by Sam Staggs
As reported by columnist Sidney Skolsky in 1951, “Sanders was inspired to his greatest work by his bride, Zsa Zsa Gabor. Day after day, hotel managers would come screaming that the bathtub was running over and guests below were wet.”
“My wife,” said Sanders, “has the habit of turning on the water full force and then going off to write a letter. So I invented this gadget, which consists of a rubber ball with an electric connection inside. The bather puts the rubber ball at the height she wants the water. When the water reaches that mark, it turns the ball over, setting off an electric discharge which rings a three-fire alarm bell.” Whatever George’s helpful intentions, it sounds like a scheme to electrocute Zsa Zsa! Nor will you find this useful, though risky, tool at the Home Depot.
Not only did Zsa Zsa find controlling, dominant wife beaters alluring, she could not resist the challenge of an indifferent, unapproachable man. Spotting passive-aggressive George, she recognized her ideal target. And for him, a big turn-on was an audacious woman in pursuit. The more brazen that woman, the more he savored keeping her desire unassuaged. For both, it was a high-stakes gamble when he moved in with Zsa Zsa.
For a time, both were winners. She discovered that he listened to her, as no previous husband had. Even Jolie, Magda, and Eva felt uncomfortable when she tried to unburden herself and talk about the horrors of West Hills Sanitarium, the attacks of nerves that plagued her before and since that confinement, her hopes for little Francesca, the uncertain future ahead and whether she would succeed in show business, even if someone in Hollywood decided to hire her. Jolie’s pat answer to everything was, “It wouldn’t have happened if I had been here” or “If you’re ever verklempt again, Zsazsika, I’ll take you on an ocean cruise.”
George found Zsa Zsa highly amusing, and she him, though he soon realized that their fun would have remained unspoiled if only they had not married. “No one is a better date than Zsa Zsa,” he said, “and no one is a better companion on a trip, even if it involves roughing it.” Their travels resembled a continuous honeymoon.
In those happy days of 1947, Zsa Zsa lived in a remodeled brownstone at 8 East Eighty-third Street, between Fifth Avenue and Madison. Whether she bought it with money earned from Hilton hotel stocks, or whether another Gabor bought it for forty thousand dollars, depends on whose real estate prospectus you read. Whoever held the deed, that house was filled with Gabors. Vilmos, still in the United States pending his return to Hungary; Jolie, now the insouciant Manhattan jewelry entrepreneur and matron-about-town; Eva, when in New York between Hollywood assignments and West Coast stage appearances; Magda, recently remarried to William Rankin, a minor screenwriter, and a part-time resident on East Eighty-third Street when not on speaking terms with her groom; and Zsa Zsa and baby Francesca in the penthouse apartment. Soon George Sanders took up residence with Zsa Zsa.
Such libertine behavior scandalized Vilmos, who walked into Zsa Zsa’s apartment one morning to visit his granddaughter and found the bed occupied by an extremely tall man eating fried eggs and drinking milk, and Zsa Zsa caroling from the kitchen, “Georgie, dahling, what can I make for you now, my love?”
“Jó napot, drága Papuska,” she managed to say in a language he understood. “Éhes vagy?” A stony silence from Vilmos conveyed that he had no interest in eating the same food she was serving to that long foreigner. As she tried to explain that her friend was very lazy, that he followed the adage, Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can recline, Vilmos stormed out and slammed the door, waking up the baby, whose vociferous screams quite ruined the remainder of George’s meal.
A month later, Zsa Zsa put Francesca in a wee basket and, along with the baby’s nanny and the dog, flew to Hollywood to be with George. A month after that, suspecting that he had two-timed her, she reversed course to New York.
And so they were married, on April Fool’s Day 1949. Zsa Zsa was partial to the month of April for her weddings, having married Conrad on April 10 and before that, Burhan in May, which, she reasoned, in Hungary was not so different from April.
This new wedding was delayed by George’s divorce from his first wife, Susan Larson. Little is known of her except that she worked at a studio where George was filming and that they married in 1940. Although Zsa Zsa never met the first Mrs. Sanders, she had this to say: “He had a miserable marriage with that woman. He treated her badly, like a peasant, and she was mentally not very strong. She was in a mental home for quite a while.”
* * *
In April 1950, one year after their marriage, George and Zsa Zsa arrived in San Francisco where he was to join Bette Davis, Gary Merrill, Celeste Holm, Thelma Ritter, Marilyn Monroe, and the rest of the cast of All About Eve. In it George played Addison DeWitt, the role for which he is best known and for which he won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor. Since I have covered this period of George’s life, and of Zsa Zsa’s, in a previous book—All About “All About Eve”—I will avoid repeating myself. Throughout those weeks of filming, in San Francisco and later back in Hollywood at 20th Century Fox, George faced the professional task of long hours before the camera, squabbles with Bette Davis both scripted and otherwise, and, at the end of the work day, tussles with Zsa Zsa over her myriad concerns and frustrations.
Famished for a career of her own, she badgered George to persuade Joe Mankiewicz, the director, and Darryl Zanuck, the producer, to let her play the role of Phoebe, a teenage fan who appears for a minute or two in the film’s final sequence. So persistent was she in that quest that Mankiewicz eventually banished her from the set. Adding to George’s woes was Zsa Zsa’s intense dislike of Marilyn Monroe, who, she imagined, was trying to steal George from her—despite the fact that Marilyn had more suitors than anyone in town. When Zsa Zsa learned that George and Marilyn often had lunch together in the commissary, she forbade him even to speak to her unless required to do so by the script.
On Oscar night—March 29, 1951—Zsa Zsa’s emotions soared to heights undreamed of even by the evening’s nominees. She was delirious with pride on George’s behalf; despondent because she had no career and could only loiter in the shadows of his fame and Eva’s; ravaged by jealousy when she imagined all the actresses backstage who might be flirting with George—and his Oscar—while she sat alone in a seat at the RKO Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. No one took her picture. And who would want the autograph of a mere wife, a hausfrau?
* * *
Cecil B. DeMille, to Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard: “You know, crazy things happen in this business, Norma. I hope you haven’t lost your sense of humor.” The crazy thing that happened to Zsa Zsa in that business was this: not quite a year later—on March 20, 1952—she swept onto the stage at the RKO Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard to present the Oscar for Black and White Costume Design to Edith Head for A Streetcar Named Desire.
1951 was Zsa Zsa’s annus mirabilis, for as we saw in the opening pages she became famous overnight after her first appearance on the TV show Bachelor’s Haven. Soon after that she made two pictures, and by Oscar night 1952 she had appeared in three more. She had just been signed for Moulin Rouge, John Huston’s expensive, prestigious new film to be shot in Paris and London in summer and fall of that year. Zsa Zsa was now every-other-inch the movie star, for despite her newfound fame her work so far guaranteed only this: that in her next picture she must prove she had real star talent. Otherwise she would remain just another wife, although a wife who had presented an Oscar to Edith Head.
For Zsa Zsa, the remainder of 1952 loomed like a precarious cliff. She must not only survive as a movie actress, she must also zoom past those previous five performances in small roles and convince Hollywood that she could do a lot more. Failing that, she saw her next role as recurrent hausfrau: cooking eggs and washing socks for an ungrateful husband who barely bothered with a thank you. The sole membrane between Zsa Zsa Gabor movie star, and a has-been blonde with an accent, was John Huston.
Chapter 17
An Actress Prepa
res
Zsa Zsa didn’t scare easily, one reason being that she never thought too far ahead. She rushed into each day’s adventures, expecting the world to do her bidding, and if those biddings went awry she vented her emotions and whizzed straight ahead. Although rarely intimidated, in 1944 she briefly lost her voice from nerves in the office of Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Not until late September 1951 was she again so petrified. That was the day she reported for work at MGM and her first day on the set of Lovely to Look At. Mervyn LeRoy, the director, had seen her on Bachelor’s Haven after her sensational debut on the show, and one night when he spotted Zsa Zsa and her brother-in-law Tom Conway dancing at the Mocambo, he tapped her on the shoulder and introduced himself. “I’m doing a new picture and there’s a part that’s just right for you. A cute French model. Would you like to do it?”
She thought he was joking.
“No,” he said. “I mean it. You’re so right I won’t even bother with a test.”
George was still filming Ivanhoe in England, but his agent gladly accompanied Zsa Zsa to LeRoy’s office at MGM. To her astonishment, no one argued when the agent named her price as a thousand dollars a week. The following days found her at the studio for drama lessons, photo shoots, and fittings with Adrian, one of Hollywood’s premier costume designers. Then a phone call came from Russell Birdwell, press agent to countless stars and the inventor of the hunt-for-a-star format. It was Birdwell who made Gone With the Wind the most talked-about movie in history before its release by extending the search for Scarlett O’Hara over three years.
Zsa Zsa had now joined the big leagues, and Birdwell wanted in on it. “I’m laying out a campaign for you,” he said at their first meeting. “Our aim is not to impress the whole country. You’re already doing that. We want to impress the ten top picture makers.” He began taking Zsa Zsa to premieres in a chauffeured limousine. Her own expertise in fashion, jewelry, and makeup gave her the look of a movie star before she even stepped in front of a camera.
Looking like a star, however, is easier than becoming one. This Zsa Zsa realized that first day of filming. Her nerves froze. The excitement overwhelmed her. Early that first morning she was directed to makeup and told to sit at a long table in front of a gigantic lighted mirror. Looking to her left she saw Lana Turner and Grace Kelly. Down the table, on her right, Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, and Kathryn Grayson.
Everyone nodded, said good morning, then Ava Gardner leaned over to Zsa Zsa and said, “Sydney will make his entrance any minute now.” Sydney, of course, being Sydney Guilaroff, coiffeur to everyone who mattered at MGM. When he swept in, he commanded, “Girls, put your lipstick on. I don’t fix up dogs.” Zsa Zsa loved his campy joke, and she immediately felt at home with Ava Gardner, who told her that girls at this studio did their own lipstick, the theory being that no makeup artist could apply it to a woman’s lips as well as the woman herself.
* * *
“I arrived on the set practically speechless,” Zsa Zsa recalled. “I was given my cue, but I was so scared I couldn’t even open my mouth.” Kathryn Grayson, the leading lady and an established star with over a dozen roles to her credit, sized up Zsa Zsa’s predicament after a quick look. “Hey, Merv,” she called out to the director. “Can we take a break? I’ve got a run in my stocking and I need to go and change.”
Zsa Zsa, on her mark but bereft of that steel-jaw self-confidence that had carried her through many a crisis, stood rooted to the floor. At first she didn’t comprehend why Kathryn walked toward her. Looking into Zsa Zsa’s terrified eyes, she smiled and said, “Come with me, honey. Let’s go to my dressing room.” She put her arm around Zsa Zsa’s shoulders and led her away.
Zsa Zsa never forgot what happened next. “I followed her, grateful for the reprieve, yet still feeling crestfallen and inept. Once in the dressing room, Katie invited me to sit down, made a certain amount of small talk to give me time to compose myself, then poured me a stiff shot of vodka, telling me, ‘Drink up.’ When we went back onto the set, my performance was virtually flawless. And Kathryn Grayson became my best friend.” The friendship endured, although by the time of Kathryn’s death in 2010, Zsa Zsa was unable fully to comprehend her friend’s passing.
Everyone knew Zsa Zsa from Bachelor’s Haven, and on her second day at MGM the cast and crew played a joke on her. Several weeks earlier, she had said on the show, “I hate how American men dress—all those Honolulu shirts.” Arriving on the set, she saw a dozen men done up in “Honolulu shirts.”
Kathryn Grayson’s daughter, Patricia, was one year younger than Francesca, so the two girls often played together. Francesca had happy memories of those times, and her most endearing childhood story was this one. A year or so after filming Lovely to Look At, Kathryn and Zsa Zsa took their little daughters trick-or-treating in Beverly Hills in costumes borrowed from MGM’s wardrobe department.
Seven years into their friendship, Kathryn spoke about Zsa Zsa to the New York Post for that paper’s series on the Gabors. “This Zsa Zsa in the newspapers is not the real Zsa Zsa. It’s just a façade. Inwardly, she is a frightened, nervous person. When she sees a horde of newspaper reporters descending on her, she says she just doesn’t know what to do, so she talks. Then she’s shocked when they print what she says. I tell her, ‘Hide, like I do.’ But she says, ‘I cannot hide. They expect me to say something.’ ” Over the years, Kathryn was the rare person who saw Zsa Zsa weep.
Marge Champion was the one cast member that Zsa Zsa didn’t like. Without going into detail, Zsa Zsa claimed that Marge was not nice to her. Again, Kathryn Grayson took Zsa Zsa’s part. “I will not allow such behavior,” she snapped after Marge directed a catty remark to Zsa Zsa.
* * *
For Zsa Zsa, Lovely to Look At proved an inauspicious debut, though in it she was indeed lovely and poised. Adrian, the costume designer, thought Zsa Zsa was mad when she insisted on wearing a black cocktail dress. “It’s just not done,” he declared. But Zsa Zsa’s insistence paid off. She walked away with fashion honors while the other female stars in their pastel gowns—Kathryn Grayson, Ann Miller, Marge Champion—resembled scoops of sherbet at Baskin-Robbins. It’s a miracle, however, that Zsa Zsa received future film offers, given this deadly musical that foreshadowed the demise of MGM and its famous genre. She does nothing but giggle and chatter in French like a francophone monkey.
Even those in the cast who often did better work—Howard Keel, Ann Miller, Marge and Gower Champion—sink under the dull script and hackneyed direction. The Jerome Kern songs fare badly when rendered in Grayson’s piercing soprano. (A trivia note: When Kathryn Grayson speaks a few lines of French, they’re dubbed by Zsa Zsa.)
In his memoir, Take One, Mervyn LeRoy recalled not Zsa Zsa’s nerves but “the quantity of flowers that were delivered to the set for her” that first day. “There were baskets of flowers, bouquets of flowers, vases of flowers. The stage smelled like a florist’s shop, and so did she.” And of the female cast members: “This was one film where the problem wasn’t that they didn’t get along, but that they got along too well. The girls—Kathryn, Ann, and Zsa Zsa—became an instant sorority. They were always off in some corner, giggling like schoolgirls. I like a happy set, but I also like a quiet set when there is work to be done. I had a devil of a time trying to get those girls to simmer down.”
Typical of Zsa Zsa’s reviews in her first screen appearance are these, from Time (“blonde Zsa Zsa Gabor just flounces around”) and the New York Times (“Kurt Kasznar and Zsa Zsa Gabor make a couple of noisy appearances as a Broadway producer and his giggling Gallic girlfriend.”)
* * *
After her short stay at MGM, Zsa Zsa moved to 20th Century Fox in December 1951 for We’re Not Married. What should have been a fluffy little anthology film ended up heavy and indigestible. That’s owing to Edmund Goulding’s sluggish direction and to editing that loiters when it should dance and skip.
Five couples—among them Ginger Rogers and Fred Allen, Eve Arden and Pau
l Douglas, Marilyn Monroe and David Wayne—find out they’re not legally hitched because the justice of the peace who performed their respective ceremonies was not yet qualified to do so. Nunnally Johnson, who wrote the script, created a segment for Zsa Zsa and character actor Louis Calhern that starts as an in-joke and becomes a miniature operetta without music. In her first scene, Zsa Zsa is eating breakfast in bed in a finely appointed bedroom, with a poodle beside her. (It was probably her own.) She’s the trophy wife of a Texas oil millionaire.
Sound familiar? Conrad Hilton’s money didn’t come from oil, though he did try drilling for it en route to his hotel empire. Like Calhern in the picture, he was the older husband of a petted young wife. Zsa Zsa’s split from Calhern in the movie follows the same track as her divorce from Hilton a few years earlier: schemes, detectives following one or both parties, an attempt to take half the husband’s wealth which, onscreen as in real time of 1946–’47, goes awry for the plotting wife. Calhern outfoxes Mrs. Melrose—Zsa Zsa’s character—just as Conrad outsmarted Mrs. Hilton. At the moment when Mrs. Melrose is about to take her husband to the cleaners, he gets the letter informing him: you’re not married.
Gorgeous Zsa Zsa plays what was to become her usual role—hard-boiled, cynical fortune hunter swathed in topnotch couture. She was as photogenic as Marilyn Monroe, though in a very different way. The camera dotes on vulnerable Marilyn, eager to come closer. Zsa Zsa’s impenetrable porcelain face rivets the camera eye. It wants to pull away, but can’t: she has taken a mortgage on it.
* * *
Zsa Zsa returned to MGM in early 1952 for The Story of Three Loves, another anthology film with two segments directed by Gottfried Reinhardt and Zsa Zsa’s by Vincente Minnelli. What a cast: costarring with Zsa Zsa in the episode titled “Mademoiselle” are Leslie Caron, Farley Granger, Ethel Barrymore, and eleven-year-old Ricky Nelson. In the other episodes are James Mason, Agnes Moorehead, Moira Shearer, Kirk Douglas, and Pier Angeli.
