When she was a teenager, Barbara Hutton, the five & dime store heiress, was as fat as butter, and slim, gum-chewing daughters of plain people were wont to gaze at her newspaper pictures and cry with feline contentment: “She’s got money, but look at that shape.” When pretty Barbara grew older, she reduced until her bones showed. Afterward, she was sick a lot. Between bouts in expensive hospitals she wandered wanly around Europe, wearing jewels and Paris dresses and collecting husbands (two princes, one count and Movie Actor Gary Grant) as befitted a member of international society. But none of the marriages worked.
Fate, however, had not abandoned Barbara. All this time, as it turned out last week, it had been grooming a fifth husband for her—a dark, politely feral Latin named Porfirio Rubirosa. At the time Barbara began reducing, of course, she had never heard of Rubi. He was not yet known to the tabloids as the “Big Dame Hunter,” but was just the son of an impoverished Dominican Republic general, a personable lad who wasted energy boxing and playing soccer. Rubi had been brought up in Paris before daddy lost his dinero, wanted to get back to Maxim’s, and soon launched his career.
Loving. He married Flor de Oro (Flower of Gold), the wildcat daughter of Dominican Dictator Trujillo, and stayed married to her for five years. The Dictator, apparently impressed by this feat, made him a diplomat. Once established on the Continent, Rubi found ways of maintaining himself in expensive luxury. He had setbacks. The Germans threw him into a detention camp during World War II. Back in Paris in 1944 he was wounded in a mysterious street shooting. But Rubi was undismayed. He married French Actress Danielle Darrieux (a collector’s item), and capped this by marrying Doris (“Richest Girl in the World”) Duke. During that ceremony, he insolently smoked a cigarette, and afterward, in Miss Duke’s fond words, “Big Boy passed out in my arms.”
Last year, after two other members of the international set had accused him of seducing their wives, 44-year-old Rubi was at the very zenith of his career. During July, in Deauville, he met Barbara. By now, of course, she had heard of him and his accomplishments. He, of course, had heard of her and her enormous for tune. “He told me,” she explained, “that he loved me. But he doesn’t remember. He never asked me to marry him then. He just told me he loved me, but I didn’t believe him. I have loved him ever since I met him.”
Leaving. At the time, Rubi was busy. He was accompanying Hungarian Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor around Europe, like a bumblebee buzzing about a truckload of sugar. He still seemed disturbed, as a matter of fact, when he came to the U.S. last month. He visited New York to renew his acquaintance with Barbara, but then headed west to see Zsa Zsa again. Last week he was back in New York, and as he arrived, Dominican officials in Ciudad Trujillo announced that he was going to marry Barbara.
At first Barbara acted as though she were not sure that the wonderful news was true. Rubi said nothing on his arrival, either. He looked sullen. He had reasons: behind him in Las Vegas, Zsa Zsa was shrilly announcing through Pressagent Russell Birdwell that Rubi had 1) followed her around like a schoolboy, pleading for her hand in marriage; and 2) on being refused, punched her in the eye, raising a lump on her forehead. According to Birdwell’s measurements, the bump was 2% in. long and 1¼ in. wide.
The very next day Rubi and Barbara got married. First they met the clamoring press in Barbara’s suite at Manhattan’s Hotel Pierre. Barbara, now 41, and only recently released from Doctors Hospital, looked haggard in her black Balenciaga dress and big purple-lined hat. Her hand shook as she held a champagne glass. Rubi looked sleek, well-barbered, healthy as an acrobat, and annoyed.
When a female reporter cried, “You look lovely,” Barbara said, “No,” in a forlorn voice. She added that she hated to look in a mirror because “I think I’m so ugly.” Tears came to her eyes. She asked her 17-year-old son Lance (son of Count Court Haugwitz-Reventlow) to hold her hand. “You would think sometimes that people would believe I’m getting married because he sees something in me, because I’m myself,” she said. “But they always think it’s the money. When I think of all the silly things I have done—maybe this will all be different tomorrow. Maybe he’ll feel differently tomorrow, but today I’m the happiest girl in the world . . .”
Said Rubi, interrupting: “She has brought sincerity to my life.”
The wedding itself, a short civil affair, was conducted in Spanish by Dominican Consul General Dr. Joaquin Salazar at his Park Avenue apartment, with Rubi’s former brother-in-law, Major General Rafael Trujillo Martinez, standing by as best man. “Oh, this is impossible,” said Barbara as she entered the apartment. “I feel as though someone had just hit me on the head.” But after drinking a Scotch & soda, she stood up, put one arm around Rubi, and replied, “Si,” when asked if she took him to be her husband. “Oh,” she said afterward, “we’re so tired.”
Looking. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, where she is appearing in a nightclub act at the Last Frontier Hotel, the beautiful Zsa Zsa had herself photographed holding an ice bag to her eye, and went on being difficult. “He wants me still,” she crowed. “In a couple of weeks this man will be after me again.” Rubi, she announced, had sent her flowers from New York and had called her on the telephone two hours after being married. “See how unhappy they look,” she trilled, holding up a newspaper picture of the wedding. “I give them six months. I love George [Sanders, her present husband], Rubi loves me, Barbara loves Rubi, but who loves Barbara?” “Just a publicity stunt,” said Rubi. “I refuse to talk about that woman,” said Barbara icily. “I’m a lady.”
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