by Sam Staggs
No one, however, was immune to right-wing tyranny at the height of the Red Scare, and so a phalanx of American Legion protesters showed up on December 27, 1952, at the Fox Wilshire Theater in Los Angeles for the Moulin Rouge premiere. “American Legion Bans José Ferrer” was a typical sign held aloft. Another was “Communist Press Praises John Huston.” The protesters were disgruntled because Huston, in 1947, had helped to form the Committee for the First Amendment, an action group in support of the Hollywood Ten and others affected by the black list. Members of the group included Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Myrna Loy, Bette Davis, Groucho Marx, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, and many others.
Ferrer, a liberal Democrat, was tarred as a communist sympathizer. Zsa Zsa, considered a refugee from communist Hungary even though she had not seen her native country since 1941, remained above suspicion. During the witch hunt of the early fifties, with Hollywood fogged in by fear, José Ferrer was taking no chances. He wired the American Legion that he would be glad to join the veterans in their “fight against communism.” A few days later, he denounced his fellow actor Paul Robeson for accepting the Stalin Peace Prize. Among Huston’s reasons for moving to Ireland a bit later was his dislike of American political paranoia.
* * *
“She moved like a tank,” said Oswald Morris, referring to Zsa Zsa. It is doubtful, of course, that Zsa Zsa ever moved like a tank, though Huston’s intimidation may have temporarily stiffened her spine. One thing she did extremely well onscreen and off was to walk with confidence and grace, and in ballroom scenes throughout her career she glides across the floor with swan-like ease. Morris, as Huston’s crony and director of photography on Moulin Rouge, no doubt absorbed the director’s prejudice against her. Morris added that he and Huston asked Colette Marchand, another star of the picture, to show Zsa Zsa how to move. If so, the instruction seems misguided because Marchand had trained as a ballet dancer and Zsa Zsa’s character, Jane Avril, was a self-taught dancer who, in her youth, was treated for the movement disorder known as St. Vitus dance. The dance style she invented, captured only in a few photographs and in Lautrec’s work, evokes a spidery grace that verges on the grotesque. Nor is Zsa Zsa called upon to dance. The script—and Huston—portrayed Jane Avril only as a singer, and whatever Oswald Morris’s reservations, he made Zsa Zsa the most dazzling woman in the film.
She first appears ten minutes into the opening sequence in long shot at the top of a flight of stairs at the Moulin Rouge. She is singing what became known as “The Song from Moulin Rouge” (dubbed by Muriel Smith, who appears in the film as Aicha, the fiery Algerian cancan dancer). The camera glides up the stairs to meet her, then pulls back and back to show her long descent of the staircase. With each step she makes Lautrec’s Jane Avril come to life. Zsa Zsa’s willowy arm movements replicate exactly Lautrec’s posters and tableaux of Jane Avril. Pauline Kael’s comment on those movements—“her gestures while she pretends to sing are idiotic”—couldn’t be more wrongheaded. Zsa Zsa uses not only her arms but her entire body to capture the wavy, art nouveau undulations of Jane Avril through the eyes of Toulouse-Lautrec.
At the end of the picture, the artist lies on his deathbed. Unshaven, distraught, he looks—perhaps intentionally on the part of Huston—like Proust as photographed in his own final hours. Hallucinating as he dies, Lautrec sees the characters he has sketched at the Moulin Rouge materialize through the wall and, in feverish montage, dance wraith-like to his bedside. The cancan dancers; Chocolat, the young black dancer; double-jointed Valentin, of the exaggerated nose and prominent Adam’s apple; and finally Jane Avril, in a haunting valedictory that Zsa Zsa claimed to have invented: “Henri, my dear, we just heard you were dying. We simply had to say goodbye. It was divine knowing you. We will see you later, of course. But now, if you forgive me, I must fly. There is the most beautiful creature waiting for me at Maxim’s. Goodbye, Henri. Goodbye!”
She blows a kiss and vanishes into air.
* * *
Fast-forward to 1983. Zsa Zsa, looking years younger than she did in 1953, stood before a stellar audience in Los Angeles and spoke with affection about the director who hadn’t wanted her at all in his picture. By the end of Moulin Rouge, however, they had become friends owing to their mutual love of horses. Addressing her old nemesis at the American Film Institute Salute to John Huston, she said, “John dahling, you didn’t want me for the movie Moulin Rouge. Before seven hundred extras, you screamed into the loudspeakers, ‘Miss Gabor, you can’t act, you can’t sing, and you can’t dance! At least show your face to the camera!’
“You put a big red heart on it and you said, ‘Make love to the camera.’ John dahling, you made me what I am today—rich and famous—but you never married me!”
She might have added that owing to her role in the film, forever after when she entered a nightclub or a restaurant, the orchestra would play “The Song from Moulin Rouge.” In a sense, John Huston not only made her famous, but immortal. When she died, every obituary named Moulin Rouge as the high point of her career. One of the better elegies echoed her final lines from the picture. Writing in Time magazine, Richard Corliss concluded: “Mademoiselle Gabor, you silly delight, it was divine knowing you.”
Chapter 21
The Destroyer
Moulin Rouge made Zsa Zsa the movie star she wanted to be. That success, however, left her vulnerable to forfeiture. Having almost reached the top, she faced a crisis: either to climb higher, or else to fall back into a great passion. Had she not met Porfirio Rubirosa, and spent the night of February 10, 1953, with him after the New York premiere of Moulin Rouge, she might at least have held her position. It would have been difficult for her to move beyond second-tier stardom because of her heavy accent and her basic lack of interest in acting as opposed to starring. Hollywood liked her, and studio brass considered that whatever it was she did, she did well enough. Besides, the studios could always use a new blonde.
As Marilyn Monroe’s career zoomed at 20th Century Fox, the other studios—and Fox itself—stockpiled sexy blondes to compete with, and, should need arise, to replace M.M. The plan was that if Marilyn became uppity, they would bring in Jayne Mansfield, Cleo Moore, Anita Ekberg, Sheree North, Diana Dors, Zsa Zsa, or any one of a dozen others. None of these, however, outshone Marilyn, who survived by a couple of years the very studios that created her and later tried to sabotage their creation. But the threat remained, and a morals clause was part of the boilerplate in every contract. The studio system required sluts onscreen, while Hollywood hypocrisy demanded middle-class respectability, or its semblance, to please moralistic America. Some of these actresses made unwise career choices; others failed to play by Hollywood rules and so found themselves left out.
In Zsa Zsa’s case, she mistook libido for love. After an in-the-headlines romance with Rubirosa throughout 1953 and after, during which she neglected career and all else, she returned to Hollywood to find the front gates closed. From then on, she was directed to the service entrance. All was not lost, however, for she did her best screen work later, although in Europe, not Hollywood. But Zsa Zsa’s reputation was ruined. Even so, she might have made a comeback, like Ingrid Bergman. For an actress, a few divorces never hurt, and everyone carried on extramarital affairs, but the rules stated unequivocally: Discretion Above All. Survival could be arranged if justified by box office grosses, as in the case of Lana Turner after her daughter stabbed Lana’s gangster lover to death. Imitation of Life, a moneymaker, kept Lana afloat. And Elizabeth Taylor triumphed despite breaking up the marriage of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds and then scandalizing several continents before settling down with Richard Burton.
Zsa Zsa’s margin for error, however, was microscopic. In the eyes of Hollywood, she had a small but visible talent, though no one was able to define it precisely. Even worse, every day brought her closer to forty, yet Zsa Zsa had no intention of playing someone’s mother. When she sliced off a decade, she believed it really gone. Oscar Levant on televisi
on said what everyone knew: “Zsa Zsa has discovered the secret of perpetual middle age.” A big dose of sanctimony would have worked in her favor, but Hungarians lack skill in that game. Their culture values candor; bluntness is the done thing. It’s part of their sophisticated earthiness.
Copius tears could often resurrect a fallen star, especially if photographed for the papers. Zsa Zsa’s eyes stayed dry. An afternoon of repentence with Hedda Hopper or Louella Parsons, supplemented with expensive Christmas gifts to those ladies, might have labeled her an outstanding mother of the year, along with Joan Crawford. And if only Zsa Zsa had dragged little Francesca to midnight Mass at Church of the Good Shepherd, she could have been Hollywood’s newest Mary Magdalene. (Not as farfetched an idea as some might think. She was mentioned for a biblical drama titled Joseph and the Wife of Potiphar, to be filmed in Egypt with Errol Flynn beginning in January 1954. A significant role, it might have elevated both career and reputation. But the picture was not made.)
Zsa Zsa, however, would not, or could not, relinquish her adulterous passion for Rubirosa. Adulterous because she was still married to George Sanders. Although Rubirosa married twice after the climax of their affair, he and Zsa Zsa were unable to stay apart. Their flames rekindled again and again until 1958, when she saw him for the last time.
* * *
Porfirio Rubirosa was, above all else, the dark secret love in the erotic fantasies of many women and not a few men. Described as the “Caribbean Casanova” in the tabloid press of the fifties, Rubirosa had a great secret that remained only guessed at and whispered about until later decades when it was revealed by a man who stood beside him at a urinal, and peeked. “I thought I was seeing Yul Brynner in a turtleneck,” he said. This macrophallic report flashed across the celebrity network, finding its way into print only after Rubirosa’s death in 1965. Other witnesses compared the famous appendage to the large brown peppermills used in some restaurants, a comparison that led Parisian waiters to nickname their pepper dispensers les rubirosas. Delighted with his reputation as a male sex object, Rubirosa smiled when a French journalist described him as “toujours prêt” (always ready).
He was born in 1909 into a bourgeois family in the Dominican Republic. In a country that serves as a case study in corruption and political vice, Rubirosa grew up a scion of privilege in a typical banana republic setting: dictators, revolutions, torture, murders, and endless strong-arm meddling by the United States. In 1915, his father was appointed chargé d’affaires in the Dominican Republic’s embassy in France, so that young Rubi, as he was called, ripened in Paris and acquired the sophistication of an homme du monde. Not until 1926 did he return to the Dominican Republic. In 1930, a rigged election brought Rafael Trujillo to power. Almost overnight Trujillo became the country’s immovable dictator, a position he held until his assassination in 1961. His long tenure was one of terror and cruelty matched by such dictatorships as those of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and the Kim dynasty of North Korea.
In 1931 Rubirosa met Trujillo, who became the younger man’s patron. Their relationship endured, although at times the dictator became so enraged at his protegé that Rubirosa fled the country. Generalissimo Trujillo, as he styled himself, was a bumpkin in general’s garb covered with spurious medals. Rubirosa’s erudition and savoir faire charmed the old vulgarian, who appointed him to the diplomatic corps. His first posting was to Berlin at the time of the 1936 Olympic Games, with later assignments to Buenos Aires, Havana, Rome, and Brussels. He served for many years in the Dominican embassy in France, where his chief duties were ceremonial and amatory. In later years, press reports named him as ambassador; this was never the case. Asked by a reporter about his specific duties, Rubirosa replied, “Work? But I have no time for work.” To another such query, he answered, “Women are my full-time job.”
The perfunctory demands of his office left ample time for love, and for polo and race cars. Owing to his handsome face, trim athletic build, and requisite social grace, café society welcomed him. His first marriage, to Flor de Oro Trujillo, the dictator’s daughter, lasted from 1932 to 1938. During World War II, he was the husband of French film star Danielle Darrieux, and after her the trophy spouse of Doris Duke for just over a year. It was a year well spent, for Rubirosa’s bounty from the woman said to be the world’s richest included a check for $500,000 as a wedding present; several sports cars and as many polo ponies; a converted B-25 aircraft; and a seventeenth-century mansion in Paris, at 46 rue de Bellechasse, a house the size of a small chateau.
* * *
Some of his history and accomplishments Zsa Zsa knew when they met on that winter night in Manhattan in 1953, others she would learn in time. It surely belies her reputation as a gold digger, however, that she didn’t marry him. She herself said it on Bachelor’s Haven: “I’m a wonderful housekeeper. Every time I get a divorce, I keep the house.” A Parisian chateau would be quite a house to keep, along with a chunk of his bulging bank account.
“Rubi was a sickness to me,” she said, meaning that the man himself intoxicated her and would have done so had he been a pauper or a ploughman. To illustrate Zsa Zsa’s erotic affliction, and its metaphorical source, I quote a poem from the eighteenth century, William Blake’s “The Sick Rose”:
O Rose thou are sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Change the word “life” in that final line to “career” and it describes the gaping professional wound that Zsa Zsa never recovered from. That damage wasn’t caused by sex, or infatuation, or high living—all of these a top-energy woman like Zsa Zsa could have incorporated into her schedule. Rubirosa, however, insisted, for the two years they spent together, on her full attention, which she found herself unable to withhold. Even so, had he been a reputable lover, they might have compromised. But beneath his seductive charm—the low-hung baritone and the perfect grooming, the roomful of roses he delivered to her suite at the Plaza after their first night together, his warm maleness in bed even when not aroused, the Continental manners of an aristocrat, except when angered—Rubirosa might have sprung from the pen of Edgar Allan Poe, if Blake had not already imagined his dangerous type. Zsa Zsa didn’t guess, until much too late, that the real Rubirosa flew by night in a howling storm.
Who hasn’t encountered the type? If survived, they leave a festering bite mark. Aristotle Onassis was also such a one; he maimed Maria Callas. Benumbed by the sexual power of that rustic billionaire, she neglected her career, lost her magnificent voice and ultimately her will to live because of unrequited love when he ditched her for Jacqueline Kennedy.
* * *
If Rubirosa had not existed, a novelist would have invented him, or a script writer, as the charismatic demon lover in a film noir. Although never convicted of a crime, Rubi was a frequent suspect. As far back as the 1930s, he aroused the suspicion of New York police who believed him complicit in the murder of a Dominican dissident working to overthrow Trujillo. On other occasions Rubirosa happened to appear, with payoff money, in the city where one of the dictator’s enemies was to be rubbed out. And stayed just long enough . . .
In later years, his associates included the notorious mobster Sam Giancana. Around the same time, Rubi’s friendship with Frank Sinatra included flights on Sinatra’s private jet with questionable fellow passengers and introductions to useful third parties. Rubirosa became an intimate of John F. Kennedy, who shared his interest in women and whose incautious pursuits while president endangered the United States more than once. The dots have never been entirely connected; they may never be. The point here, however, is the nexus between Washington, the Dominican Republic, organized crime in the U.S. and throughout the Caribbean, the Cuban Revolution, the Mafia and its fellow travelers such as Sinatra and the Kennedys, Trujillo’s assas
sination of political enemies with the aid of his government’s employee, viz., Rubirosa—shadowy figures and their dark connections cast Rubirosa as the real-life player in a drama that is at best unsavory, at worst soaked in blood.
Shawn Levy, in his biography The Last Playboy: The High Life of Porfirio Rubirosa, delved into all aspects of that life, with emphasis on the playboy’s associations with Trujillo and with Zsa Zsa. Among the many books that chronicle Trujillo’s atrocities, the most succinct is The Changing Sky, a collection of essays by Norman Lewis. The following passage comes from those pages.
“The best known of Trujillo’s resoluteness of purpose occurred when in 1937 he decided to stop the illegal entry of Haitian sugar-cutters from across the border, and a number estimated at a minimum of 7,000 and at a maximum as 20,000 of these defenseless people were bayoneted by his troops.” (Other writers upped the total to 30,000 or more, of men, women, and children.) Among Trujillo’s other methods for keeping order was to drop his enemies into vats of boiling water while alive. Others he fed to sharks.
He ruled every facet of Dominican life. From Shawn Levy: “Santo Domingo would be renamed Ciudad Trujillo; calendars would all be dated according to the Era of Trujillo, with 1930 as Year One. In the course of time, every home in the country would boast a sign reading God and Trujillo—often right out on the roof in large letters.” Any house that omitted the obligatory homage risked destruction.
This was the world that Zsa Zsa entered, probably unwittingly. Her romance with Rubi, gaudy and all-consuming, obscured the background of fear and bloodshed. Many times she said, “I know nothing about politics.” Indeed, no one ever accused her of reading U.S. News and World Report. In her ignorance she resembles those wives and mothers in The Godfather who ask no questions and have no wish for answers.