At one gilded moment in history, his fame was so great that he was known
the world over by his nickname alone: Rubi. Pop songs were written about
him. Women whom he had never met offered to leave their husbands for
him. He had an eye for feminine beauty, particularly when it came with
great wealth: Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke, Eva Perón, and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
But he was a man's man as well, polo player and race-car driver,
chumming around with the likes of Joe Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Oleg
Cassini, Aly Khan, and King Farouk. He was also a jewel thief, and an
intimate of one of the world's most bloodthirsty dictators. And when he
died at the age of fifty-six--wrapping his sports car around a tree in
the Bois de Boulogne--a glamorous era of white dinner jackets at El
Morocco and celebrity for its own sake died along with him.
He was one of a kind, the last of his breed. And in The Last Playboy,
author Shawn Levy brings the giddy, hedonistic, and utterly remarkable
story of Porfirio Rubirosa to glorious Technicolor life.