Zanuck, "Jock" Whitney, and James Cagney - he opened Romanoff's, a restaurant that flourished primarily on the basis of his personality. Both he and it became Hollywood institutions. Throughout the 1940's and 1950's, Romanoff's was the place to see and be seen in the filmmaking community. "Prince Mike" assigned regular tables to special celebrities, and much was made of who got to sit where and look at whom. Stories, mostly apocryphal, circulated about his many personas, about his charming inconsistencies (one day he was the czar's brother; the next day, his nephew; the next, his cousin) and about his idiosyncrasies. He himself, it was said, dined only with his dogs. He reportedly sent money to a quiz-show contestant who lost a game because he said the Prince's title was real. "The first believer I ever had, " Romanoff joked, "should not go unrewarded. " He dressed elegantly, refused (not surprisingly) to speak Russian, and hobnobbed with Hollywood's "elegantsia" as well as with gangsters, politicians, and J. Edgar Hoover. Still maintaining his claims to royalty, Romanoff nevertheless settled into respectability. In 1951 he moved his restaurant to a larger location, whereupon his profits rose. He eventually opened other branches, but the Hollywood site remained the center of his enterprise. He later told a reporter that the average check at the restaurant in its heyday came to $10 per person for dinner and $6. 50 per person for lunch, drink included. In 1958, an act of Congress brought Romanoff his longtime dream and made it possible for him to become a citizen, although he was required during the ceremony to renounce all claim to foreign titles. He followed up this milestone with a much publicized trip to his "native" land, the Soviet Union, to see what had become of his so-called family's vast holdings. Romanoff's closed its doors in 1962. During his retirement, Romanoff amused himself working as a production assistant in films for his friend Frank Sinatra, appearing in a few motion pictures as well. He was still the country's bestknown, least-documented, and most-beloved impostor when he died of a heart attack in Hollywood at the age of seventy-eight or maybe eighty-one. No one can be certain.
Personality
His charm was such that some of his victims apparently enjoyed the compliment his cheating bestowed upon them. He dressed elegantly, refused (not surprisingly) to speak Russian, and hobnobbed with Hollywood's "elegantsia" as well as with gangsters, politicians, and J. Edgar Hoover. Still maintaining his claims to royalty, Romanoff nevertheless settled into respectability.
Interests
Music & Bands
This time his case went to court, and the judge allowed him to remain in the United States, although he decreed that Romanoff had to cancel a vaudeville tour he had arranged focusing on his experiences as a stowaway and aristocrat.
Connections
In July 1948, he married his young secretary and bookkeeper, Gloria Lister. They had no children.