Consider the playboy. Well-educated, moneyed through inheritance, aristocratic, European, refined, swashbuckling, married with mistresses. Playboys wake most days hungover, but still valiantly manage to crawl out of bed for a round of tennis or polo before driving their tiny European sports cars to chalets over-looking the sea for long, boozy lunches with their fellow playboys, which sets the table for debaucherous nights that more often than not take place on impossibly sprawling yachts. And they’re also going the way of the dinosaur, it seems.
Yes, the slow extinction of the playboy is cause for great sadness among some — particularly, it would seem, among playboys. I was made aware of this over the weekend when I ran across a hilariously ridiculous essay written by apparent playboy Taki Theodoracopulos in which he pompously mourned the passing of fellow playboy Gunther Sachs, pictured above being playboy-y.
This whole piece is so great — I really had a hard time deciding what to excerpt. Whatever you do, be sure to read this a thick Euro accent:
Gunther Sachs was 78, a ridiculously old age for a playboy, which he was par excellence. Gunther, who became the third husband of Brigitte Bardot two months after meeting her – he showered her home with thousands of roses from a helicopter the day after spotting her in a bar – modelled himself on Rubirosa when he arrived in Paris in 1957. They became fast friends – Gunther had the funds, Rubi had the connections and know-how – and proceeded to give non-stop parties such as I have never seen again.
That involved entertaining at home – Rubi had a beautiful country house just outside Paris, Gunther’s grand flat was on Avenue Foch – which meant an orchestra was always present, many beautiful young women, and society swells. No freaks, no hookers, very few film people, and even fewer gays. There were absolutely no drugs. It was booze, champagne, fine wines, and more booze. Dinner jackets were mandatory, although an elegant suit was also acceptable. There were no formal invitations. Rubi and Gunther would get on the blower, and a terrific party would take place that very evening. After all, no one of our group worked back then.
A typical Parisian day for Rubi and myself went as follows: we’d wake up around 9am (I lived in his house with him and his last wife, Odile), breakfast in his large garden, then box in his ring for 30 minutes or so, put on our boots and jodhpurs, drive into the Bois de Boulogne, where the polo club was located, and work the ponies. Then we’d meet our wives or girlfriends, as the case may be, lunch with them and friends like Gunther, a de Ganay or two, or perhaps ale heir Mark Watney and the great Belgian tennis champion Philippe Washer, then drop the wives off to go shopping, and more often than not we’d go over to Madame Claude’s, the most elegant and exclusive brothel in the City of Light.
Dinner time was party time, followed by a de rigueur visit to Jimmy’s, the Boulevard Montparnasse nightclub that lasted for 20 years and was the school for budding playboys. The next morning, however badly one felt, it would start all over again. But everyone was young, in good shape, and recovery time was a sign of weakness.
But wait, if you thought this couldn’t get any more ridiculous, he’s just getting warmed up…
I know it sounds like an empty life now, but back then it had an aesthetic appeal as well as a taste of depravity. Playboys were first and foremost gentlemen, machos excelling in dangerous sports, and above all, ladies’ men. The F-word was never uttered in public places, women were treated as women should be, and showing off was left to a few arrivistes who possessed neither class nor pedigree.
Unlike a number of today’s Arab kleptocrats and vulgar Russian oligarchs, no one escorted hookers, no one employed bodyguards and no one employed PR assistants. Today’s upwardly mobile, socially inept, vulgar types never would have mixed with, say, fabled playboys like the Roman Prince Filippo Orsini, the Brazilian Baby Pignatari, Count Jean de Beaumont or Porfirio Rubirosa, an adventurer like no other, but one who had innate good manners and chivalry.
And then, before closing, Theodoracopulos gets in a good burn about the two legendary ladies in media whose sh*t allegedly smells more flowery then yours or mine, ladies with tainted honeypots the playboys of yesteryear wouldn’t have bothered sticking their refined cocks into…
Ladies of high society were particularly drawn to them, but then ladies were really ladies. Little English lower-middle-class girlies like Anna Wintour and Tina Brown, had they been around, would never have come close to meeting them or even seeing them.
Now both ladies are considered arbiters of taste and society, in America at least, a bit of a grotesque joke if you ask me, but then, like all the best playboys, I’ve become a bit superfluous myself.
I blame the internet for the death of the playboy, because the internet has ruined everything. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS ANYMORE. If it weren’t for the internet, old French guys could probably still drop their pants and chase hotel maids around — probably with croissants impaled on the end of their dicks — free from worry of criminal charges. Ah yes, the good ole days!
(Via Ebert)