by Jeremy Scott
Then Rubi died in the Bois de Boulogne, only a few hundred yards from her apartment, Jimmy Donahue committed suicide, Reventlow expired during heart surgery, her son Lance died in a plane crash. She sat in bed fully made-up, wearing all her jewels. Her facelift had collapsed, her eyes were failing, she never got up. She was sinking into a stupor but her prodigious will sparked for the last time when her lawyer Mattison came to say goodbye. ‘Graham,’ she said in her sweetest voice, ‘I think you’re the biggest con artist I’ve ever met. Now get out of here and let me die in peace.’ She did so aged sixty-six in May 1979 and was buried at Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery, NYC. No member of the press attended the ceremony.
What was the secret of Rubi’s allure – apart from the obvious?
Part answer is that he was custom-made for the sort of experienced women who invited him to their beds. He came unaccompanied by any emotional baggage or hang-ups, and you could take him anywhere, he was a distinctive accessory to wear at any gathering. He provided sex, fun, company and drama. He was also the perfect girlfriend to take shopping. He knew which clothes showed off a woman best and he adored spending.
There existed many elements in Rubi that were feminine. Vanity, flirtatiousness, wilfulness, inordinate passion and a taste for drama are predominately, though not exclusively, female characteristics. The downside was that he was entirely self-centred and didn’t know the meaning of love. At the same time he was Peter Pan, the boy that never grew up, who liked nothing better than boxing, fencing, racing cars and playing with his toys.
Soon after Odile Rodin had met Rubi, he invited her mother to join them for dinner where she’d said, ‘You will never be able to keep up with her, and you will be made most unhappy in the end.’ It proved to be the case. Did he suffer? Probably. Did she? Perhaps not. Maybe it was as well it ended when it did, as the role of geriatric cuckold would not have become him. Afterwards, Odile sold their house for a substantial sum, remarried, chose the seclusion of a private life, gave no interviews and erased Rubi from her past.
So why do women marry shits? Or if that is too wide and stereotypical a question, why do some women choose to marry one while knowing full well what he is?
This book represents an attempt to elicit an answer to the query. A presumptuous venture not undertaken alone, but with the help of three female editors not unacquainted with life.
Tales of men who behave badly to women litter the pages of history since antiquity. It is rarer, much rarer, to learn the woman’s side to the story. Very often they were in that relationship because they’d had no choice, they’d been obliged to marry a monster. But that is not so for the women in this book. They chose to marry Rubi, they embraced their fate.
Notes toward why may be gathered from these pages while reading of their childhood and upbringing; that is, the explanation lies within them. But this does not answer the question in regard to Rubi, their chosen one. Why was he irresistible?
He was dangerous, therefore exciting? He was volatile and passionate yet also sooo cool? He raised a woman’s morale, made her feel special and desirable? Further, he made her more attractive in others’ eyes, providing a boost to self-worth prickled by a frisson of jealousy? But that jealousy was well-founded. Rubi was programmed to stray, a wife was destined to be betrayed. Knowing his past, did each think she would be the one to change him? They weren’t innocents in the world, how could they have deluded themselves so?
Yet life was exhilarating in his company. To be with him was to live hard, with the accelerator floored and the needle flickering into the red zone. It raised the pulse rate. You were never bored, as so often with other men. He kept a woman on her toes, you had to stay sharp. He surprised you, made you laugh. No row could endure for long, it was solved by sex. And sex was wonderful with Rubi, he was the most attentive and sensitive of lovers. And most men aren’t?
Zsa Zsa Gabor’s affair with him had lasted on and off for a tempestuous four years. After not marrying him she went on to wed five more husbands. When she learned of Rubi’s death, ‘I cried for him, for his charm, for his passion, his verve, for our love, our romance … he mesmerised me.’ Years after his death, while married to her fifth husband, she went to visit his grave in Père Lachaise cemetery. ‘At first I couldn’t find it … eventually I did and saw that no flowers marked the last resting place of the most famous playboy the world has ever known. Instead an old Christmas tree had been placed on the grave. It was July.’
It is appropriate that Zsa Zsa, who most resembled him and knew him best, should have the last word.
If I hadn’t followed my heart and hadn’t capitulated to my passion for Rubirosa, and had, at that moment, concentrated on my career, my life might have been completely different. As it is, I did follow my heart, I did let passion overrule judgement but I didn’t care and, to this day, I still don’t care. Out of all the many lives I’ve lived up till now – my life with Rubirosa was the most exciting.
† Or at least assuage it. Philippe Woog, inventor of the electric toothbrush and mega-rich in consequence, incurably Belgian and one of the most miserable men on earth, when questioned on the disjunction between wealth and happiness agreed there was none but said he’d rather cry in his Rolls-Royce than on the subway.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A number of people have been of significant help while writing this book: Stephen Brough, Ernest Chapman, the Benjamin Fishers, Peter Mayle, Mark Ramage and Vivien Tyler.
Particular thanks to Gill Hoffs for research, Christine at Valiant Services, my agent Julian Friedmann. At The Robson Press to my editor Sam Carter, James Stephens, Katy Scholes, Nam Cho and Jennifer Hamilton.
A NOTE ON THE SOURCES
I am most indebted to Shawn Levy’s fine biography of Rubirosa, The Last Playboy, Fourth Estate, 2005. I have also drawn upon the following sources:
Brown, Peter H., Such Devoted Sisters: Those Fabulous Gabors, St Martin’s Press, 1985
Cassini, Igor, I’d Do It All Over Again, G P Putnam & Sons, 1977
Cassini, Oleg, In My Own Fashion, Simon & Schuster, 1987
Crassweller, Robert D., The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator, NY Macmillan, 1966
Delaunay, Pierre, Just A Gigolo, Paris, Olivier Orban, 1987
Diederich, Bernard, The Death of the Goat, The Bodley Head, 1978
Duke, Pony and Thomas, Jason, Too Rich: The Family Secrets of Doris Duke, Harper Collins, 1996
Frank, G., Zsa Zsa Gabor: My Story, Arthur Baker Ltd., 1961
Glass, Charlos, Americans In Paris. Life and Death under Nazi Occupation, Harper Press, 2007
Hersh, Seymour M., The Dark Side of Camelot, Little Brown, 1997
Heymann, David C., Poor Little Rich Girl: The Life and Legend of Barbara Hutton, Random House, 1983
Humbert, Agnes, Resistance: Memoirs of Occupied France, Bloomsbury, 2008
Jennings, Dean, Barbara Hutton, A Candid Biography, W.H. Allen, 1968
Kelley, Kitty, His Way: The Unauthorised Biography of Frank Sinatra, Bantam, 1986
Leigh, Wendy and Gabor, Zsa Zsa, One Lifetime is Not Enough, Headline, 1991
Mansfield, Stephanie, The Richest Girl in the World, Pinnacle Books, 1994
Maxwell, Elsa, RSVP, Little, Brown, 1954
Moats, Alice Leone, The Million Dollar Studs, Delacorte Press, 1997
Nemirovsky, Irene, Suite Francaise, Chatto & Windus, 2004
Rubirosa, Porfirio, Mis Memorias, Editorial Letra Grafica, 2000
Sanders, George, Memoirs of a Professional Cad, G P Putnam & Sons, 1960
Servat, Henry-Jean, Les Trois Glorieuses, Pygmalion, 2008
Spada, James, The Man Who Kept The Secrets, Bantam, 1991
Van Rensselaer, Phillip, Million Dollar Baby: An Intimate Portrait of Barbara Hutton, G P Putnam & Sons, 1979
Vanderbeets, Richard, George Sanders: An Exhausted Life, Robson Books, 1991
Vargas Llosa, Mario, The Feast of the Goat, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001
Magazines
Look, interview with Flor Trujillo by Laura Bergquist, 15 June 1965
Night & Day, article by Phillip Knightly, 26 November 1994
Sunday Times, article by Shawn Levy, 4 September 2005
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
The Robson Press (an imprint of Biteback Publishing Ltd)
Westminster Tower
3 Albert Embankment
London SE1 7SP
Copyright © Jeremy Scott 2012
Jeremy Scott has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the publisher’s prior permission in writing.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.
ISBN 978–184954–427–6
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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