Zsa Zsa Squirms on the Hot Seat but Returns Fire at Friars Roast

Zsa Zsa Gabor, after being mercilessly teased by Hollywood celebrities Monday night at a Friars Club roast in Beverly Hills, lashed out at her legal problems and her tormentors in the audience.

Referring to her court-ordered community service at a shelter for homeless women--penance for slapping a Beverly Hills traffic cop--Gabor said, “I don’t have to clean toilets. I know seven languages and was raised as a princess. There are other people to clean toilets; Judge (Charles) Rubin can clean toilets.”

Many in the audience of several hundred at the Beverly Hilton Hotel booed and got up to leave when Gabor, the guest of honor, rose to speak. She angrily yelled after them, “You don’t understand.”

There were few printable jokes as a lineup of veteran comedians including Henny Youngman, Milton Berle and Pat Buttram, took turns ripping into Gabor.

“She’s so old that when she orders a three-minute egg, they make her pay up front,” Youngman said.

Dressed in a black, puff-sleeved taffeta gown, Gabor sat blushing, flailing her hands and arguing with the other celebrities as the biting, often sexual, ripostes rolled on.

In reference to Gabor’s sentence, Berle said, “Zsa Zsa, you got community service. You’d really do the community a great service if you’d get the . . . out of town.”

Gabor became only the second woman to be roasted by the Friars. Phyllis Diller, in 1987, was the first.