At the opposite end of the Kinseyian sexual scale is the raft of roués who, like Hudson, get into the biz to have access to like-minded women — or not. Hollywood is still a Rat Pack world, at least on the street and casting couch level, and according to my spies down there, it's getting harder and harder to get laid if you are just an average Casanova. The aspiring starlets are more mercenary then ever, if that's possible, and even less willing to put out for anyone less than a superplayer who can advance their career. Size, I guess, really doesn't matter anymore, unless we are talking about a wallet.

If you are a red-blooded American who also happens to read, and if by chance you pick up a copy of Shawn Levy's new book, THE LAST PLAYBOY: THE HIGH LIFE OF PORFIRIO RUBIROSA (4th Estate, 356 pages, $24.95, ISBN 0 00 717059 9), you will most likely consult the contents page or search the index for the part of the book that is going to discuss the book subject's biggest part. Specifically, you will be reading pages 124 through 128, where Mr. Levy writes a mini essay, called "genital endowment" in the index, an engorged digression on the most famous thing about a guy who was one of the first people famous for being famous.

Rubirosa, the son of a Dominican soldier turned diplomat, a serial marrier of progressively more wealthy or famous women, polo player, and race car driver, and, according to some of Mr. Levy's revelations, an agent of his government involved in some way in the elimination of the repressive regime's exiled enemies, is above all, the man famous for his humongous penis. So thick, so long, so aggressive was this member that its reputation preceded it, just as the penis itself preceded Rubirosa by about a foot. So notorious was this penis that a common restaurant pepper mill was unoffically renamed a "rubirosa."

There have been big dicks before. Milton Berle, Forest Tucker, and numerous others whom SPY used to gather together for one of its occasional and notorious penis-oriented "SPY Lists," and have all been the subject of rumors concerning their robust sexual organs. Porn star John Holmes was well-endowed, as was made evident in the several hundred straight and gay porno movies he made. With Holmes we can see, so to speak, what all the excitement, on both sides of the screen, was all about. But Rubirosa's member can only be the subject of conjecture, or rapturous encomia by some of his ex-wives. There is no picture of The Prick in Mr. Levy's book, though there are numerous snaps of the prick who owned it. The lack of visual confirmation of the legend's legend is the gaping hole, the great lack, the elephant in the room at the heart of Mr. Levy's book. Fortunately, the very subject of the biography and his glamorous life, and Mr. Levy's prose style and dogged reporting, more than make up for this metaphoric dismemberment.

Rubirosa never made a movie. He wasn't a war hero, or a world leader. He won a few races, sure, but what he is famous for is serial hypergamy, the wedding and bedding of a succession of rich dames, starting with Danielle Darrieux, and proceeding through Doris Duke, Barbara Hutton, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, before ending up with the aspiring New Wave actress Odile Rodin, who became his widow on July 5, 1965. He was also married briefly to the daughter of the Dominican Republic's dictator, Trujillo. Gabor's previous husband, George Sanders, was one of the few men to catch sight of the meaty monolith. He happened to observe it plunging in and out of his wife when he walked into the bedroom unannounced with a team of divorce photographers, finding Rubirosa and Co. on top of Zsa Zsa.

You might well ask, does such a subject really require a whole book? Wouldn't a mere magazine article suffice, such as the one that ran in VANITY FAIR some time back? If you think such a thought than you understand neither publishing nor human nature. It is of vital importance to your average American male to dwell, if only momentarily, in the ragged terrain of sexual comparisons. If you have never measured your own cock, and then tried to cheat by putting the butt end of the ruler against the cremaster, then you may indeed have no interest in this book, and more power to you as you blithely wander through life unaware how well you measure up or down. Mr. Willson would use this fascination as evidence of the latent homosexuality of all American males.

Mr. Levy (who is the reviewer for the Portland OREGONIAN, and has written other books including a histories of the Rat Pack and Swinging London and the definitive biography of Jerry Lewis) does a fine and amusing — and sometimes even compassionate — job, of chronicling Rubirosa's life, and is also prone to taking detours down the path of the lives Rubin intersected, such as Gabor, Hutton, and various politicians and celebrities. With access to Rubirosa's own autobiography (never translated into English) and some Spanish language bios, plus FBI and other government folders, Mr. Levy lifts the veil that shrouded this seemingly open book. If I had a complaint, it would only be that Mr. Levy succumbs to the ubiquitous tendency to write acknowledgements as if they were acceptance speeches, but with no exit music mercifully (for us) to cue you off the stage. His goes on for six pages and refers to everyone from helpful librarians to "bosom buddies." Be that as it may, Mr. Levy has the knack for the cogent turn of phrase. One of my favorites is his reference in passing to another playboy in action, Gunther Sachs, whose marriage to Brigitte Bardot is heralded as a "triumph of the skirt-chaser's craft" (page 307). And Mr. Levy does not stint on the gossip or odd fact, such as when he notes that the combined 20 marriages of the Gabor sisters amounted to but one child.

Mr. Levy sat down (at a keyboard) for in interview with this reporter. Here are the fruits of that colloquy:

The afterward suggests that it took about six months to physically write the book. So how do you do it? For those out there who only fantasize, so far, about writing a book, how the hell do you do it? How do you sit down and write the whole big damn thing? Do you have a schedule? Do you have a daily word count as a goal, or something like that? What fuels the writing engine?

I make a list of everything that needs to go into the book — people, characters, incidents, oddities, themes, etc. From that master list, I choose each day what I feel like writing. As much as possible I work in chronology, but since I can edit and move things around, I don't have to do that strictly. And some 1500 words a day seems about sufficient — 6 double-spaced pages. If it's going better, great. There were a couple 5000-word days. Those give you some breathing room and make up for the days that you can't whip yourself into action.

What surprised you most about Rubirosa's life once you got into the serious research?

He had a reputation for being a diplomat in name only, but the records I discovered in Santo Domingo and Paris showed that he actually worked at his job and was occasionally given sensitive assignments. He was capable of some important work. And he was taken seriously by presidents and ambassadors everywhere.

Did you ever hear what Rubirosa sounded like? Did you find any newsreel footage of him anywhere?

I have an LP of the highlights of the 1956 Sebring 12-Hour race, with two interviews with Rubirosa on it. His voice was higher-pitched than I imagined, and his accent sounded more Portuguese than Spanish or Italian. I found some newsreels but none with voice recordings.

What is this obsession you have with slick, hustling show biz types like Jerry Lewis and the Rat Pack, and now an international playboy? Do you live in a bachelor pad with a tiger skin throw rug and spend your evenings in smokey nightclubs rubbing elbows with top models and race car drivers?

I have a family of three children, a dog, two birds, a mortgage, etc — no swinger I. But I grew up looking backward at this era with a kind of fondness. My parents, I realized years later, were a Rat Pack-ish couple, and the music, books and magazines in the house celebrated that era of show biz. Plus the idea of powerful, glamorous creeps never gets old for me.

Would you say that an overarching theme of the book is that THIS is how the world really works, with its political corruption and chasing after tail to finance your lifestyle? As you write, do you feel as if you are unveiling formerly suppressed truths about success and ambition?

I think the point is more that in our corrupt age we sometimes look back to earlier eras for signs of innocence or purity and in fact those days were just as corrupt and putrid and base as our modern era. Rubi is no different from today's celebs-for-celebrity's-sake, but he seemed grander in an age when media saturation was at a far lower level and when people were more credulous about the things they read and heard. You could get away with more, back then. But Rubi wasn't nearly as venal or corrupt as the Rat Pack; Sinatra was King Heel #1.

OK, so in your research did you manage to get a look at Rubirosa's dick? Did you find a candid photo snapped by Zsa Zsa hidden somewhere? And if there is an extant picture of Rubirosa's behemoth, why didn't you include it in the book? Or surely one of the surviving ex-wives could have helped with a police artist's sketch.

His ex-wives wouldn't talk (two are still alive) but I did turn up some photos of him doing yoga in old-fashioned tiny gym shorts. I pored over those with a magnifying glass and all I can suppose is that he was in a cold room and was well under wraps.

It sounds as if his testicles were as much a problem as his phallus — as big as oranges, heavy, painful, requiring specifically designed harnesses.

It is funny, isn't it, that we somehow imagine a huge penis with normal-sized testicles? The testimony of his valet Victor almost makes me feel sorry for Rubi, his tailor, and those who were involved with him. You imagine two wrecking balls in full swing …

I don't know if there is a movie movie in R.'s life (as opposed to, say, a TV movie), but if there were, whom do you imagine playing R.? Or Hutton? Or Zsa Zsa? Or George Sanders, for that matter.

Javier Bardem looks just like him. Jennifer Jason Leigh has the calcium-deficient air of Barbara Hutton. Geena Davis has Doris Duke's jawline. Trujillo and Zsa Zsa are tough roles to cast, though. Sanders would be a plum role for any number of British actors, from David Thewlis to Stephen Fry to Rupert Everett.

What is the single most important quality for a biographer: Organizing skills? Research skills? Grit? Determination? Being able to imagine sympathetically the minds of people who to others might loom as monsters? At what point in the process of research and writing do you "make up your mind," so to speak, about your subject(s)?

I don't know that I ever 'make up my mind' entirely —or at least I try not to make it up all in one way. Jerry Lewis is a genius of a stripe, as is Frank Sinatra and, say, Mick Jagger, the villain, if there is one of "Ready Steady Go." Rubi ultimately struck me as sad and small — I think of his old age more vividly than his prime.

As for what a biographer needs: research and organizational skills, of course, but you have to remember that you're telling a story and it ought to read with the same fluency of a novel. It's ultimately a writing job, not a researching job, though you need lots of data upon which to rest your most fanciful phases.

I'd like to get a scoop here. What is your next project? Or do you no longer feel the need to be "always working on" a book?

I'm only just now getting my strength back from this book, which was more grueling for me to write than even the Jerry Lewis book, which was more than twice as long. I have about 8 ideas — one of which I wrote up and have in a drawer, several of which emerged from this world of Eurotrash and insipid glamour that was Rubi's life, a short book of criticism, even a novel and, perhaps, a series of novels. I keep tossing the dart at the center of the board, but I haven't quite hit it yet. In other words, the readers of THE OREGONIAN aren't safely rid of me yet!

NEXT TIME: Tales of two Natalies!

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