Brigitte Bardot and Gunter Sachs (click for larger version)

 

Gunter Sachs

They don’t make them like that anymore, those continental jet-setting dandies of leisure, wealth, and adventure. With Sachs’ departure, the world bids farewell to the Men of the World, the Monaco casino/St. Moritz slope/Mediterranean yacht club gadabouts, that class-apart group whom Truman Capote referred to as the “super rich.” There’s no getting around it: Gunter Sachs was the last of the international playboys.

As the son of Willy Sachs, Gunter was heir to German automotive empire Fichtel & Sachs (Opel). At any given point in time, therefore, he had at his disposal roughly $400 million. That’s not a lot by the standards of modern pop stars or computer industry moguls, but during the 1960s a few hundred million went a long way on the Continent, and the Continent was Sachs’ playground. Among other pastimes, he was the Chairman of the St. Moritz Bobsleigh Club, and yes, that’s him walking back from an icy, deadly run in crash helmet, goggles, and full-length fox fur. That’s also the multimillionaire swaggering through an international airport with Brigitte Bardot in 1966—superbly tailored white chinos and white denim shirt on his athletic frame, Rolex on the left wrist, savoir fare all over the place.

Bardot was hardly the only international babe with whom Sachs enjoyed life’s simple pleasures, but she was the only one he wooed into marriage by dropping rose petals onto her Cote d’Azur villa from a helicopter. That arrangement lasted until 1969, after which Sachs married Swiss model Mirja Larrson. Before those two marriages, Sachs was involved with Soraya Esfandiary, former princess of Iran. Chicks dug him.

	The late Gunter Sachs, multi-millionaire international playboy, seen here returning from a bobsled run in St. Moritz. (click for larger version)

And why not? Sure, he was rich, but it didn’t hurt that he was ruggedly handsome, held a degree in mathematics, was a skilled photographer, and knew all the best spots for a private getaway or $30,000 picnic. St. Tropez, for example, was largely unheard of until Sachs turned it into his favorite beach. That wasn’t a secret for long among the jet set. Or Mick Jagger’s entourage. Or the Hollywood/Cannes coterie.

Sachs collected Dali, Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Picasso. Not just for the walls of his many villas, chalets, and manor houses. He collected the artists for dinner engagements and other get-togethers. When he wasn’t bobsledding, or on a yacht shooting footage of some lark or adventure, he was busy with a philanthropic enterprise, or finding ways to make those millions grow to billions. He once famously declared that he had never worked a day in his life, but no one ever got the notion that Gunter Sachs was lazy.

Many personal accounts of the Sachs saga reveal that his contemporaries did understand that he was a breed apart—something to do with innate charm, gregariousness, style, and quiet confidence. It helped that he was a daredevil on the slopes, at sea, on the racecourse, and on the polo ponies. Today we might suspect that the “stay thirsty, my friend” adventurer in the Dos Equis beer commercials (The Most Interesting Man in the World) is modeled after Sachs. That’s about right. But then, Sean Connery, Alain Delon, James Coburn, Steve McQueen, and Marcello Mastroianni were each, at various times, attempting to get on screen a character like Gunter Sachs. It’s a case of art not quite imitating life, because for Sachs, living was a matter of infinite life experiences. Sensing that the onset of Alzheimer’s signaled an inglorious introduction of the finite, Sach’s put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. (79, suicide) —DP

Linda Christian

By the late 1940s, Hollywood had roughly established a 3-tiered system for actresses. A-list (Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman); B-list (Teresa Wright, Jean Simmons, Susan Hayward); and there was no C-list. Anything below B was a nebulous, undefined field of starlets, ingénues, and “new interests.” In one distant corner of that third tier dwelled what might be described as an “ambitious girl,” aka The Climber. Actually, “playgirl” might be a more apt description, but Hollywood and American society did not yet officially recognize a female analog for the playboy. In any case, the goal of The Climber was to sink her claws into the nearest rich and famous gentleman (on the Continent or stateside), and if this target happened to be a film star, that was even better. To succeed with that ploy, the girl had to be highly physically attractive, very mysterious, sufficiently dangerous, and, in every sense of the term, willing. Linda Christian was all of that and more.

She’s the lead player in a forgotten chapter of Hollywood lore, but there are still some folks who recall that Christian was once briefly Mrs. Tyrone Power. Their marriage in 1949 was an insanely ornate affair held at Rome’s legendary Santa Francesca Romana cathedral, and was, for all practical purposes, a Hollywood production replete with Italian police unsuccessfully holding back a mob of fans.

Movie people understood that kind of thing in those days, especially if the concerned party were a star of Tyrone Power’s stature. What many observers did not understand was where, exactly, this Linda Christian woman came from, or how and why Power (who was said to be leaving his wife to continue his well-known romance with fellow star Lana Turner) so quickly ditched Turner and then took this mysterious gal as his lawfully wedded wife. They had dated only a short time, and how they even met was a matter of contradictory accounts.

Granted, Christian had made a splash in the tabloids as Hollywood’s newest beauty to keep an eye on a few years previous; she had appeared in some very minor movies in a very minor way. Apparently Christian, a stunning physical specimen whom LIFE magazine dubbed “the anatomic bomb,” exuded an irresistible erotic charisma. Debbie Reynolds had noticed that men “changed” after a few minutes around Christian, and quickly wrote her off as a mere “temptress.”

(click for larger version)

 

Power and Christian began experiencing marital difficulties right away. In 1955 there was that odd matter of admirer Robert Schlesinger, son of Countess Mona Bismarck, giving Christian a necklace, bracelet, and ring valued at $132,000. The purchase was made with a bad check, and the jewelry firm used legal measures to force Christian to return the items. Christian was also seeking film roles; Power was against it. One Christmas season English actor Edmund Purdom took up residence in the Powers’ guesthouse. By 1956 a divorce was looming, but Christian landed on her feet, or put another way, numerous eligible bachelors around the globe were suddenly at her feet.

That’s because “around the globe” is where Christian, aka Blanca Rosa Welter, was from. Her father, Gerardus Welter, was a wealthy engineer and oil trader, and his frequent global travels had provided his daughter with a sophisticated education (she spoke seven languages well, managed several others) and a taste for all things international and expensive. Possessed of almost supernatural feminine poise and beauty, Christian knew how to make an impression as a woman of the world. That’s how she wound up in Hollywood. Errol Flynn, otherwise an invulnerable lady-killer, had taken a very young Blanca Rosa from Mexico to California so she “could have a tooth fixed.” For reasons not made clear, Flynn eventually made himself scarce, urging his new young conquest to find work in pictures. He arranged for Welter to change her name to Christian, after the character Flynn had portrayed in Mutiny on the Bounty.

Not all the men smitten with Christian were wise enough to cut their losses. By the time she had divorced Power and moved on to various bullfighters, playboys, and Spanish Olympic athlete, millionaire, and racing legend Alfonso de Portago, several Italian tabloids were alluding to at least five men who had died under mysterious circumstances or by suicide. Each had made references to Christian in their last known conversations with friends or family. Nothing to do with foul play, mind you; Christian simply had that effect on young men. A lot of similar babes were home wreckers, but according to the tabloids Christian was out there wrecking souls.

On the other hand, she may have been the kiss of death in some cases. It was Christian, after all, whom de Portago had kissed before climbing back into his Ferrari to finish the Italian endurance race Mille Miglia in 1957. He flipped the car into the crowd when a tire went flat, killing himself and ten spectators. Eighteen months later Power died from a heart attack.

At that point, observers suspected that Edmund Purdom, with whom Christain had been cozy while separated from Power, might propose. But that’s difficult to do when the object of one’s affection is in St. Moritz with yet another filthy rich Italian playboy. Such was Christian’s influence, however, that when the European gold digging failed to pan out (and she’s reduced to the status of Azalea Queen at a festival in North Carolina), the globetrotting vixen returned to London in 1962 to marry a waiting Purdom. They divorced the next year. Christian spent the following decades in her native Mexico. How she got along is a matter of conjecture, depending on which bullfighter you talk to. (87, Cancer) —DP