Ay Carumba!  He’s been compared to Casanova and Don Juan, and during his lifetime romanced a slew of the most gorgeous — and frequently wealthiest — females around, yet he’s far from a household name today.  He’s been dead for over forty years, but scandalous tales of his legendary erotic prowess live on.  Such is the legacy of Porfirio Rubirosa, sometime government attache, much-in-demand man-about-town, ace polo player, daredevil racecar driver and the quintessential Latin Lover, for real.  Many women fell under his powerful romantic spell, but only five women walked down the aisle with him, beautiful French movie actress Danielle Darrieux among them.

Darrieux – today at 91 years of age she’s still acting — studied music as a child in Paris and used this background to break into the French film industry while still a young teenager.  In 1938 she co-starred in director Anatole Litvak’s Mayerling opposite Charles Boyer, a film that brought her to the attention of an international audience.  Darrieux’s appeal was a combination of her tremendous beauty, onscreen grace and acting prowess, and she was constantly busy making several films per year.  In 1935 Danielle, barely eighteen, married director-screenwriter Henri Decoin, nearly thirty years her senior.  Theirs was a personal and a professional collaboration, and Decoin urged her to try Hollywood.   She made her American debut in 1938′s The Rage of Paris, a Universal production opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr., but would not make another U.S. film until after World War II.

The War was a troublesome time for Darrieux.  When the Germans invaded and occupied Paris, Darrieux stayed in the city and continued her film career, a decision reportedly influenced by the Nazis who threatened to deport her brother to Germany if she left.  Her decision to remain in Paris was criticized by her contemporaries (the French Underground was allegedly after her for a time) who were unaware of the pressures put upon her, but staying there was also propitious for her.  She became acquainted with a handsome Dominican named Porfirio Rubirosa, the charge d’affaires of the legation of San Salvador who was stationed in Vichy, the capitol of Nazi Collaborationist France.

Good-looking, spoiled and intensely charming, Rubirosa was the son of a diplomat and had been raised in Paris, but returned to the Dominican Republic to attend military school and start his career.  The suave Rubirosa soon also started on what would end up being his second career, marrying well-connected women who could help him along.  He hooked up with the daughter of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo and they were married in 1932, when Porfirio was 23 years old.  Gen. Trujillo posted his son-in-law to a Berlin diplomatic mission, but it was soon obvious that Rubirosa’s eye for the ladies couldn’t be controlled, and the marriage ended.  (But don’t feel bad for the first Mrs. Rubirosa; she went on to have a total of nine husbands).  Rubirosa was clearly not a one-woman man, instead living out a near-fantasy existence with a succession of beautiful women on his arm and in his bed and more-or-less playing at being a diplomat.  His antics were ultimately considered terrific P.R. for the Dominican Republic’s international image, though — or perhaps because – he essentially earned his keep thru his personal charisma and nature’s blessings.  He was reportedly most spectacularly endowed precisely where it counts if you’re a lothario, and he also had the requisite manners and skill to exploit that lucky break well enough to keep him circulating in important and glamorous circles.

Darrieux, the beautiful and well-off (highest paid in France) actress, and Rubirosa, the gallant gadabout, fell in love and were married at the Vichy Town Hall on September 18, 1942, the ceremony witnessed by the Ambassador to Brazil and the wife of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s nephew.  The couple also hosted a wedding breakfast at a prominent hotel with many dignitaries and celebrities in attendance.  It was a truly a union of two spectacular and glittering individuals.  Though both labored under the political strictures necessitated by the German occupation, Rubirosa ran into trouble with the regime.  He had been shot on the street by a mysterious assailant, and later, after some rash public comments, incurred the wrath of the Nazis and found himself exiled to Berlin and put under house arrest.  The missus managed to arrange for his release by agreeing to go on a publicity tour to Berlin for the Nazis in exchange for Porfirio’s freedom, and soon afterwards the couple left France for Switzerland.

Darrieux continued her career and Rubirosa continued his quasi-official mission as a Dominican operative.  They were an attractive couple but Porfirio’s uncontrollable womanizing hadn’t stopped.  The self-described “man of pleasure” was as irresistible to women as they were to him, and in early 1947 (or thereabouts) he was spotted by Doris Duke, the multi-millioned tobacco heiress who spent a lot of time in Europe and ran in the same circles as Rubirosa and his actress wife.  Duke, divorced from her first husband, also was passing time as a correspondent for magazinesTime and Harper’s Bazaar; one of her assignments was interviewing Darrieux and Rubirosa in Rome.  Infatuated by the ladies man, Duke found her fascination returned by Rubirosa and the two began a furtive romance.  Though Danielle and Porfirio were by this time semi-estranged at best, they were still legally bound.  Completely smitten and loaded, Doris offered Danielle a cool million dollars to agree to an uncontested divorce from Rubirosa.  Since the marriage was already on the rocks, the bribe sealed the deal. 

Darrieux and Rubirosa divorced in May of 1947, and Doris Duke and Rubirosa tied their own gilded knot on September 1, 1947, but not before Duke handed Rubirosa a prenuptial agreement which stated her money stayed hers.  Danielle went on to marry screenwriter George Mitsikides in 1948 and they had a long and happy marriage which lasted until his death in 1991.  Rubirosa, on the other hand, had barely gotten started.  He and Doris Duke stayed marriage a little over a year, and during that time Doris showered her bought-and-paid-for hubby with plenty of loot, including polo ponies, sports cars, and a huge private airplane.  When they split up, she gave him a townhouse in Paris and agreed to pay him $25,000 a year in alimony, which went a lot further then than it does today.  A few years later Rubirosa would latch onto another moneyed honey, this time Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, who had already collected Cary Grant as one of her previous husbands.  Grant, in fact, called Hutton when he heard she was about to marry the Dominican Don Juan, and accused her of essentially buying herself a gigolo.  Didn’t stop her, though, and though their union lasted only a few months, when they split up she laid three and a half million bucks on him for services rendered, and threw in a plantation to boot.

In-between and during his official marriages Rubirosa dallied with an assortment of international beauties, including many of Hollywood’s most famous faces.  Reported to have succumbed to his considerable charms over the years were cinema favorites such as Gene Tierney, Veronica Lake, Ava Gardner, Dolores Del Rio, Kim Novak, Marilyn Monroe, Eartha Kitt, Eva Gabor and also her sister Zsa Zsa, a passionate liaison which took place during his brief marriage to Barbara Hutton, and which at one point had Zsa Zsa sporting a black eye.  Also falling in line for him were international celebrities like Eva Peron, Queen Soraya of Iran, various society dames and a few not-so-innocent debutantes.  His last marriage was to a young French actress, and they were still together in 1965 when the world’s greatest lover had a bit too much to drink after a night alone out on the town in Paris.  As he sped home, Rubirosa crashed his Ferrari into a parked car and then headlong into a tree, killing him instantly at the age of 56. 

Gone was possibly the greatest playboy of the 20th Century, famous for being famous, famous for having a big one, and most famous for kissing the girls and making them sigh.  Enough of a resume for one lifetime, I should think.

Here’s a little video tribute I found on YouTube, set to David Lee Roth’s “Just a Gigolo”: