Error in the Credits?

During the opera scene, there are two women in the box with Vronsky's mother. The one to the screen right is in her 50s or 60s and the one on the screen left is a young woman. The young woman remarks how Vronsky and Anna make a good looking couple, and the one on the right rebukes her, called her something that sounds like "Lee." It feels like a mother/daughter relationship and the ages would seem to support it.

When Vronsky goes to talk with them, Anna asks who the young woman is in the box and a man replies that she is Princess Sorokina, one of the greatest beauties "of this season". Her youth and beauty continue to bother Anna at later points in the movie.

In the credits both in the movie and here on IMDB Mary Forbes is listed as playing Princess Sorokina. Forbes was born in 1879 and would have been 55 or 56 at the time this film was made, though. I am wondering if Forbes played the other woman in the box, the one to the screen right. If that is the case, who really played Princess Sorokina?

In the IMDB credits there is a "Lili" played by Joan Marsh, who would have been 21 or 22 at the time of filming. She would seem to be the right age and name to have been the young woman addressed as something like "Lee", and this means the older woman would be Princess Sorokina, making the casting correct. This goes against the man's answer to Anna, though, about who the young woman in the box is. It also goes against two other versions of Anna Karenina that had a Princess Sorokina character played by a 19 year old and a 15 year old, respectively. A picture I found of Joan Marsh does look like the young woman in the box, though.

Does anyone know for sure who played the part and/or why the man speaking to Anna identifies her as Princess Sorokina?


"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."