The Million Dollar Studs (Porfirio Rubirosa, the Mdivanis, et al.)
Moats, Alice-Leone. The Million Dollar Studs. First Edition. 1977. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition— jacket shows minor rubbing.
There has always been a market for beauty, charm, and social ambition, and few exploited it more successfully than the international playboys who populate this entertaining book. Men such as Porfirio Rubirosa and the three Mdivani princes, whose titles may have been dubious but whose charms were not, repeatedly married wealthy women, heiresses whose fortunes vastly exceeded their own. Whether motivated by love, money, social advancement, or some combination thereof, they became fixtures of café society and perennial subjects of gossip columns on both sides of the Atlantic. Alice-Leone Moats, herself born into society and acquainted with many of the principals, recounts their exploits with wit, skepticism, and the advantage of firsthand observation. The result is a highly entertaining social history of a vanished world in which marriage could be as much a career as a romance.
“I am the same as thousands of other men who have fallen in love and married. But I’m a monstrosity. Why? Because I have made the mistake of loving and marrying heiresses.”
--Porfirio Rubirosa
For more on this book, check out this Nick Harvill Libraries blog post.