Why would a German playboy-billionaire industrialist with a large family and lots of old and good friends have dinner in Gstaad with one of his closest buddies, then go up to his chalet and put a bullet in his brain? As of writing, Gunter Sachs’s suicide is a mystery. But Gunter was always somewhat mysterious, and I have known him since the late Fifties. His uncle, Fritz von Opel, was the heir to the Opel car fortune and lived the grand life in St Moritz and St Tropez, where he had opulent houses. Von Opel was his uncle on his mother’s side. His father was also an industrialist — Sachs ball bearings, machines or something like that — and was probably richer than the Opels. Fritz von Opel’s son, Ricky, blew his share; Gunter’s side multiplied it. But his father did commit suicide, so escaping the claustrophobia of life and old age was in Gunter’s genes.
Gunter and I hung out together quite a lot in Paris during the early Sixties. His close friend Jean-Claude Sauer was a Paris Match photographer who was also a close buddy of mine. But after a year or two we went our own ways. Gunter loved to have a crowd with him at all times. His friends were his life, even more than the women he collected non-stop. He married Brigitte Bardot after a brief courtship — ‘I have a tiger in my bed,’ he once told me, paraphrasing the Shell advertisement which had just appeared. But he soon wandered off with some prettier models. La BB needed too much attention, something Gunter was not about to provide.
His brother Ernst was killed skiing; he was a daredevil, as was Gunter, who raced the bob as well as the Cresta in St Moritz. He was extremely generous and gave non-stop parties, and his closest friends were not necessarily rich or famous. His chalet in Gstaad was 100 yards as the crow flies from mine, and he owned houses all over the place: St Tropez, St Moritz, Munich, Paris, you name it. His first-born son, Rolf, lives in London and is very much in control of the Sachs conglomerate.
So, why does a man like Gunter kill himself? According to his family he was afraid of losing his memory and mind. It is said that life gets much of its meaning from the fact that it ends. It is also said that humans are animals, with no special destiny or future. Old age confirms such pessimistic sayings. There is no question in my mind that Germans tend toward depression. They are too romantic, too ‘inwardly torn’, according to Hölderlin, their greatest poet. Gunter’s outward behaviour was one of gaiety and fun. His marriage to Bardot had put him firmly in the sights of the paparazzi, and for 50-odd years he was photographed always with a bevy of young blonde models and actresses. Yet his last marriage to a Swede lasted for close to 40 years, a fact that left many of us wondering. If there ever was an open marriage — on Gunter’s side, that is — this was it. Gunter was not known as a soft touch, but he had a very good heart and was always there for those who needed help. Not many so-called playboys follow Christian teachings of helping out their fellow man.
Gunter Sachs was artistic, a collector, a photographer, and five years or so ago he wrote his autobiography. Back in the Sixties, just after the film Goldfinger appeared starring Sean Connery, Gunter had the idea of making a spoof of the James Bond movie, starring Porfirio Rubirosa as Bond, a Greek billionaire as Goldfinger, and myself as Odd Job. We filmed for three days in St Tropez but then a storm blew away all our props, Rubirosa, during the famous fight scene between Bond and Odd Job, swung a rifle which hit my elbow at full force breaking my funny bone, the Creole, on which we were filming, went aground, and Gunter got bored and took off with one of my girlfriends, a Chanel model. My elbow hurt too much for me to care about the girl.
For years afterwards, Gunter and I would laugh about that disastrous week and, as so often happens, we reminisced too much. Although I know nothing of his motives for taking his life, I would say it was a fear of getting very old, coupled with the fact that he spent his life surrounded by youth, and when one gets too old one becomes a comic figure next to the young.
And there’s another thing. When one survives one’s old friends, one has to make new ones, and that’s a bore. I was not a close friend of Gunter but we knew each other for more than 50 years, had partied together, had shared women, and had so many close friends in common, I was truly shocked to hear of his death. He never harmed anyone, never spoke badly of people, and had a craziness that was lovable. So I ask myself, why did the wrong kind of billionaire kill himself? There are so many others who would be doing a service to humanity by topping themselves. The list is much too long for this space. Rest in peace, dear Gunter, you brought much happiness to many people, and what better compliment is there in this life? Or in death?
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