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Of Playboy Dreams
Sep. 16th, 2005 04:15 pm♠
As Shawn Levy amply documents in "The Last Playboy," his bubbly, breathless and appropriately inconsequential biography, Rubirosa worked hard at having fun. Well into his 50's, when he crossed paths with the Rat Pack, he set a pace that few could match. Sammy Davis Jr., wrecked and staggering after a night on the town with Rubi, ran into his host the next day at lunch. Rubirosa, none the worse for wear, was leaning against the bar, elegantly turned out and casually sipping a Ramos gin fizz. Davis asked him how he did it. "Your profession is being an entertainer," Rubirosa said. "Mine is being a playboy." He found his vocation early. While attending school in Paris, where his father had been posted as ambassador, he took every opportunity to haunt the nightclubs of Montmartre. "Books didn't find in me a very faithful friend, nor did the professors find a conscientious student," he wrote in his memoirs. "The only things that interested me were sports, girls, adventures, celebrities - in short, life."
-- William Grimes for The NY Times
Although it is difficult to imagine a life without books, one wouldn't mind a life on that other extreme. Maybe the solace of books would be superfluous. Then again, maybe women are so crazy that it would just be another kind of hell.
xXx
As Shawn Levy amply documents in "The Last Playboy," his bubbly, breathless and appropriately inconsequential biography, Rubirosa worked hard at having fun. Well into his 50's, when he crossed paths with the Rat Pack, he set a pace that few could match. Sammy Davis Jr., wrecked and staggering after a night on the town with Rubi, ran into his host the next day at lunch. Rubirosa, none the worse for wear, was leaning against the bar, elegantly turned out and casually sipping a Ramos gin fizz. Davis asked him how he did it. "Your profession is being an entertainer," Rubirosa said. "Mine is being a playboy." He found his vocation early. While attending school in Paris, where his father had been posted as ambassador, he took every opportunity to haunt the nightclubs of Montmartre. "Books didn't find in me a very faithful friend, nor did the professors find a conscientious student," he wrote in his memoirs. "The only things that interested me were sports, girls, adventures, celebrities - in short, life."
-- William Grimes for The NY Times
Although it is difficult to imagine a life without books, one wouldn't mind a life on that other extreme. Maybe the solace of books would be superfluous. Then again, maybe women are so crazy that it would just be another kind of hell.
