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E-mailWhen Opposites Attract
In 1987, Irish butler Bernard Lafferty arrived at the doorstep of tobacco heiress Doris Duke. Lafferty was a secret alcoholic who'd just come off another stint at rehab but six years later he had not only managed to remain employed, he had been granted control over Duke's billion-dollar fortune.
CAHIR O'DOHERTY reviews Bernard and Doris, the new film about Lafferty's life starring Susan Sarandon and Ralph Fiennes.
Filmed on a shoestring, which at times is a little apparent, the film chronicles the unusual relationship between Duke and Lafferty.
"It's an interesting, unorthodox love story," Sarandon told the press, and her co-star Fiennes agreed. "There's one scene where she says, 'What do you want, my money?' And Lafferty replies, 'I want to take care of you.' I think that's the truth. I think that's what he really wanted to do."
At a first glance, Lafferty's life reads like an Irish tragedy. Orphaned by the age of 17, he went to live with his aunt in Philadelphia. Then, in his early twenties he developed a serious drink problem, eventually drinking himself to death by the age of 51.
That's a tragic enough tale certainly, but in the intervening 34 years Lafferty had shown himself a high time, going on epic benders that could last for weeks, and traveling as far from his lonely birthplace in Creeslough, Co. Donegal as it's possible to get.
To his astonishment, when his employer Duke - one of the richest women in the world - died in 1993, she granted him control of her vast fortune, and left him $3 million to ease the shock. For a man from such humble origins, perhaps it's no surprise that it all went to his head. It was miraculous, it was like something out of a movie, in fact.
Before he could shout "I'm rich!" Lafferty bought himself a $2 million Bel Air mansion, which he decorated with enormous silver urns and framed glamour photographs of his old mistress and billionaire benefactor.
Never one to do things by halves, the bedroom was draped with wine red velvet and lit by the soft light of an antique Venetian chandelier. The headboard of his king size bed was carved from the door of an old Vanderbilt mansion.
The shy working class man from Donegal who earned his living as a butler had even acquired a butler of his own. In the end Lafferty died as he had lived, in completely over the top splendor.
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