(Friends and fans of this blog may be surprised to find the focus of this week’s entry the frightening freaks and famous monsters of filmdom. But Halloween is fast approaching and I suddenly remembered that I had written the following chapter — “Monster Madness” — for a book entitled The Variety History of Show Business that Abrams published in 1993. My contribution explored the cinematic influence of two great horror films: Dracula and Frankenstein. The piece is a revelation to me since I honestly forgot that I had known all this stuff!

A few nights ago, in a similarly morbid train of thought, I also happened to be watching a tribute to slasher films on one of the more gruesome cable channels and there was a fascinating interview with Tom Savini. Like a blow to the head, I quickly recalled that I had worked on a documentary about this great makeup artist (Friday the 13th; Maniac; Dawn of the Dead) for Paramount Home Video. The memory of it was buried deep within my resume. I was credited as the author of the “script” for the film (released originally only on video). It was the first in a series of Scream Greats projects that Paramount hoped to put out. I think they only did two in the end. My job as “script” writer was to piece together the filmed interviews and movie moments from Tom Savini’s oeuvre.

I worked with the young and extremely likable director Damon Santostefano who has gone on to direct full-length Hollywood features. What a bloodbath of memories all of this brings back! My brother Ken can attest to my early childhood interest in old horror films. I used to collect Eerie and Creepy magazines as well as Famous Monsters of Filmland. And I had all the Frankenstein and Dracula toys one could find back in the 60s. Somehow in the 80s, I lost interest in horror films. I never warmed up to the Wes Craven school of fright films in which nubile blonds are massacred by malignant sadists. What appeals to me about the early horror classics is the pathos associated with the “monsters.” Both Dracula and Frankenstein were sympathetic in their own misunderstood, tragic, ways. Here, below, is the essay as it appeared in Variety’s anthology.)

Monster Madness

In darkened movie theatres across the country on the auspicious date of Friday the 13th, February 1931, audiences shivered in their seats as they watched an eerie new “talking film” called Dracula, starring a little known actor with the vaguely sinister name Bela Lugosi. Advance word had alerted audiences to the film’s weird and terrifying premise: the tale of a vampire who escapes the inevitability of death by sucking the blood of beautiful young women. Advertised as “the Strangest Love Story of All” (to capitalize on its Valentine’s Day weekend opening), the film was shot in a stark monochrome and filled with ghoulish images of cobweb-strewn castles and foggy crypts. Nurses were stationed in some theatres to be on hand should any of the patrons faint in terror.

Near the end of the picture, the character of Dr. Van Helsing took out a crucifix and held it up to the evil vampire, who flung his cloak over his face to avoid the powerful force generated by the Christian symbol. At the initial showing at the Roxy Theatre in New York, the audience suddenly burst into loud applause, cheering on the doctor as Good triumphed over Evil. Much to everyone’s surprise, Universal Pictures, which had been on the verge of bankruptcy, had a huge hit on its hands. The film broke movie house records, becoming the number one box office draw of the year.

Today, it is hard to image the effect that Dracula had on the moviegoing public of 1931. The film’s special effects seem gimmicky and unconvincing. Lugosi’s ham acting seems ludicrous even by the standards of the early talkies, and the tortured script leaves a lot of plot twists unresolved. But American audiences, struggling through the severest depression the country had ever experienced, had never seen anything like it before and were entranced by its mysterious glamour and gruesome mood. Lugosi’s portrait of a decadent European aristocrat who rises from his casket every night to prey on virtuous young women struck a chord with viewers who had survived a stock market crash and were coming to grips with the after-effects of massive waves of immigration.

Eschewing fangs and elegantly attired in white tie and tails, Lugosi made Count Dracula almost human, acting more like one of those charming Continental playboys who haunted gambling casinos than a devilish fiend with a thirst for blood. Instead of being repugnant, Lugosi made vampires chic. The director, Tod Browning, used expressionistic cinematographic techniques then popular in Germany — skewed camera angles, black and white contrasts, shadows and fog — to great effect, transforming Dracula’s castle into a Poe-like realm of perverse beauty.

When Mordaunt Hall, the New York Times film reviewer, wrote that Browning’s picture “succeeds in its Grand Guignol intentions,” he could only describe the film as a “mystery,” since the term “horror film” had not yet been invented. True, in silent films, John Barrymore had succeeded in capturing the horrific essence of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), and the legendary Lon Chaney, “the man of a thousand faces,” had made a series of scary pictures — The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), and London After Midnight (1927), in which he played a policeman masquerading as a vampire (Chaney had in fact been offered the part of Dracula, but he died before the film went into production). But Dracula was the first Hollywood picture especially designed to frighten and shock audiences by making the monster himself the focus of dramatic interest. As a result, a cult of personality developed around the Count Dracula character. Lugosi received mountains of fan mail in care of Universal and became so identified as the personification of evil that Disney’s animators used his face as the devil in Fantasia.

Universal capitalized on the public’s newfound fascination with the grotesque by rushing into production a film version of Mary Shelley’s classic 19th-century novel Frankenstein. The studio had owned the film rights (of a play version by Peggy Webling) for 12 years but had feared to produce it because of its grim subject matter. The surprise success of Dracula, however, suddenly made it possible. The story of a mad scientist who creates a monster from severed parts of cadavers had been filmed twice before — first in 1910 by Thomas Edison (the film, unfortunately, is lost) and again in 1915 as Life Without Soul — but this new talking version, a mere 70 minutes long) writen by John Balderston (who penned the popular Broadway play on which Dracula was based) was going to be different. Smelling a hit, Universal pulled out all the stops. Bette Davis and Leslie Howard were slated to star, with Lugosi playing the monster, but the studio had second thoughts, realizing that Davis was destined for greatness in more dramatic roles. When British director Jame Whale was signed on, he chose Colin Clive and Mae Clarke. Lugosi, fresh from his success as the count, refused to play a nonspeaking role, so Whale opted for a relatively unknown British actor who went by the name of Boris Karloff. The rest, as they say in B movies, is history.

Opening at the start of the Christmas season in December 1931, and released in a print tinted a ghoulish green which made the monster look more like a walking corpse, Frankenstein proved to be an even bigger smash than Dracula, mostly because of Karloff’s riveting performance. Listed only as “?” in the opening credits, he imbued the creature with a tremendous sense of pathos and a mime-like intensity. Karloff was aided by Jack Pierce’s inventive makeup (he examined cadavers to get the right effect) and a costume that weighed 45 pounds. The effect was so frightening that when waiting around the set, Karloff often wore a handkerchief over his face so as not to offend the crew.

Frankenstein marks the first time a studio promoted a movie by actually telling people to stay away. In fact, a scene was added to the beginning of the film in which a doctor instructs audience members to leave the theatre at once if they do not feel they have the stomach to view what comes next. Indeed, many people were not prepared for the violence and horror and complained about the film’s lack of morality. English critics cautioned that Frankenstein was a “freak picture, rated intense” that “cannot be judged by ordinary standards of entertainment” and should not be seen by “children and sensitive women.” Other commentators were outraged by three scenes in particular which they felt went beyond common decency. In the climactic laboratory scene, Dr. Henry Frankenstein witnesses the first signs of life in the creature and shouts the now famous words, “It’s alive! It’s alive!” Immediately following that statement, he added, “Now I know what it feels like to be God!” That line was cut after protests, as was the scene in which the monster kills the troublesome hunchbacked dwarf (played by Dwight Frye, who portrayed Renfield in Dracula). But it was the notorious flower scene in which the monster throws Mary, a young village girl, into a lake, drowning her, that incited the loudest uproar. The scene was cut entirely until the movie was re-released years later. Even now, its more violent moments take place off-screen. Frankenstein was also one of the first movies to film two different endings, to be selected depending on how the audience responded. After a preview in which Henry was flung off a burning windmill and killed by the monster, audiences left disappointed. The studio opted for a happier ending in which Frankenstein survives (a voice-over was added in which a villager shouts, “He’s alive!”, providing a dramatic counterpoint to the earlier scene in the laboratory). Apparently audiences in 1931 did not think the doctor should be punished for trying to play God after all. Whereas Dracula had been a romantic thriller, Frankenstein went further, romanticizing and humanizing the predicament of a monster attacked on all sides by belligerent villagers. As a symbol of a tortured loner, Frankenstein touched American audiences on a deep psychological level. Soon Karloff as Frankenstein (the monster was often called by its creator’s name) developed his own fan club. On Halloween, American kids eagerly took to the streets dressed as their favorite monster, sporting shortened sleeves, fiendish makeup, and bolts on their necks.Universal helped solidify its reputation as the house of horrors by releasing a succession of sequels starring Boris Karloff. The Bride of Frankenstein, in many ways a superior film, appeared in 1935 (also directed by James Whale), Son of Frankenstein in 1939, and House of Frankenstein in 1944. Ironically, Lugosi, who had originally turned down the role, gave in and portrayed the monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein in 1942. Eager to repeat its success, Universal also invented other horror heroes. The Mummy (1932, also Boris Karloff) led to a series of popular sequels, as did The Wolf Man (1941, starring Lon Chaney, Jr.) By the end of the 40s, the genre began to run out of steam and devolved into low comedy in pictures like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), in which all the Universal monsters teamed up to wreak havoc.

After the Second World War, the novelty of seeing fiends like Dracula and Frankenstein on the screen was wearing thin. The atrocities of the Holocaust and the explosion of the atom bomb significantly altered the way in which American audiences reacted to horror. Instead of humanized monsters, audiences craved more mystery and a greater threat of peril. Now the monsters were less sympathetic (Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954) or alien creatures (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956) representing a species that was more advanced, more intelligent, and infinitely more cruel. Seeking out enemies from beyond our own planet was a soothing notion after the devastating revelations of man’s inhumanity to man in World War II. Once the hydrogen bomb was detonated, it became apparent that world destruction was not just an idea, but a possibility, and many horror films from the 50s exploited this fear.

Ironically, Frankenstein and Dracula came back into vogue in the late 50s. Hammer Films in England came up with the notion of remaking the horror classics in color, winning over a new generation of fanatics by spilling buckets of bright red “blood” and showing realistically sharp fangs. The series, starring Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Frankenstein, helped revive Britain’s lagging film industry. The release of Universal’s famous horror movies on television also spawned a new generation of monster flicks and opened the door to questions about the suitability of showing them to young, impressionable audiences.

It was not until Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, that a horror movie created the same kind of sensation as had the original Dracula and Frankenstein. Using low-budget techniques, Hitchcock delved into the mind of a mentally deranged serial killer who murders patrons at his motel. Like Dracula and Frankenstein, Psycho is remarkable for its Gothic effects (Norman Bates’s bizarre house, the stuffed animals of prey). It similarly set off a stream of sequels and imitators such as Maniac (1963), Deranged (1974), and Halloween (1978), culminating (or deteriorating, depending on your point of view) in the set-piece style murder sprees of films such as Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

During the 60s and 70s, Hollywood and television also trotted out several new and different retellings of the old standards, and not all of these ventures were pure schlock. Roman Polanski offered his interpretation of horror with the Fearless Vampire Killers in 1967. Esteemed author Christopher Isherwood wrote a 1972 television version of Frankenstein starring Michael Sarrazin and James Mason which emphasized the story’s homoerotic elements. Andy Warhol, working with director Paul Morrissey, produced two of the most gruesome remakes in 1974, including the 3-D version Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein that included close-ups of entrails pouring out the monster’s torn abdomen. Mel Brooks had all of America rolling in the aisles that same year with his monstrous parody Young Frankenstein, and Michael Jackson later had a lot of fun spoofing the Wolf Man in his best-selling video Thriller (1982) directed by John Landis.

After more than a hundred movies about vampires, it is understandable that a figure like Dracula would also become the subject of many comedies. What is surprising is how entertaining some of them have been. George Hamilton scored a hit producing and starring in the inventive Love at First Bite (1979), while Blacula (1972) cornered a burgeoning black exploitation market. The less successful Vamp (1986) served as a vehicle for sultry disco diva Grace Jones.

In 1978, actor Frank Langella offered a suave update of the original play Dracula (the same one that Lugosi had done on Broadway in the 20s). The Broadway production featured sets by Edward Gorey and was soon turned into a stylized romantic thriller by John Badham. Frankenstein also had his day on Broadway in an ill-fated 1981 production featuring special effects by techno-wizard Bran Ferren (Altered States). The show closed after just one night, costing its investors millions and making it the most catastrophic flop in Broadway history. Dracula fared better recently when director Francis Ford Coppola returned to the original novel and wove a powerful film which rejoiced in bloodletting. His Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) is a phantasmagorical vision of sexual invincibility in the age of AIDS.

In recent times, faced with such sophisticated and technically brilliant horror entertainment as Alien (1979), above, and Silence of the Lambs (1991), audiences remain glued to their seats, some shivering in fear, others laughing until their sides hurt. Gone are the gimmicky promotional gags, the elaborate warnings, the hired nurses. Gone too are the hammy acting and clumsy special effects of ground-breaking films like Dracula and Frankenstein. But the legacy of the terrifying spell they cast 60 years ago will always — like the monsters themselves — live on.

(©1993 Variety.)

The final twist in my recent flirtation with James Dean revolves around a grim episode in American history. It serves as a potent counterpart to our fascination with juvenile delinquents, which Dean epitomized. His allure lies also in the flip side of fame. His rebel without a cause was a two-edged sword. On one hand, he represented to us freedom. On the other, chaos and anarchy. His pain was our pain; we felt it. All of us. Whether we were good or bad, solid citizen or reprobate. He represented the misfit in us all.

While searching for images of James Dean for my earlier post (October 5th), I stumbled across pictures of Martin Sheen from the film Badlands. The movie was known to me, of course, but for some reason I had never seen it. I ordered it from Netflix. Badlands, directed by Terrence Malick, tells the tale of a handsome young garbage man, Kit, who suddenly goes on a killing rampage, taking with him his young teenage girlfriend, Holly, played with frightening froideur by Sissy Spacek.

Sheen’s character sees himself as a James Dean clone; even his girlfriend comments on his resemblance to the movie star on several occasions. Malick, (with Sheen, above) in directing the flick, underscores the comparison by having Sheen pose in certain stances reminiscent of Dean’s work in Rebel, Giant and East of Eden. The cinematography in Badlands is simply breathtaking, and the new restored DVD version shows it off in wrenchingly beautiful, vivid colors.

Even without the Dean likeness, Sheen’s performance in Badlands is mesmerizing. I only knew bits and pieces of Martin Sheen’s career, mostly from his work in Apocalypse Now (1979) and in an earlier, terrifying Outer Limits episode “Nightmare” (below) in which he plays a soldier sent to another planet, where he is brutally interrogated by sadistic aliens.

And of course I adored him in the ground-breaking 1972 TV movie That Certain Summer (which you can now enjoy in full on YouTube). Sheen also shone in a very early role in the 1967 cult classic The Incident, in which he played another Deanesque bad boy who terrorizes strap-hangers on a subway car. To see Sheen in Badlands is to glimpse what might have been if Dean had lived. But it was not to be. Even then, in the 70s, Sheen was already in his thirties, which might explain why he soon abandoned such roles. It was left to his two boys, Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez, to try and recapture that swagger and élan (to less than stellar effect).

Badlands, as any film or crime aficionado knows, was based on the true story of the first “spree killer,” Charlie Starkweather, who rampaged through Nebraska and Wyoming in 1958, killing eleven people for no better reason than he seemed to enjoy it. He started out by brutally killing his girlfriend’s mother and father and her two-year-old sister. The sadistic nature of how he killed them has haunted authors, law enforcement officers, and psychiatrists for years. Starkweather, whose grim name summed up his dark appeal, represented a new breed of slayer at the height of the juvie craze. He was ruthless, rapacious and totally callous. His blood lust is only hinted at in Badlands. (There’s a scene in the film in which Sheen lets two victims go free. In real life, Starkweather slaughtered them.)

Starkweather inflicted gruesome injuries on some of his victims after they were dead, sodomizing one victim with a knife. His 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, always claimed she was held hostage and had no part in the killings, although Starkweather later implicated her, calling her “trigger happy.” She was given a life sentence and was paroled in 1976. Starkweather, in a true example of swift justice, was electrocuted a year after his arrest. (From LIFE, below.)

Since his death, there has been a rash of books and films based on his life and his legendary rampage. I was surprised in researching him, just how well-known he really is. For some reason, his saga had slipped through the cracks of my consciousness. That might be because he was classified as a “spree killer,” rather than as a serial killer. But judging by the extent and cruelty of his crimes, the semantics seems rather pointless.

Some books claim that he was a social outcast who sought revenge against the world for having mocked him as a child. He had struggled with a birth defect that left him a cripple and he suffered from a severe speech impediment. Kids in school teased him mercilessly. Others looked at his stern upbringing or his job as a garbage collector for some understanding of why he went off. But despite dozens of doctors and experts analyzing the case, there has never been a satisfactory explanation. His case, like that of the two boys in Capote’s In Cold Blood, famous for the Clutter killings, can never be easily categorized. Such acts of violence and mayhem are beyond comprehension.

But the story lives on. Charles Starkweather, who fancied himself as James Dean, mimicking his pompadour, jeans, and leather jacket, and who was obsessed with the young star’s films, has become a cult figure himself, an icon of shame and horror. The first film to depict his story was The Sadist, a 1963 low-budget thriller starring Arch Hall, Jr. and a bevy of B-movie actors.

Hall, who was known for drive-in-style movies (most of which were directed by his father) gives a warped, ferociously over-the-top performance as Starkweather. It’s like watching a polished Twilight Zone episode in which one of Ed Wood’s stars suddenly appears, having stumbled in from the set of Jailbait. Yet, despite the hilarity of his bad acting and relentless grimacing, Hall’s sadistic menace works on many levels. It is a harrowing film, one of the first played out over real time, and made even more memorable by its very fine cinematography. It was Vilmos Zsgimond’s first feature.

Badlands followed in 1973. The obscure film Stark Raving Mad from 1983 was based on the case. Television did a version in 1993 called Murder in the Heartland with Tim Roth. Then in 1994 Oliver Stone took a stab at the story in Natural Born Killers with Woody Harrelson, below. Stone opened it up and gave it a madcap, nihilistic edge. Most people I know prefer Badlands. In 2004, a cheap indie appeared called Starkweather, that, judging by comments on IMDB’s forums, is one of the worst movies ever made.

What is my interest in all this? That’s a good question and I’m not sure I know the answer myself. It has something to do with why we like James Dean. Part of America has always been drawn to anti-heroes, to rebels without a cause. We may celebrate true heroes such as Daniel Boone, John Brown, or Audie Murphy in books, plays and film. But we fall in lust with our anti-heroes in a way that strikes me as uniquely American. Whether it’s John Dillinger, Scarface Capone, Freddie Krueger, the Sopranos or the Zodiac Killer, we flock to these evil-doers. It’s part of what makes us the greatest superpower on the planet, but also the place with the most serial killers and spree killers in the world.

The American Dream is also a nightmare. And while we may turn away in disgust from the actions of these so-called monsters, the crazies, we also turn back to get a closer look. James Dean, in his own peculiar, tortured way, reflected this duality. He inspired us, both the good and the bad — the Martin Sheens who strive to help save this planet and the Charles Starkweathers who yearn to bring it down.

Ironically, the same day in Maine that I found the novel based on James Dean, featured here last week, I also happened to come across an old issue of Saga magazine from December 1957 with Alfonso de Portago on the cover. Nicknamed “the madcap Marquis,” this flamboyant Spanish playboy had lived large, and died, like Dean, in a devastating car crash.

There are striking similarities between the two, although “Fon,” as he was called, led a far more glamorous life.

Born in London on this day October 11, in 1928, Fon was the offspring of a celebrated bon vivant, Antonio Cabeza de Vaca, a gambler and polo player, and a dazzling Irish nurse named Olga Leighton. De Vaca, scion of a distinguished Spanish noble family, was pals with the Spanish King, who became Fon’s namesake and godfather. The De Vacas had ancient roots in Spain and were early explorers in the Americas. According to Jack Newcombe’s Saga article, Fon’s ancestors included a Spanish hero of the 13th century, Martin Alahaja, who routed the Moors and Francisco de Vera, who conquered Grand Canary Island in 1483. The most famous ancestor was Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who in 1527, joined an expedition sailing from Spain to colonize Florida and eastern Mexico. “Shipwrecks, disease and desertion cut the original party of 600 down to a handful,” Newcombe writes. “For six years, he wandered half-naked among the Indians of the Southwest, a trader in cones, conches and skins. He was always in danger of being hacked to pieces by Indians.”

Because of his miraculous medicinal skills, however, de Vaca (pictured above), survived and became something of a religious cult figure, a hero in Mexico, lauded by all. He later became governor of Rio de la Plata in South America. Fon’s father inherited this adventurous streak. He once won two million francs at a table in Monte Carlo. A first class sailor and crack polo player, he hired Jack Johnson to teach him boxing.  He also produced five movies in which he acted as the star.

Fon’s mother, Olga Leighton, above, was the widow of her former employer, Frank Jay Mackey, a rich American who was the founder of the Household Finance Corp. Mackey, who was 40 years her senior and ill, shot himself to death. Other sources say she was British, not Irish. The de Vacas lived the high life in Europe until Antonio died in 1941 from a heart attack. Fon was barely a teen. His mother placed him at Lawrenceville prep school outside Princeton, but Fon hated it and left after a month. His mother found him a tutor, and moved him into the Plaza where she was living. (Alfonso, age seven, below.)

There he befriended a rough-and-tumble elevator operator, Edmund Nelson, who became his constant companion until the bitter end. Fon said he drove his first sportscar at the age of 7. But after his father’s death he became even more reckless. Newcombe describes him as a teenage dandy, a prissy snob, who smoked cigarettes from a gold holder. But he also rebelled against his noble upbringing, refusing to bathe and to observe social niceties. One society wag said that if he hadn’t been a nobleman, Fon would have been a truck driver.

“A nobleman in spirit,” Newcombe writes, “Fon made no effort to dress or cultivate the part. His customary appearance was one of studied dishevelment. He let his hair grow to unruly lengths. He chain-smoked cigarettes, dangling them like a blade of grass between his teeth. He was handsome in a dark, masculine way, but he often dressed like a garage mechanic. At Sebring or Monaco or Nassau, he was seen hiking quickly along the pit area, wearing rubber-soled shoes, wrinkled slacks and an alligator sports shirt with the alligator neatly removed. His father, once described as the best dressed man in Europe, was the very model of a modish Marquis. Fon was satisfied to behave like one.”

From day one de Portago was a daredevil, addicted to hazards, horses and hot rods. He yearned to be an aviator, so he took flying lessons in Lynchburg, Virginia. But his flirtation with having wings did not last long. In Palm Beach, a hotel chef bet Fon $500 that he could not fly under a causeway bridge. The span was only 20 feet above water. Portago won the bet, but landed in jail. Later, in 1946, he was flying in France when his plane suddenly malfunctioned. He managed to fly into a field, landing, he said, “on a cow.”

Portago was always testing the limits of speed. As a horseman, Newcombe writes, “he twice rode in the Irish Grand National, the most famous and hazardous of steeplechases, and was thrown from his mount each time. He was an excellent swimmer… He became an Olympic bobsledder with only a few weeks practice. He slithered down the Cresta Run at St. Moritz, setting a record for that suicidal sled course. In auto-racing, he survived a series of 100-mile-an-hour spins and crackups to develop into one of the ten best professional drivers in the world.”

At 20, he slowed down long enough to marry Carroll McDaniel, above, a disarmingly beautiful American, seven years older than him, from a small South Carolina town. Fon first saw her in New York at El Morocco and was enchanted. The first time they met, they barely spoke a word to each other. She was with a group who didn’t care for him. But he remembered her. The next day he made certain to get her alone. Always impulsive, he asked her to marry him two hours later. She did so in 1949. They had two children, Alfonso and Andrea. Alfonso inherited his father’s way with the ladies. One of his wives was Barbara de Portago, a prominent New York socialite who grew up in Versailles. Her father-in-law was its curator.

Andrea (above, with Scavullo) who inherited her mother’s fine features, became a model and an actress, and traveled in chic circles, including the Warhol crowd. I remember when I worked with Jay Presson Allen, who had written a Broadway play designed for Angela Lansbury, entitled A Little Family Business, Andrea Portago (she did not like to use the “de”) came into the office to audition for one of the parts. Reeking glamour and sophistication, she was also surprisingly down-to-earth and charming. You can always tell a person’s breeding by how they treat the staff, and she was as gracious as she was lovely. People magazine profiled her in 1977, when she was promoting a new perfume by Nina Ricci. After affairs with Garry Trudeau and Bob Neuwirth, she wed Mick Flick in 1978. She later retired from acting.

From the outset, Fon’s marriage to Carroll was tempestuous and difficult. His mother was said not to approve of her, perhaps as Charlotte Hays writes in The Fortune Hunters, she saw too much of herself in the ambitious young American. Carroll befriended the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who remained lifelong pals, and entertained on a lavish scale. Fon, meanwhile, had become more and more impulsive. She was not fond of his rowdy friends, nor his constant traveling, and Fon’s Latin eye tended to rove. He also threw himself into racing. He started out with a Ferrari, then a Maserati, then an Osca, which flipped over at the Grand Prix in 1954. He went back to a Ferrari and gained their sponsorship. In 1956, he won the Grand Prix of Portugal and the Tour de France.

At the time of his final race in 1957, he and Carroll were separated, but not legally divorced. He had carried on a very public romance with Dorian Leigh, below, the Revlon “Fire and Ice” model who was the sister of Suzy Parker. Truman Capote is said to have modeled Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s in part on her. The two were wed in Mexico, although the marriage was not formally recognized. That affair resulted in a son named Kim de Portago, who would later turn to drugs and commit suicide by jumping out a window at the age of 21.

Prior to the prestigious Mille Miglia race in Italy, Fon was courting sultry Mexican-born actress Linda Christian, the ex-wife of Tyrone Power. Lusciously beautiful, she is perhaps best known for her 1948 role in Tarzan and the Mermaids, Johnny Weissmuller’s last turn as the ape man. She also appeared in Up In Arms (1944) with Danny Kaye and Dinah Shore. Some might remember her as the first Bond girl, appearing in an early TV-version of Casino Royale.

On that fateful day, during the 1000-mile race, she flew to Italy and ran out at the pit stop in Florence to embrace him. Photographers caught their kiss (below) just moments before his crash.

Throughout that hair-raising race, Fon seemed to be thumbing his nose at death. Ferrari mechanics had noticed that one of his tires was grating against the body of the car, causing severe abrasion. He paid it no mind. He was hellbent on winning the race.

Finally, rounding a curve outside Mantua, one of his back tires exploded (he was driving 150 mph) and the rear axle broke. His Ferrari flew off the road, taking out a large milestone marker, snapping a telephone pole in two, flipping from one side of the road to the other, killing his companion Edmund Nelson and ten spectators, including numerous children. Portago’s body was found in two sections. It was one of the most horrible wrecks in the history of motor car racing. He was only 30 miles away from the finish line.

Portago’s fatal crack-up was front-page news all over the world in May, 1957, just a few weeks after I was born. I remember people talking about it often when I was a child. His tale was part of the zeitgeist. It remains embedded in my psyche.

I was not the only one obsessed with his tragic tale. There have been countless articles about him in magazines and newspapers. A newsreel about the crash was released in 1957 called Speed Week. Recently a French cable channel presented a detailed documentary with interviews with family members. Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, Heaven Has No Favorites, about passion and thrills in the world of auto-racing, is said to be partly based on Portago’s life, although the situations are quite different. It was later made into the film, Bobby Deerfield, starring Al Pacino and Marthe Keller.

A novel, The Fast One, by Robert Daley, was written in 1978. Loosely based on Portago’s short, daredevil life, it captured the spirit of the auto-racing circuit. From the dustjacket:

“The intertwining of sex and death has long been a preoccupation of literature. Robert Daley’s hair-raising novel about the Grand Prix auto circuit roars from Palermo to Le Mans. As Jack Blakemore, the reigning world champion and Alex Cavelli, an aristocratic and exultantly fearless challenger, fight for the checkered flag and the love of a rich and beautiful but inexperienced American girl, the thrills and perils of danger at high speed mix with the intense exhilaration of the erotic.”

The book was not warmly received. Critics carped that it was overwrought and badly written, with sentences like this one, about Alex Cavelli (the de Portago-inspired character): “He can bend anything to his will, this car, race, season: this girl, this day, life itself.” Kirkus Review asked, “Who would have thought that a super-ordinary Grand Prix car-and-sexarama would present a seminar in pretentiously clumsy writing?” Their critique ended on this cruel note: “For readers with a special interest in speed and gears, the painstaking descriptions of the actual tactics and sensations of racing may sometimes rise above the murky similes. But even the fiercest four-wheel fans will put on the brakes when they run up against ‘Her heart lands on the table like a crowbar.’”

What happened to the people touched by Alfonso de Portago’s brief but tumultuous life? Dorian Leigh, below, continued to shine as one of the premier super models, marrying five times. She opened a restaurant outside Fontainebleau, Chez Dorian. Then became a born-again Christian. She wrote her memoirs The Girl Who Had Everything in 1980. She dedicated it to her son Kim, although as she said, he would never read it.

Linda Christian, below, was married briefly to Edmund Purdom, the handsome British actor. Her two children with Power are actors Taryn and Romina Power. She wrote her own autobiography, Linda, in 1962.

And what of Carroll de Portago? Well, as it turned out, her divorce papers with Fon had not yet been filed, so she became his widow. She went through the funeral with the kind of dignity Jackie Kennedy displayed a few years later. But there was an awkward moment when Linda Christian, in a black veil, arrived just as she was leaving. Despite de Portago’s noble name, there was little or no money for her to live on and to raise her two children. She moved around the world. Andrea recalled how she felt like Eloise, constantly inhabiting one hotel after the next.

Carroll, above, eventually moved to Hong Kong where she married a Welsh doctor, John Carey-Hughes. That marriage did not last, and she returned to New York. Carroll went on to a much-rumored affair with Charles Englehard, then married a businessman, Richard Chadwick Pistell, who later had legal problems and lost his money. In the end, Carroll wed Milton Petrie, king of ready-to-wear, and settled into her role as philanthropist, collector, and socialite. She has a knack for survival, unlike Alfonso de Portago, the madcap Marquis, who flirted with death once too often.