Playboy Gunter Sachs kills himself aged 78
Gunter Sachs – the German-born billionaire, art collector and former husband of Brigitte Bardot – has killed himself at the age of 78. He shot himself at his chalet in the Swiss resort of Gstaad on Saturday.
A grandson of car manufacturer Adam Opel, Sachs’s wealth helped him to become him a prominent member of the glamorous 1960s “jet set”.
Sachs and Bardot married in Las Vegas in 1966, a few weeks after they first met. The marriage lasted just over three years. Hours after meeting her, Sachs arranged for a helicopter to fly over her house in southern France and drop hundreds of red roses.
“It’s not every day that a man drops a tonne of roses in your yard,” the actress later wrote.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
