DORIS DUKE KEPT MEN (BUT BERNARD WAS AN EMPLOYEE)

DORIS DUKE was an heiress who became one of the richest women in the world.  She owned properties around the world and traveled extensively.  She never found fulfillment in marriage and gave birth to a daughter who soon died.  She never had another child.  Doris had men and she wasn't especially conventional about men.  You could say she was a free spirit.  In the Film BERNARD and DORIS,  Ralph Fiennes acts as an increasingly feminine butler with a drinking problem, and Susan Sarandon acts as Doris.


 
No doubt Doris kept some men, perhaps only for sex, of the Boy Toy variety. As depicted in this film, which I enjoy, she is a woman who knows what she wants exactly and when she wants it. She sees a new gardener, she might want to try him in bed as Lady of the Manor. What of the handsome and fit model of a much younger man who also knows how to play the piano.  She gives him envelopes of cash but tells him she's leaving town and he must go.  He reasons that the house is big enough to stay and wait.  She tells him no.

Butler Bernard stays with her until her death, though he does get into the wine and end up in a rehab program that she pays for.  After all he admitted he had a wee bit of a problem with alcohol from the start. Based on real life (Bernard worked for Elizabeth Taylor previously).  They become playful friends and perhaps he is her only real confidant as she ages. Having traveled all over the world and had so many experiences, it is he who is there for her as she dies.

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