More Grist for Legend’s Lore : Lights, Cameras, Zsa Zsa! Gabor’s Heading for Court

In all his years of driving in Los Angeles, Marc Kwiatkowski had never seen anything quite like it. Ahead of him, at the side of the street, was a gleaming white Rolls-Royce convertible. At the car door stood a matronly blonde, practically jaw to jaw with a towering motorcycle cop.

“As I’m approaching, I see her just reach up and whack him,” Kwiatkowski recalled. “It was just amazing . . . kind of crazy.”

It got even more startling. While the mesmerized Kwiatkowski watched, wondering if he were witnessing a drug bust, the officer slung his suspect to the rear of the Rolls. Her handbag went flying. In seconds, the witness recalled, her arms were up behind her and the officer was slapping on handcuffs.

Motoring past at exactly that instant, Kwiatkowski, 27, at last caught a glimpse of the woman’s face bent almost to the trunk--anguished and desperate, a portrait of utter indignity.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my God! It’s Zsa Zsa Gabor!’ ”

The moment was one of those, like a Norman Mailer fistfight, that is etched, perhaps forever, into entertainment lore. The criminal case goes to trial Monday-- The people vs. Zsa Zsa Gabor-- in a showdown that promises to light up Beverly Hills Municipal Court.

In her first brush with the law, Gabor faces charges of driving with an expired license and registration tags and disobeying and striking an officer. But the defiant actress is claiming self-defense, insisting that she was cursed at, grabbed and ultimately kicked by Officer Paul Kramer on the afternoon of June 14.

“It is terrible, it seems to me, that in America, in Beverly Hills, a 6-foot-6 policeman with a gun in his pocket dares to manhandle a woman and handcuff her and kick her and sit her down on the (ground)--a lady like Zsa Zsa Gabor,” an indignant Gabor said recently at her hilltop Bel-Air home. “After all, I’m not just a nobody; I’m not a whore . . . nor am I a dope peddler. . . .

“My mother is a very elegant lady and a countess . . . and she said, ‘I would have done the same thing and slapped that man.’ A man calls me (an expletive), I’ll slap him if he’s the king of England! Nobody will do that to me!”

Undaunted by Charges

Gabor, who has battled husbands, jealous rivals and even her own hired help down through the years, professes no fear of the legal charges, which carry a maximum penalty of 18 months in jail and $3,400 in fines. Similarly, she is not surprised at the media spotlight that has befallen the case--which, for all the hoopla, would seem to be nothing short of the Scopes trial revisited.

In recent weeks, Gabor’s predicament has been the subject of network TV newscasts, radio updates, talk-show speculation, magazine articles and incessant newspaper coverage. In Florida, a protectionist group, the “Society for the Prevention of Anything Against Zsa Zsa,” has sprung up, selling T-shirts, writing song lyrics and running its own “Photocopy your face for Zsa Zsa” contest. (First prize: round-trip air fare to her native Hungary.) Johnny Carson has, inevitably, done a monologue.

At her home, in an office festooned with movie posters and a caricature of herself in jail stripes, Gabor showed off a basket of 90 or 100 letters from Germany--fan mail conveying support.

“The Germans are very upset about what happened to me,” she said, taking a cursory glance at the return addresses. “Everybody mentions it. It’s very bad for the Beverly Hills trade. Who dares to come to Beverly Hills today when they read the Zsa Zsa Gabor headlines in Russia, Africa, Australia? When they read that Zsa Zsa Gabor got beat up because her driver’s license expired?

“They don’t want to come to a country like that. It’s very bad for Rodeo Drive, I think.”

It galls her too that a recent poll named the Beverly Hills Police Department as one of the nation’s best-dressed. “This is not a beauty contest,” she asserted, announcing in the same breath that she has selected her own apparel for the courtroom. “I’ll probably wear a big black hat.”

A black hat?

“It goes with the outfit,” she said. “A black dress . . . Donna Karan. It’s in for fall. I’m mad for her clothes.”

Glamorous Role

Gabor seems acutely aware of her status as one of America’s last great glamour queens, a star who has scorched a dazzling and sometimes riotous path across the Hollywood firmament. Before her arrest, she was already making plans to redo her Rolls with a gold interior--her favorite color--and to add a calligraphic Zsa Zsa to the outside of the doors, with jeweled crowns set above the names, custom car builder George Barris said.

Gabor’s eighth marriage, to Prince Frederick von Anhalt of West Germany, makes the former Turkish princess a German princess. At nearly 70, she continues to grace the finest social circles, throwing parties for entertainers, traveling the world, making appearances for her cosmetics and jewelry company. Her Steinway piano is covered with photographs of herself with Presidents. She and Ronald Reagan are friends who share the same birth date, Feb. 6, she said. So every year they exchange telegrams.

At the same time, Gabor’s four-star self-image has figured in more than one fearful altercation. With dogged irascibility, she refuses to allow herself to be mistreated. If challenged, she will not back down.

The attitude has won her critics the world over. She has strewn lawsuits in her wake like so many ex-husbands.

One of several points of debate in her upcoming trial involves a crucial dialogue that occurred just minutes after Officer Kramer noticed expired registration tags and pulled over Gabor’s $225,000 custom-built coupe.

The actress, tired of waiting out a computer run on her driving record, confronted the officer in an exchange that--according to various accounts--included every choice expression but darling. Allegedly, Kramer told her to back off--but he didn’t say back. Allegedly, Gabor mistook the remark as a directive to leave.

When the ensuing chase ended on busy La Cienega Boulevard, Gabor was taken into custody screaming, “I’ll have you’re job for this! I’m calling the Reagans on this!”

The Good Life

The trouble for Gabor is not that fame has been unkind, or fleeting. She has all the money, interests and projects she could ever want.

Besides her $15-million home in Bel-Air--an estate whose past owners include Elvis Presley and Howard Hughes--Gabor owns a winter retreat in West Palm Beach, Fla., and a newly acquired castle in Germany. She populates celebrity fund-raisers and horse shows. She owns a personal menagerie of Shih Tzus, German shepherds and show horses.

A new autobiography, “Zsa Zsa: a Hungarian Life,” is due out soon after receipt of a $2-million advance, she said proudly, and she begins filming this fall in London on a movie of her life.

With Gabor, the problem is the world around her: Time after time, Gabor has clashed with individuals maladjusted to her station in life--zealots who want her fame, underlings who want her money, men who profess to want her love.

“She has a fiery temper,” said author and entertainment columnist James Bacon, who has known her 35 years.

Another acquaintance, an attorney who once worked for Gabor, spoke on the condition that he not be named, calling her “a spoiled child, an unruly child. She’s impossible. She thinks she’s a queen. . . . Nobody has a right to demand anything from her. You have no right to anything she doesn’t bestow upon you.”

‘I Am a Hungarian’

Gabor admits to being volatile: “I am of course hard to deal with!” she said. “I am a Hungarian. . . . We are the great descendants of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan. I am not a milquetoast.

“I am an intelligent, educated woman. I can make it on my own. I never got alimony in my life and I’m proud of it. I don’t want to be one of those women who goes to court and sues my husband for $4 million and $5 million and $6 million, like all my Beverly Hills friends are doing. I can tell you 15 of them.”

Yet as she barrels through life, fending off those who would mistreat her, the little incidents keep piling up. Weeks before her arrest, a pool-maintenance company filed a small-claims action in Florida claiming that Gabor had refused to pay a $393 service bill--a matter still unrectified.

“Somebody wants publicity,” Gabor said.

Not long before that, Gabor and two of her Shih Tzus--Macho Man and Genghis Khan--were booted off a Delta jetliner during a stopover after Gabor allegedly removed the dogs from a travel cage and allowed them to run freely through the cabin.

Gabor denied that accusation too, saying the dogs were caged the entire time and slapping the airline with a $10-million damage suit.

Millions of television viewers saw her in action a few months before that when Gabor appeared on the “Regis Philbin Show.” This time Gabor threw Claudia Cohen--the wife of Revlon cosmetics executive Ron Perelman--out of a dressing room and then marched in front of a live camera calling Cohen “a bitch.”

“I was in the dressing room, in my bra and panties . . . and in comes this nasty-looking woman” who demanded that Gabor move out of the way, Gabor recalled. “I said, ‘I am the first guest’ . . . and I (dressed and) ran out on the set--I thought they didn’t start the show yet--and I said, ‘Regis, I just met the biggest bitch in the world.’ The audience applauded. I didn’t find out until later (who the woman was).”

Married at 16

The one-time Hungarian beauty queen, who first married at 16 and was raised in the capitals of Europe, has endured similar incidents dating back decades. Her acting career began in the 1950s during her third marriage, to actor George Sanders, who reportedly discouraged her entertainment debut on an advice-to-the-lovelorn TV show called “Bachelor Haven.”

But the marriage to Sanders crumbled while she cavorted with Latin American playboy Porfirio Rubirosa. That affair made headlines for months, continuing even after Rubirosa reportedly blackened Gabor’s eye with a punch and rushed off to marry dime-store heiress Barbara Hutton.

Sanders, regarded as Gabor’s greatest love, later compared life with her to living on the slope of a volcano: “Pleasant,” he reportedly said, “between eruptions.” In a more thoughtful mood, the veteran actor, who committed suicide in 1972, wrote about Gabor in an essay:

“Every age has its Madame Pompadour, its Lady Hamilton, its Queen of Sheba, its Cleopatra, and I wouldn’t be surprised if history singles out Zsa Zsa as the 20th-Century prototype of this coterie. Zsa Zsa is perhaps the most misunderstood woman of our times. She is misunderstood because she is guileless. . . . She doesn’t disguise her love of amorous entanglements or jewels or whatever else catches her fancy. . . . Her behavior is spontaneous and genuine.”

Gabor’s life style became one that even other stars envied or only read about. Carl Parsons, a longtime personal secretary and manager to Gabor, traveled frequently with her during the late 1960s and early 1970s on exhilarating romps through Europe. He recalled nights spent at castles and the finest hotels and days devoted to polo and horseback riding.

‘I Need It’

On the road, Gabor always asked for a double suite--a room for herself, another to be filled with metal poles on which her wardrobe was hung. Once, when the actress grew tired of traveling by bus, she directed Parsons to purchase her a Rolls. “I said, ‘Zsa Zsa, you don’t need a Rolls-Royce, you have two Rolls-Royces,’ ” the former manager remembered. “And she said, ‘I need it for this trip, so I need it.’ ”

In those years Gabor felt safe wearing her jewelry on the streets, Parsons said, but occasionally she would see an unsavory stranger and attempt to hide her diamonds. She would slip them off and hand them to Parsons, who would discreetly drop them into his shorts.

“Sometimes my shorts would be worth $3 million,” he said, recalling one especially memorable stone--a 28-carat marquise diamond, pointed on both ends. “That was the real killer.”

Though Gabor thought little of writing a check for $25,000 or more, if the mood struck, she often had difficulty parting with tiny sums, several acquaintances said. One time in the mid-1970s she fired a secretary and a housekeeper who claimed they were owed $16 apiece in wages.

When the two former employees won a judgment for several times that amount, Gabor took action. She hired an attorney named Bette Gertz and, according to court records, briefly fought the award to no avail.

Gertz still remembers the episode. The Los Angeles attorney said she did about $1,000 worth of legal work preparing a writ for Gabor. The actress then gave her $50 to pay a fee for filing the writ in court and refused to pay anything else, Gertz contended.

“I said, ‘Hey, Zsa Zsa, how about paying me for the writ I filed for you,” Gertz said. “She said, ‘You’ve got your $50.’ I’ve always been miffed about it.”

Today, Gabor insists that she never heard of Gertz. “This woman is a liar,” she said. “Darling, there are lots of jealous women around town. When you are famous, people of course want your money.”

Divorce Battle

Gabor’s jousts in more recent years included a divorce battle with husband No. 6, Jack Ryan, which involved a classic 1961 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud the couple had planned to customize. In the wake of the divorce, Ryan returned the car to Gabor--in boxes left on her front lawn, attorney Marvin Mitchelson recalled.

“She thought she was getting the whole car back,” Mitchelson said, “but it came in about 1,000 pieces.”

One day Gabor returned from a trip and discovered that her two housekeepers had quit, allegedly without notice, which touched off another lawsuit. Gabor accused the former employees--a husband and wife--of stealing a pickup truck and, among other things, misplacing a vial of glue and a vial of eyedrops, records show. The latter transgression, Gabor claimed, caused her to drop glue in her eye.

In that case, the housekeepers filed a countersuit charging harassment, settling after several years with a $22,000 check from Gabor.

The Beverly Hills arrest could provide grist for a whole new chapter in the ever-colorful story of Gabor’s life. There is, for example, the mystery concerning her expired driver’s license, which police found to be altered. The birth date--June 6, 1923--was scratched out and replaced by a different one--Feb. 6, 1928.

Gabor explains: Two years ago, she had a fender-bender and exchanged addresses with several Latino men, who stole her license. She later recovered it, but the birth date, her hair color and even her weight had been changed. She threw the license in the glove compartment and that was the only one with her when she was pulled over.

But when the time comes to weave all that into her next autobiography, Gabor surely will not have columnist James Bacon as her ghostwriter. For a while, Bacon said, he was at work on the last one--until he was told to write it through the eyes of her dog.

“I could not see a German shepherd describing her . . . encounters with Porfirio Rubirosa,” Bacon said. “I bow-wowed out.”