Dominican diplomat Porfirio Rubirosa lived a life of political intrigue that allegedly inspired author Ian Fleming to create the fictional spy James Bond.
Fleming, a former British intelligence officer who began writing after the Second World War, frequented the Monte Carlo casino and travelled extensively. In the post-war high society of Europe and the United States, Fleming noticed Rubirosa, whose exceptional biography and talents overshadowed the author. Rubirosa had a romance with the actress Marilyn Monroe before leaving her.
Rubirosa returned to the Dominican Republic from Paris at the age of 17 in 1926. The son of a diplomat, he had studied law before joining the military, becoming a lieutenant by the age of 20 and joining the national polo team.
In 1930, military leader Rafael Trujillo took power in a coup mediated by the United States. Trujillo, whom historians compare to Augusto Pinochet and Juan Peron, banned opposition parties, created a secret police force and renamed the capital Santo Domingo to Ciudad Trujillo. He ordered the genocide of around 37,000 Haitian men, women and children in the country.
Trujillo said that if someone was not his friend, he was his enemy and would pay for it.
In 1931, the 21-year-old Rubirosa played a polo match at a country club where Trujillo was present. The dictator, a former smuggler, was impressed by Rubirosa's talent, French language skills and Parisian manners. Trujillo appointed him as a lieutenant in his presidential guard the next morning.
Rubirosa met Trujillo's 17-year-old daughter, Flor de Oro. Sources differ on whether they met at a ball, shared a stolen kiss, or if she demanded he teach her to ride. When the romance became known, Trujillo viewed it as treason. He confined his daughter to her rooms and barred her from riding. Rubirosa was arrested and held in the Fortaleza Ozama prison in Santo Domingo, emerging weeks later barefoot, dirty and exhausted.
Legend dictates that Flor de Oro took captain's epaulettes to her father's office, demanding them and the captain for her birthday. Trujillo yielded, and the couple married on December 3, 1932, at the presidential residence in San Jose de las Matas, in a ceremony marked by a national holiday.
Political murders
Rubirosa became Trujillo's personal assistant, was promoted to captain and named deputy foreign minister. Trujillo later noted that Rubirosa was an excellent diplomat because women loved him and because he was a liar.
Rubirosa was linked to the 1935 murder of Sergio Bencosme, a Dominican lawyer and former interior minister who fled to New York. Bencosme shared an apartment with exiled politician Dr Angel Morales, who was lobbying the US government against Trujillo.
Rubirosa allegedly planned the assassination, choosing his cousin Luis de la Fuente Rubirosa as the killer. With help from the Dominican consul, Luis broke into the apartment on April 28, 1935, and shot Bencosme five times while he was shaving, mistaking him for Morales. Bencosme died in hospital two days later.
Luis de la Fuente fled to the Dominican Republic, where he was made a lieutenant. Trujillo later ordered him killed to prevent extradition.
Rubirosa was also implicated in the disappearance of Jesus Galindez, a Spanish Basque nationalist who moved to the Dominican Republic after Francisco Franco won the Spanish Civil War. Galindez later moved to New York and wrote an unpublished book on Trujillo's regime. He was kidnapped at the 57th Street and 8th Avenue subway station on March 12, 1956, and never seen alive again. He was believed to have been taken to the Dominican Republic and killed.
Rubirosa, who was in the US at the time, lost his diplomatic immunity after Trujillo's death and was questioned by US prosecutors, but maintained his innocence and was never charged.
Shawn Levy, the director of a film about Rubirosa, said he was not James Bond and lacked the tools to be a spy, but wherever he went he was perhaps more valuable simply by being Rubirosa.
Berlin and Paris postings
In 1936, Rubirosa was appointed first secretary of the embassy in Berlin, Germany. During the 1936 Olympics, Adolf Hitler invited him to sit in his personal box.
He began an affair with Czech actress Lida Baarova, the mistress of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, allegedly seducing her in front of Hitler. Hermann Goering also invited Rubirosa to hunt at his Bavarian estate.
In December 1936, he transferred to Paris. His marriage ended, either due to his infidelities, or because he told Trujillo he was sterile, prompting the dictator to demand a divorce to ensure grandchildren. Flor de Oro also allegedly complained of beatings.
Ramfis Dominguez Trujillo, the dictator's grandson, said his grandfather sent a blank cheque whenever Rubirosa needed money, adding that he was the regime's best public relations agent with the sole condition that he fly the Dominican flag at every party.
Rubirosa returned to France in 1939. During the German occupation of Paris, German forces suspected he worked for the FBI, while the French Resistance suspected ties to Hitler.
In 1940, he met 23-year-old French actress Danielle Darrieux. Her friend, actor Jean Gabin, warned her that Rubirosa was dangerous. Rubirosa said it was like love at first sight and his inner voice told him how much he liked the woman. He added that they had dinner a couple of days later and decided at their next meeting never to part again.
They married on September 18, 1942, in Vichy. In late 1942, the Gestapo arrested Rubirosa and sent him to an internment camp near Frankfurt. Biographers suggest he sold Dominican visas and forged passports to wealthy Jewish people, smuggling documents in his diplomatic luggage.
Darrieux secured his release by accepting a German producer's invitation to perform for troops in Berlin, a move that left her suspected of collaboration after the war.
The couple lived under house arrest in Megeve until 1944. After returning to Paris following its liberation, French Resistance fighters shot at their car. Rubirosa took a bullet to the kidney while shielding his wife, recovered and fled to Rome.
Wealthy heiresses
The marriage ended in 1947 after Doris Duke, an American tobacco heiress and one of the world's richest women, interviewed Darrieux and met Rubirosa. Duke allegedly paid Darrieux to grant a divorce. Duke and Rubirosa married a year later. Rubirosa passed out drunk at the wedding.
During their 18-month marriage, Duke bought him polo ponies, sports cars, a converted B-25 bomber, and a three-storey 17th-century Paris mansion where he built a boxing ring and bar on the top floor. While posted as ambassador to Argentina, where Duke refused to live in Buenos Aires, Rubirosa allegedly seduced singer Eva Peron, the wife of President Juan Domingo Peron.
Duke divorced him after discovering his sexual relationship with his first wife, Flor de Oro, but agreed to pay him $25,000 a year until he remarried.
Rubirosa said he behaved better than most men who take money from women and leave them, because he married them, gave them the best time in the world, and left them richer than before. Duke died in 1993 with photographs of a boyfriend and Rubirosa by her bed.
In New York in late 1952, he met Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor. Their romance continued despite her marriage. He allegedly gave her a black eye out of jealousy before marrying another woman. Gabor noted that his name translated to red rose in Spanish but said for her it meant a black eye.
In 1953, he married Woolworth department store heiress Barbara Hutton, who struggled with psychiatric issues and alcohol addiction. She gave him a coffee plantation before the marriage ended after a year.
Rubirosa's list of romantic partners included Joan Crawford, Jayne Mansfield, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Veronica Lake, Kim Novak, Iranian princess Soraya Esfandiary and politician Patty Kennedy.
He was briefly dismissed from the diplomatic service in 1948 following complaints about his personal behaviour. Style icon Johnny Galliher said he was half playboy and half gigolo.
Rubirosa boasted to American singer Sammy Davis Jr about 26 ways to kiss a woman's hand. Giant pepper mills in Parisian restaurants are still called rubirosas due to rumours about his physical endowment, which allegedly caused his first wife to flee on their wedding night. He earned the nickname Toujours Pret, meaning always ready.
Claude Terrail, owner of the La Tour d'Argent restaurant, said they never discussed women, explaining that a gentleman keeps his mouth shut.
In 1950s Paris, Rubirosa woke at noon, trained ponies at the polo club in the Bois de Boulogne until 6pm, and drank a bottle of whisky each evening. His favourite venue was Jimmy's, a club owned by Regine Zylberberg. Zylberberg said women threw themselves at him and even dragged him into the ladies room, making him the victim rather than a gigolo.
Designer Oleg Cassini said Rubirosa's greatest asset was time, dedicating one night to going out and the next to bed.
Final marriage
Rubirosa's fifth wife was 19-year-old French actress Odile Rodin, who married him in 1956 when he was 28 years her senior. At 14, Rodin had been the muse of 57-year-old millionaire Paul-Louis Weiller, who helped her enter the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Paris. She appeared on the cover of Paris Match in 1955 and starred alongside Brigitte Bardot in the film Futures vedettes.
Rubirosa made Rodin quit acting and dictated her clothing choices. Discovering his infidelity, she had affairs with individuals including 16-year-old Alexander Onassis and US President John F Kennedy.
In the late 1950s, Trujillo sent Rubirosa to Cuba as an ambassador during the revolution against Fulgencio Batista. He established a polo team in Havana. In January 1959, after Fidel Castro took power, Rubirosa attended a presidential palace reception. He reportedly charmed Castro before fleeing to Paris, abandoning polo horses and a Ferrari. Rubirosa denied leaving out of fear and stated he planned to return.
The CIA ordered Trujillo's assassination in 1961. Rubirosa urged President Kennedy to support Trujillo's son, Ramfis Trujillo, whose romance with Kim Novak he had facilitated in the US. When Ramfis fled the Dominican Republic with state assets, Rubirosa severed ties.
Rubirosa said he would never see him again and that Ramfis was not his friend and had betrayed him.
The Dominican Council of State dismissed Rubirosa on January 2, 1962, removing his diplomatic immunity.
He sold his Paris home to a Rothschild banker and moved to a suburb with Rodin. He suffered from depression, drank heavily and abandoned plans to write his memoirs or take a public relations job in Florida. A perfume venture called Rubi with photographer Gunter Sachs failed, as did a plan to sell a Dominican aphrodisiac. Rodin said work was a nightmare for him. At his peak, he spent $2 million a year.
On July 5, 1965, the 56-year-old crashed his Ferrari 250 GT into a parked car and a tree on the Avenue de la Reine Marguerite in the Bois de Boulogne, miles from where his friend Prince Aly Khan had died five years earlier. Rubirosa, who had been drinking after winning the Coupe de France polo tournament, suffered a crushed chest from the wooden steering wheel and died en route to hospital.
Rodin suffered nightmares. Rodin said her friends decided it was best for her to leave the country house and move far away to forget.
James Bond connection
In 2016, forensic historian Daniel J. Velker published the article Will the Real James Bond, Please Stand Up?, arguing Fleming was inspired by Rubirosa. They shared friends such as Errol Flynn and Noel Coward, and both were linked to Rita Hayworth and Eva Peron.
Fleming's first Bond novel, Casino Royale, was published on April 13, 1953. The first film, Dr No, premiered on October 5, 1962, followed by From Russia with Love in 1963 and Goldfinger in 1964. Actor Sean Connery bore a physical resemblance to Rubirosa.
Rubirosa later reshot scenes from Goldfinger on the three-masted schooner Creole, owned by magnate Stavros Niarchos. Rubirosa played Bond, Niarchos played the villain, and Rodin played Pussy Galore. They hired a plane to drop 3,000 tennis balls onto the yacht, but the wind blew them away. Sachs filmed from a small boat that capsized. Niarchos was too busy with negotiations to deliver his lines, and Rubirosa was too drunk to remember his.
