Porfirio Rubirosa

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Porfirio Rubirosa

Porfirio Rubirosa Ariza, (January 22, 1909 in San Francisco de Macorís, Dominican Republic - July 5, 1965 in Bois de Boulogne, France) was a Dominican diplomat, polo player and Formula One race car driver, but was best known as an international playboy for his jet setting lifestyle and legendary prowess with women.

Born to a middle-class family, he was the son of an army general. He grew up in Paris, France, after his father was appointed the chargé d'affaires at the Dominican consulate in 1920. He returned to the Dominican Republic at 17 to study law but did not complete his schooling, instead enlisting in the military.

Rubirosa married Flor de Oro Trujillo, daughter of Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina on 3 December 1932. Trujillo dispatched Rubirosa to his first diplomatic post in Berlin. He later granted his daughter a divorce when it became obvious that Rubirosa had been unfaithful. Unable to return to the Dominican Republic, Rubirosa supported himself by selling Dominican visas to Jews seeking to flee Europe. Rubirosa soon got back into his former father-in-law's good graces, and continued to receive government posts until Trujillo's assassination.

His suave manner and rugged good looks came with a prodigious male appendage and sexual prowess, both subjects of much gossip. Truman Capote described his male organ as "an 11-inch cafe au lait sinker as thick as a man's wrist". To this day, large pepper grinders are commonly referred to as "rubirosas". He was linked romantically to Dolores Del Rio, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Soraya Esfandiary, Veronica Lake, Kim Novak, and Eva Peron. He dallied with his ex-wife Flor during his marriage to Doris Duke, and with Zsa Zsa Gabor during his marriage to Barbara Hutton. He was named a co-respondent in at least two divorces, the husbands charging adultery.

He married Danielle Darrieux on 18 September 1942. Duke (whom he married on 1 September 1947), and Hutton (whom he divorced just 53 days after their 30 December 1953 wedding) made him wealthy: Duke gave him $500,000, a stable of polo ponies, several sports cars, and a converted B-25 bomber, and gave him a 17th Century house in Paris in the divorce settlement; Hutton bought him a coffee plantation in the Dominican Republic, another B-25, and paid him a reported $3.5 million in their settlement. His last marriage was at age 47 in 1956 to then-19-year-old French actress Odile Rodin, which lasted until his death by crashing his Ferrari while speeding near his home in Paris.