Finding Zsa Zsa

by Sam Staggs

  My theory is this: Eva and Marlene being friends, and Eva in town and available—she was filming Don’t Go Near the Water at MGM in February 1957—she and Dietrich decided to have a bit of fun with Zsa Zsa. Imagine their glee when Zsa Zsa glides down the staircase, all ready to speak her two lines to Welles, and glimpses Eva twenty feet away. And, in Zsa Zsa’s heated imagination, stealing her scene.

  My speculation is based in part on this paragraph from Frank Brady’s biography, Citizen Welles: “So eager were they to be in a film directed by Orson Welles that Joseph Cotten, Marlene Dietrich, Mercedes McCambridge, and Keenan Wynn agreed to work for union scale wages, simply to be included. Perhaps out of jealousy over the fact that Welles was hiring so many friends, Zugsmith insisted that his friend, Zsa Zsa Gabor, be given a cameo role. Ultimately, Cotten, Dietrich, and Gabor were given slight salary increases over the union scale.” Since Zugsmith was friends with Eva, as well, he would probably have agreed to the in-joke cooked up by her, Dietrich, and Welles. Or maybe not. The film’s production notes list two starlets, June McCall and Betty Uitti, as “1st girl” and “2nd girl” in the scene.

  Whatever the circumstances, Zsa Zsa said at the time, “When Orson beckons, I come. He’s a dear. He once held my baby in his lap all the way from Paris to America on the plane.”

  * * *

  Later in 1957, Zsa Zsa traveled to London to appear in The Man Who Wouldn’t Talk. Her costars, Anthony Quayle and Anna Neagle, both highly regarded for their films and he for his Shakespeare roles onstage, as well, must surely have found much to admire in her work or they would not have accepted her, especially since Neagle’s husband, Herbert Wilcox, was the director. In her 1974 autobiography Anna Neagle wrote, “For some reason the combination of Zsa Zsa and myself met with a sceptical reaction, but we ignored it. I found her a first-class actress, very beautiful and extremely witty.”

  The film is a Hitchcockian thriller with a Cold War plot. It opens with Zsa Zsa and Quayle, newlyweds, boarding a plane in New York for their flight to London. She is as frothy as ever, chirpy and oblivious to all except hair and makeup as she primps on the plane. When the door closes behind them in their honeymoon suite in a London hotel, they drop the façade. They are not married at all. She is a Hungarian-born undercover agent for British intelligence. The fake marriage served as a deceptive way to bring Quayle, a virologist, to England.

  There he meets in secret with a famous Hungarian virologist who is in London for an international conference. This man knows of a deadly killer virus developed by the Russians and intended for horrific use. He gives Quayle the formula for an antidote to counteract the virus, which he describes as a hundred times more virulent than any other.

  A bit later, Zsa Zsa’s character is killed by Soviet agents and her murder pinned on Quayle, who must remain silent during his trial in order to maintain his cover and deliver the vaccine formula to Washington. In unusually advanced casting for the fifties, Neagle plays the queen’s counsel who defends Quayle in court. This she does with the deadpan aplomb of Charles Laughton in Witness for the Prosecution, which Billy Wilder was shooting around the same time.

  Here Zsa Zsa gives her best dramatic performance, her finest comic role having been in Public Enemy Number One with Fernandel. It’s obvious once more that if she had remained in Europe, her career would no doubt have assumed more respectable lineaments. By the late fifties, however, she had become rigidly self-important, a star clutching at diminished stardom. Lacking judgment in the selection of roles, she jumbled good work on film with ubiquitous one-note TV performances.

  By 1958, Zsa Zsa had done irreparable damage to career and reputation. Whether she herself at the time recognized the harm, or whether she believed the public still clamored for her as they had at the premiere of Moulin Rouge, no one knows. (Years later, she was clear on what happened, though she claimed to have no regrets. “Professionally, I missed my moment,” she said in 1990. “I followed my heart and to this day I still don’t care.”) At the very time when she should have sought a “mature” supporting role like that of Joan Crawford in The Best of Everything or Claire Trevor in Marjorie Morningstar, she grabbed the starring role in Queen of Outer Space. It made her immortal, of course, but for all the wrong reasons—and she didn’t even play the queen.

  Before that celluloid succès de scandale was released, however, Zsa Zsa entangled herself in a personal scandal that dropped her reputation even lower and labeled her, in public opinion, as a teammate of Polly Adler and the Mayflower Madam.

  Chapter 27

  The Trujillo Stink

  Ionce heard someone call Zsa Zsa “the world’s most brilliant stupid person,” and her judgment in the late fifties confirms the epithet. This time the career vandal was not Rubirosa but his amigo and former brother-in-law from the Dominican Republic, Rafael “Ramfis” Trujillo, rancid son of the foul dictator.

  Born in 1929, Ramfis was awarded the rank of colonel at age five. From then on, he appeared often with his father at state occasions in full military regalia. Adding to the child’s grotesque costume was a chest covered with fake medals. Shawn Levy, in The Last Playboy, his biography of Rubirosa, portrays Ramfis as “a pouty brat” who was “weak, uncertain, childish.” Despite such liabilities, he remained the apple of his father’s evil eye. Trujillo père promoted him to brigadier general at age nine. In his twenty-second year, Ramfis was named commander of the Dominican Republic’s midget air force, even though, as Levy points out, “he couldn’t pilot so much as a crop duster.” Beginning in his teens, Ramfis learned torture and massacre from his father, who intended this first-born son to carry on the dynasty.

  In 1957, Trujillo enrolled his heir at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. If Robert Altman had filmed this story rather than M*A*S*H, the comedy might have been not only dark but stygian, for Ramfis the cadet possessed all the diligence and character of a Donald Trump, had that future commander-in-chief not received five deferments to avoid the draft. As politicians-in-waiting, however, both fought similar battles. Trump told Howard Stern in 1997 that his own “personal Vietnam” was avoiding sexually transmitted diseases. “I feel like a great and very brave soldier,” he crowed, implying Napoleonic battles minus a genital Waterloo. Such was Ramfis’s own field of battle. He waged his venereal campaigns with such vigor that he often lacked time and energy to show up for class.

  Upon arrival in Kansas at age twenty-eight, Ramfis deposited a million dollars in various bank accounts. He also received a monthly allowance from the dictator of $50,000, while the majority of Dominicans struggled in poverty. After weekday classes, Ramfis and his sizable entourage occupied a ranch house in the town of Leavenworth and on weekends they drove to Kansas City, Missouri, where the heavily guarded ninth floor of the Ambassador Hotel was theirs for the entire nine-month course of study. At both locations, some three dozen detectives and bodyguards patrolled around the clock, for the Trujillos were hated throughout the world.

  Having been prodigiously indulged all his life, Ramfis quickly grew bored in Kansas. Along with sloth, he suffered from depression, anxiety, insomnia, and excessive drinking. Doctors prescribed pioneering tranquilizers and antidepressants, but no drug listed in the PDR was effective in treating a sociopathic personality. Nor did he find comfort in his wife, Octavia, and their six children, five of whom had accompanied their parents to the American Midwest.

  Ramfis, Octavia, and their youngsters returned to the Dominican Republic for the Christmas holidays in 1957. While there, he explained to the dictator that responsibility for a wife and children made study difficult, not to mention their hindrance to pleasure after long hours of instruction. A divorce would be so convenient, he whined. Exit family.

  During the spring term Ramfis welcomed his mentor, Rubirosa. Learning of his friend’s boredom, Rubi called Zsa Zsa.

  “Do you remember young Ramfis?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Zsa Zsa giggled. “He’s my favo
rite Dominican after you.” She had met him twice, once when she visited the Dominican Republic with Rubirosa and another time in New York.

  “If I send him out, can you show him around?” He told her that Ramfis loved movies and the beautiful stars, like herself, who starred in them.

  “Perfect timing,” Zsa Zsa purred. Her latest picture had just wrapped, and she was thrilled because Queen of Outer Space offered one of the biggest parts of her career.

  Learning that Ramfis was famished for blondes, and that he had a burning crush on Kim Novak, Zsa Zsa told Rubi that she and Kim were good friends. “Any friend of mine is a friend of Kim’s,” she assured him. “It’s happened before. Did I tell you about the time—well, you remember.”

  When he put down the receiver, Rubi smiled at Ramfis. Whatever his actual words in Spanish, the gist of it was, She will make you glad you’re not in Kansas anymore. “Nobody gives a party like Zsa Zsa,” Rubi assured his protégé. “The things I could tell you.”

  * * *

  Before Zsa Zsa could set to work on her welcome-to-Hollywood soirée for Ramfis, she had to meet several professional obligations. So grateful was he for the promised event, however, that he began phoning her several times a week to drool about movie stars and to remind her obsessively of his eagerness to meet Kim Novak. “Yes, dahling,” Zsa Zsa said as she rushed off to rehearsal for an episode of The George Gobel Show. During a break, she got a message to step outside and see the present that had just been delivered for her. Parked at the door was a red Mercedes-Benz convertible that Ramfis had sent by chartered plane.

  She called him in ecstasy. “But you shouldn’t have,” she gurgled unconvincingly. “How can I thank you?”

  “Your friendship is thanks enough.”

  Zsa Zsa drove the car home and parked it in the garage beside her several others. Since a chauffered limousine usually picked her up for television shows, she had no need of yet another fancy car. Her hectic pace continued. In January 1958 she appeared on the popular afternoon drama series, NBC Matinee Theater. In February she flew to Palm Beach for the annual Heart Fund Ball, of which she was honorary chairwoman. While there, she heard from Ramfis again. “I’m in New Orleans for Mardi Gras,” he informed her. He had sailed across the Gulf of Mexico on the presidential yacht and wanted Zsa Zsa to come on board as his guest. “I have the consul general of the Dominican Republic and his wife aboard, and several other friends. You’ll be well chaperoned.” So Zsa Zsa recalled, though it’s doubtful that the word “chaperone” entered his mind or issued from his mouth in any language.

  She arrived in New Orleans at night. Her low-light description sounds like the opening sequence in a film noir. “At the airport three of his aides waited to whisk me in an enormous black limousine through the city to the dark, black docks. It was like a murder mystery—squads of police on guard, secret-service agents in the shadows, and there, looming like a great trans-Atlantic liner, the magnificent Angelita. It was the longest yacht in the world. I saw dark sailors in white uniforms peering out. I heard, floating across the water to me, the soft Caribbean music of the orchestra.”

  On board the yacht, she wallowed in banana-republic luxury for several days in the company of shady fellow guests whom she named only as “six or seven men and three or four lovely women.” She hardly recognized Ramfis when he greeted her. Gone were whatever youthful looks he once had. Zsa Zsa tried not to notice his swollen face, puffy from drink and drugs, the piled-up hair that gave him the look of a swarthy cockatoo, and the banal, imbecilic eyes.

  She focused on the overdone sumptuousness of her Louis Quinze suite and its golden bed, the Aubusson carpet, the pink marble bath with gold taps. Like the aimless rich in an Antonioni film, the Trujillo party and his entourage of goons moved off the sultry waters and into the sweaty town, joining the Mardi Gras revels and elevating Zsa Zsa, their quixotic star, to elegance concocted of tinsel and paste, which to her looked like Versailles. And like Marie Antoinette, she gave no thought to the poor peasants across the water in the Dominican Republic.

  In the powder room of a nightclub a woman claiming to be a fan took Zsa Zsa’s picture. At the time it seemed harmless enough. Next day, the mayor of New Orleans came on board the Angelita with his wife. He brought along the morning paper, which headlined: ZSA ZSA IS HERE; BUT WHERE? IS SHE VISITING THE TRUJILLO YACHT? Illustrating the story was the powder-room photo of Zsa Zsa. “They love to make scandal wherever I go,” Zsa Zsa groused. The mayor soothed her feelings. “You’ll come with me to city hall and I’ll present the keys to the city and name you an honorary citizen of New Orleans.”

  Humid mist and gray shadows hung not only over the yacht and above the entire city; the murky damp closed in quietly on Zsa Zsa herself, whose nervous merriment among the masked faces of Mardi Gras could not dispel the stealthy whisperings in the Angelita’s corridors and the curious cries in the night. Whatever her pleasures, she could not linger on in the fantastic dream, and so her revels ended.

  The sunshine of Los Angeles, draped in webs of haze, did not relieve Zsa Zsa’s vague foreboding. What was the gnawing that refused to state its scheme? But work, always work, pushed it away. Jack Benny’s Shower of Stars in March, another appearance on NBC Matinee Theater in April, and her first invitation to Jack Paar’s late-night talk show, which would take her to New York in early May.

  But before departure, two conspicuous events.

  * * *

  If one listed the ten most assiduous party givers of the twentieth century—in the U.S., at least—the names would include Elsa Maxwell, Perle Mesta, Truman Capote, and Zsa Zsa. By the late fifties, her parties routinely earned photo spreads in big-city newspapers and occasionally in Life and other national magazines.

  In that spring of 1958, Zsa Zsa’s house seldom quieted. She was either planning two big occasions, attending to every detail as expert party givers do, or else the events were taking place. First came Francesca’s eleventh birthday celebration on March 10. For this annual event Zsa Zsa wanted more than cake, sweet drinks, and kiddie games. She hoped Francesca would remember the day forever. This year Zsa Zsa decided that the children would dress as grown-ups. She counted on their behavior matching their outfits. In previous years mayhem had erupted, leaving her house a shambles. Invitations specified long evening gowns for girls, tuxedos and black ties for boys. Zsa Zsa’s canny sense of how dress affects behavior worked as she predicted with the assembled guests, who loved the pretense of adulthood. They sipped ginger ale from martini glasses and parroted the latest talk in “the industry.”

  Conrad Hilton gave Francesca a gold and pearl necklace. Ramfis sent a bouffant ball gown from New Orleans. (In future years Francesca would not speak his name.) Other gifts included Nancy Drew mystery novels and a gold watch. On that Monday afternoon the house filled with young sophisticates: Kathryn Grayson’s daughter Patricia, Van Johnson’s daughter Schuyler, Dick Powell and June Allyson’s Pamela, Keenan Wynn’s son Tracy, Deborah Kerr’s Melanie, and the two sons of Franchot Tone, Jeff and Pat. There were eighteen guests in all.

  Carrie Fisher, not yet two, didn’t attend, but her father did. A picture in Life shows him hugging Francesca. Like many young girls across the country, Francesca had a crush on Pat Boone, who was then at the height of his cloying fame. Unlike other little girls, however, Francesca was called to the phone to hear her absolute idol sing “Happy Birthday, dear Franci.” After much ribbing from the youngsters, Eddie Fisher sang “April Love”—Pat Boone’s big hit. Then Johnny Mathis sang, accompanied at the piano by Jolie.

  Well-mannered children, like obedient dogs, are never one hundred percent house trained. As afternoon faded to evening, little ladies and gents regressed. Tired; out of sorts; tears—Zsa Zsa witnessed the entire palette of childhood disgruntlement, as fisticuffs broke out among the boys and minor hair snatching among the girls. Yet no one wanted to leave, even as annoyed parents threatened dire detentions.

  “But for my sweet daughter,” Zsa Zsa said
with great satisfaction, “it was the night of nights. And also for me, her proud mother.”

  * * *

  A few weeks later, in April, Zsa Zsa gave her party of the year. She determined to invite everyone in Hollywood that Ramfis wanted to meet, and then some. One hundred and ten invitations went out, with only a few regrets from those filming on location. For Zsa Zsa, any party was an ordeal because of her exacting arrangements. “Every flower must be in place,” she said, as if writing a manual, “an ashtray cannot be awry, house, food, help, decorations, program, music—all must be perfection.”

  Lending respectability to the occasion were cohostesses Jolie and Eva. Who could criticize a lady whose mother and sister were in attendance, even if the guest of honor was a squalid reprobate? Arriving guests also towered above the unseemly: Mr. and Mrs. James Stewart, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Taylor, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Mitchum (his jail term for marijuana almost forgotten), Zsa Zsa’s close friends James and Pamela Mason, her very best friend Kathryn Grayson, Louella Parsons, Mr. and Mrs. Kirk Douglas, Bea Lillie, Ginger Rogers, Rhonda Fleming, Shirley MacLaine, Maureen O’Hara, Ann Miller, George Sanders (“Dearest Cokiline,” he whispered as he kissed her cheek, “this is a party to end all parties”), Kim Novak, who was already intimately acquainted with Ramfis since his arrival in town a week earlier. And Rubirosa and his young wife, Odile. Ramfis had flown them in from Paris just for tonight.