Through the ages some men love to play harder than the rest. Their thrills are more explosive and can woo anyone with their charm and hypnotic traits. If the will, money and power are present, a playboy will be born. We take a look back at some of the greatest panty-raiders of our time and the women they have awed.
Caligula (AD 12-41)
The rich Romans loved extravagant living and Gaius Julius Cesar Germanicus, nicknamed Caligula, stretched this luxury gap to the max. When not drinking dissolved pearls in vinegar, he would hold extravagant orgies where anything was allowed, or visit the brothel he set up at his palace housing the wives of prominent senators. He was rumored to have committed incest with his three sisters.
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647 – 1680)
Some playboys just want to have fun pure and simple; John Wilmot was a naval hero and lived a life of riotous excess in the English court while playing the role of a sensible husband in the country. A member of an early Rat Pack, called the Merry Gang, his drinking and marital dalliances got him thrown out of Charles II’s court. He then set himself up as a “Doctor Bendo”, a physician who could cure barrenness – and succeeded in that he did. He went on to write Sodom otherwise known as The Quintessence of Debauchery led to prosecutions for obscenity and is thought of as the world’s first printed pornography. He died at age 33 of syphilis. The 2004 film, The Libertine, starring Johnny Depp, is based on Wilmot’s life.
Casanova (1725 – 1798)
A scandal-seeker in his own arena, Casanova was a gambler, swindler, spy, gentlemen, entrepreneur, wit, poet, translator, philosopher, and, of course a great and well-known seducer with an exhaustive libido. He travelled Europe and met with great figures of the likes of Pope Clement XIII, Voltaire and Catherine the Great. Casanova highlights include escaping from what was thoughts of as a one of the most secure prisons during that time after being accused of witchcraft, creating the world’s first national lottery in Paris, and being banished from most European cities due to his scams and errant naughtiness.
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Following in Casanova’s footsteps was literary superstar Lord Byron. He espoused a self-assertiveness and right to a freedom of existence that contravened the sexual morality of his time. Being a figure of the fashionable elite society, women found him irresistible and Bryon conducted numerous affairs with married women. In 1813, he started an affair with his half-sister, Augusta. Â After a failed marriage which was planned to calm his “actions”, he was denounced a member of the high society and fled England to escape debtors. In the continent he enjoyed his sexual freedom sleeping with both men and women, and wrote his famous work Don Juan which satires English society and was open about sex, his mainly female audience dropped their dresses in shock…literally.
Portfirio Rubirosa (1909-1965)
Forget the term “the boy around town”, this charmer popularly known, as ‘Rubi’ was the boy around the world in Fifties and Sixties. Porfirio singled out beautiful women with even prettier bank accounts and married them. His marriage to Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton lasted just 53 days but left him with a rumored $3.5 million. Being handsome and gifted helped – large pepper grinders in some parts of the world are still known as “rubiroras” after his appendage and sexual prowess. Between bedding Zsa Zsa Gabour and Eva Peron he raced cares around the word, excelled on the polo field, and dabbled in dodgy diplomatic dealings with his homeland association with the Dominican Republic’s dictator Rafael Trujillo. He personified the suave, devilish playboy with a white dinner jacket, masculine glamour. His play-hard lifestyle eventually got the better of him at 56 when he died in a car accident of crashing his Ferrari into a tree in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.
Sean Connery (1930)
While not strictly a playboy in his own right, Sean Connery, through his roles in the James Bond movies, embodies the perfect playboy figure. Well-built, 6ft 2, embodies the handsome, masculine looks that matured well. Connery coined a smooth Scottish sexiness all of his own. 007’s creator Ian Flemming was rumored not to favor Connery as he thought he came across as “unrefined”. But it was this edginess that the public loved.
Warren Beatty (1937)
Hollywood has chummed out many a playboy in its history from producers (Howard Hughes) to actors (Errol Flynn and Jack Nicholson), but it’s rather hard to match the swooning energy of Mr. Beatty. He bodied scores of leading ladies before his marriage to Annette Bening in 1992, including Joan Collins, Diane Keaton, Princess Margaret, Natalie Wood, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Madonna and Carly Simon whose song, You’re so Vain is said to be written about him. “My notion of a wife at 40 is that a man should be able to change her, like a bank note, for two twenties.” Beatty said. Beatty directed and produced Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Dick Tracy (1990).
