Slapped With Ticket, Zsa Zsa Returns One

Zsa Zsa Gabor and the Beverly Hills Police Department concur that she was arrested Wednesday afternoon when she slapped a Beverly Hills motorcycle officer who stopped her for driving a white Rolls-Royce with out-of-date license tags.

Other than that, there isn’t much they agree on.

According to Police Lt. Jim Smith, the 70-year-old actress was pulled over on La Cienega Boulevard by the officer, who then found that her driver’s license had expired. While the officer was checking with the Department of Motor Vehicles, said Smith, Gabor “took off.”

The unidentified officer, Smith said, stopped her again at Olympic Boulevard and LeDoux Road, where he ordered her out of the car. It was then, Smith said, that she slapped the officer in the face.

Other officers arrived and Gabor was taken to police headquarters, where she was booked for investigation of evading a peace officer, battery on a police officer, being an unlicensed driver, driving an unlicensed vehicle and having an open alcoholic beverage container in the car while driving, all misdemeanors.

Gabor was released pending a July 12 appearance in Beverly Hills Municipal Court. She was still furious several hours later when she insisted in an interview she did nothing but defend herself as “this gorgeous, tall policeman” yanked her out of the car.

She said the car belongs to her husband, Prince Frederick von Anhalt, and that she was unaware that the license was out of date. She drove away the first time, she said, only because he kept her standing in the hot sun for 45 minutes and he told her she could leave. But then he stopped her a second time.

At that point, she related, the officer hauled her out of the car angrily and was “nearly breaking my arm.” She added, “It was a reaction that I hit him in the face. I am not going to (intentionally) hit a man 6 feet 4 or 6 feet 8. I’m not that stupid. I was just trying to protect my arm.”

She insisted that the officer made her sit in the middle of the street, used obscene language and threatened to “break both your arms and legs.” She said she was handcuffed so roughly that she screamed in pain and that other officers arriving on the scene did nothing to ease the situation.

“They are stupid . . . uneducated,” she said. “How can they do that to a lady like me?”

As for the bottle, she said it had been in the glove compartment for years. Her press agent, Phil Paladino, said, “This lady does not drink. All her friends will tell you that.”