He had taken her to the quiet outskirts of Paris, away from the film studios and the bright, dangerous world that had once been her life. He told her how much hairspray to use and how modest her dresses had to be. At parties he watched her, studied her conversations, and closed whatever distance she tried to put between herself and his gaze. She was nineteen, a young actress named Odile Rodin, and she had married Porfirio Rubirosa in October 1956, five months after they met, believing she had found a whirlwind romance.

Now she was learning that the charming playboy who had swept her off her feet expected absolute control in return. To the outside world, this marriage looked different from the ones that had come before. There was no violence, no public scandal, at least not yet. But Odile was discovering that Rubirosa’s need to possess a woman ran deeper than any of his previous wives had ever described.

He was not the man she had danced with that first night, the man who had whispered about her freshness and her mysterious charm. That man had disappeared behind the walls of their new home, replaced by someone who saw her as an object to be managed. How she had come to this point was a story that began long before she was born, in a different country and a different century. If one man embodied the idea of the reckless playboy in the middle of the twentieth century, with his extravagant bachelor lifestyle and his endless string of women, it was Porfirio Rubirosa, a Dominican living in Paris.

He was born in the Dominican Republic in 1909, the youngest of three brothers. When he was only six years old, his family moved to Paris after his father, Pedro Rubirosa, took a position as a diplomat in France. The elder Rubirosa was a man of considerable influence: a brilliant career, a distinguished reputation, a commanding presence, a vibrant social life, and refined taste. Most importantly, he was devoted to women.

These qualities left a deep impression on his impressionable young son, as would become clear when Porfirio grew up. But the similarities between father and son ended there. The father took both work and pleasure seriously. The son focused only on pleasure.

At seventeen, young Rubirosa returned to his homeland and followed his father’s path by joining the army. He rose quickly through the ranks. By the age of twenty, he had reached the rank of captain in the military and earned a place on the national polo team. It was through polo that Rubirosa first met the brutal Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.

Rubirosa used his charm and impressed the leader. As a result, Trujillo offered him a position he could not refuse: a new post as a lieutenant in his personal presidential guard. One of his first assignments turned out to be meeting the dictator’s seventeen-year-old daughter at the airport. The task seemed simple enough, but Rubirosa fell in love the moment he saw her.

She was beautiful, and beautiful women were his weakness. Her name was Flor de Oro, and she had just returned from her studies in France. Rubirosa struck up a conversation in French, and thanks to his irresistible charm, he was soon invited to a dance at the presidential palace. But that was only the beginning.

At the ball, Rubirosa broke every rule of etiquette by dancing with the dictator’s daughter every single set. He was taking a huge risk, and his behavior quickly caught Trujillo’s attention, igniting his fury. It comes as no surprise that his conduct at the ball had consequences: Rubirosa was dismissed from his post in the presidential guard. He went so far as to hide out at his family’s coffee plantation.

After eight days, he received a letter from Flor, inviting him to meet secretly in a photo booth, away from prying eyes. Their secret meeting became a turning point in his life when Flor de Oro proposed to Rubirosa. They married in 1932. But rushing into marriage turned out not to be the right decision.

Fortunately for Rubirosa, the marriage allowed him to return to Trujillo’s good graces. He followed in his father’s footsteps and began a diplomatic career, with postings that led him first to Berlin and then to Paris. Despite his marriage, he could not resist the temptations of the city. He became known for his wild all-night parties, and for coming home smeared with lipstick.

Whatever the time or place, he denied everything. And in a grim irony, he beat his wife when she asked where he had been. After years of infidelity and mistreatment, Rubirosa’s behavior led to their divorce. He and Flor separated in 1937.

With that development, he began to fear returning home, dreading the anger of his former father-in-law. His finances also deteriorated once the support from his ex-wife’s family and their apparent fortune dried up. But Rubirosa made up for that loss in an unexpected way. As the political situation in Europe worsened and war approached, many Jews sought to escape to safer countries.

Rubirosa began selling them entry visas to the Dominican Republic. Although his motive was probably personal, he undoubtedly saved many lives in the process. The outbreak of the Second World War brought new challenges to Rubirosa’s life in Europe. Because his views on the Germans were not acceptable to the French Vichy government, he found himself detained for five months in a German hotel.

Fortunately for him, there was a beautiful woman in his life at the time, the French actress Danielle Darrieux, with whom he was deeply infatuated. Darrieux managed to secure his release in exchange for some promotional work in Berlin. Once they were free, the couple decided to marry quickly despite the ravages of war. But things proved harder than expected.

In 1944, the couple was ambushed in Paris as they returned home from a nightclub. They were exposed in their car, completely vulnerable to the attackers. Rubirosa defended his wife bravely, shielding her with his body, even taking three bullets near his kidneys. After that horrific incident, it became clear they needed to leave the city.

They went into hiding, spending the remaining months of the German occupation of France on Darrieux’s farm. But even there, they were not entirely safe. Once, they had to spend several days hidden in a friend’s barn. The couple had been through so much together.

But would their shared trauma keep their relationship together in the long run? Darrieux, coming from the glamorous world of cinema, unintentionally introduced Rubirosa to many beautiful and eligible women. One of them was the journalist Doris Duke, heiress to a fortune estimated at one hundred million dollars. After interviewing Darrieux in Rubirosa’s presence, the two felt a mutual attraction.

Duke became determined to have Rubirosa for herself. She used her money to achieve it, allegedly offering Darrieux one million dollars to divorce Rubirosa. Whatever actually happened, the divorce went through in 1947, and shortly afterward Rubirosa married Duke. Yet just before the official ceremony, Duke’s lawyers surprised Rubirosa with a prenuptial agreement.

Despite his hesitation, he signed it in the end. Marriage to one of the richest women in the world certainly had its advantages. Rubirosa was showered with luxurious gifts, including sports cars, horses, and even a World War II-era B-25 bomber. But would wealth and extravagance really lead to a successful marriage in the long term?

Disagreements arose between their expectations of each other. Duke expected her husband to be available to her at all times. Rubirosa had always been more independent, wanting to do as he pleased. This eventually led to secret alliances with other women, one of whom was his ex-wife, Flor.

Once Rubirosa was caught with his first wife, their marriage collapsed quickly and ended in divorce, remarkably less than a year after they had wed. Because he had signed the prenuptial agreement, he received only a seventeenth-century house in Paris and a modest annual allowance of twenty-five thousand dollars until he remarried. His recurring bachelorhood and his desire for a wealthy wife to support him became a pattern in his life. When once asked about work, he gave his famous answer: “Work?

It is impossible for me to work. I have no time for it. ” The man apparently considered his profession to be hanging out with women and entertaining. Among Rubirosa’s adventures across various walks of life, he found himself drawn to car racing.

After befriending many racing drivers, the world of racing became yet another space for Rubirosa to meet new women. All women became the object of his romantic interest, even the wives and girlfriends of his peers. One married woman he met was the famous American-Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor. After a brief encounter at the Plaza Hotel in New York in 1953, she returned to her suite for a nap.

When she woke up, her room was full of flowers with a message that read: “To the most beautiful women. ” Rubirosa kept pursuing her, showering her with flowers and telephone calls, and Gabor grew more attached to him day by day. But this passion was only a glimpse of his dark, possessive side. Eventually, Gabor’s husband filed for divorce.

Shortly afterward, Rubirosa gave her an ultimatum: marriage or split. Even though she wanted Rubirosa, she remained conflicted over her love for her husband. Rubirosa was not satisfied with this situation. On one occasion, he attacked and beat her.

Gabor responded in a strangely twisted way, defending him by saying: “His beating me is proof of his love for me. A woman who has never been beaten by a man has never been loved. ”

Meanwhile, Rubirosa’s bank balance continued to shrink. So when an extremely wealthy woman entered his life, despite his interest in Gabor, Rubirosa was drawn to the heiress Barbara Hutton.

She was in her forties, not the type of youthful beauty he was accustomed to. But she was rich, very rich. Strangely enough, she was in a long-standing feud with Rubirosa’s ex-wife, Doris Duke. If she married him, it would be a satisfying revenge.

Perhaps for the wrong reasons, they both agreed to the marriage and wed in a lavish ceremony in New York in 1953. As it turned out, this marriage was no better than Rubirosa’s previous ones. Hutton was in poor health at the time, and with Rubirosa’s lack of empathy, the situation was not suitable at all. Meanwhile, his former lover Zsa Zsa Gabor mocked him: “I bet that man will come back to pursue me within six months and a few weeks.

” Nevertheless, they tried hard to make the relationship work, or at least Hutton did. She showered him with expensive gifts, such as a huge coffee plantation, forty suits, eight polo ponies, an airplane, and on one occasion, she spent two and a half million dollars on him in cash. Reports even claimed she was spending sixty-six thousand dollars a day on him. Yet despite all this, Rubirosa was, for some reason, unhappy and visibly bored.

More surprisingly, this marriage was even shorter than his previous one, which had lasted only a year. After just two weeks, Hutton left Rubirosa and moved in with her aunt. This damaged their relationship, and after only fifty-three days, they separated. Rubirosa was never the husband Hutton wanted, given her health condition.

He longed to return to his wild bachelor life, complaining: “She stays in bed and reads all day. It is a very boring life. ” Despite the shock of that adventure, one thing was certain: this marriage had been very profitable for him, and he was no longer broke. Now free once again, Rubirosa returned directly to the arms of his former lover, Zsa Zsa Gabor, exactly as she had predicted.

By 1956, Rubirosa was forty-seven years old and back in Paris. For many reasons, things ultimately did not work out with Gabor, and the two separated. But shortly afterward, Rubirosa met a young, ambitious French actress named Odile Rodin. He fell in love at first sight, saying: “I fell in love with her the first moment I saw her.

She was young, fresh, very beautiful, and possessed a mysterious charm. ” Rodin’s mother was aware of Rubirosa’s reputation and forbade her daughter from responding to his advances. However, she eventually relented after seeing the harmony between them during a quiet dance. Rubirosa was enamored with Odile and her vitality.

By his side, she greatly enjoyed staying out until the early hours of the morning. After five months, they married in October 1956. Soon Odile discovered a dark side to Rubirosa that had not been visible before: how controlling he was. He dictated his wishes about how she should behave, from the amount of hairspray she could use to how modest her clothing had to be.

At social gatherings, he watched her with intense jealousy, monitoring her interactions. He moved her to the outskirts of Paris, away from the film industry, to tighten his control over her. Aside from his domineering behavior, their marriage was more stable than Rubirosa’s previous relationships, outwardly without any violence or problems. As the years passed, by 1961, things changed in his country with the assassination of the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.

He was succeeded by his son, Ramfis Trujillo, who proved to be no less unstable than his father. Ramfis’s leadership was catastrophic for the Dominican Republic. He tried to get rid of the Venezuelan president, caused the United States to impose an embargo on the country, and then decided to embezzle two hundred thousand dollars from the treasury and flee the country. Eventually, a new leader came to power, the elected president Joaquín Balaguer, who soon removed Rubirosa from his position as a Dominican diplomat.

This plunged the aging playboy into immediate financial distress. By then, many of his jet-set friends had abandoned him, and his money troubles weighed heavily on him. Living without money was difficult for a man accustomed to a life of pleasure and amusement. Rubirosa fell into depression.

In 1965, Rubirosa died when his Ferrari crashed into a tree. It was never known whether his death was caused by excessive drinking or depression. Odile later moved to Rio de Janeiro and married a Brazilian businessman.