The Last Playboy: The High Life of Porfirio Rubirosa

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.

Author: Shawn Levy
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 10/31/2006
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 7.94h x 5.34w x 0.93d
ISBN: 9780007170609

About the Author
Levy, Shawn: -

Shawn Levy is the author of the bestsellers The Castle on Sunset, Rat Pack Confidential, Paul Newman: A Life, King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis, and Dolce Vita Confidential. The former film critic of The Oregonian, he has written for Sight and Sound, Film Comment, American Film, Interview, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Black Rock Beacon, and The Hollywood Reporter. He lives in Portland, Oregon.