Finding Zsa Zsa

by Sam Staggs

  * * *

  Fortunately for Zsa Zsa’s career, the trial became not only a cause célèbre but her true Norma Desmond moment. And yes, DeMille might have filmed it had he been still alive, for it was the greatest Gabor show on earth. And the last one. It was Zsa Zsa’s Sunset Boulevard played for laughs. Call it La Cienega Boulevard. Minus the anguish of a dead lover in the swimming pool, Zsa Zsa’s version was still gothic and slightly ghoulish, for she seemed convinced that those cameras would never stop rolling. And she was almost right, for the moment she alighted from her car each morning at the courthouse the newsreel cameras made love to her image, reporters blocked her path, and she eagerly gave interviews on the sidewalk as though she were guest star on a plein-air talk show. Also like Norma Desmond, she had a German husband, for her entourage included Frederic, who stood by like a footman until called upon for confirmation; her attorney; her hairdresser; and various supporters and hangers-on.

  Motley crowds greeted her outside the courthouse, some wearing “Free Zsa Zsa” T-shirts and hoisting placards with the same sentiment, and others with signs urging “Hang Zsa Zsa.” An oddball woman hit Zsa Zsa up for money to pay her own legal bills; Zsa Zsa promised to help. A very convincing Eva Gabor imitator managed to seat herself in the courtroom beside Frederic until her fakery was discovered and a bailiff ushered her out. (The real Eva was mortified at these shenanigans. “It wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t talk so much,” she scolded, much to Zsa Zsa’s annoyance.)

  Francesca, too, was in the crowd. She held up a wobbly hand-lettered “Free Zsa Zsa” sign that looked amazingly cheap for the daughter of a star. Watching all this on The People vs. Zsa Zsa Gabor, you see Zsa Zsa give Francesca an absentminded kiss; the scene is so weird you almost expect her to autograph Francesca’s homemade sign, not quite realizing it belongs to her own daughter.

  * * *

  Zsa Zsa’s arrest in 1989 rocketed her once more into the scandalsphere. The trial, which lasted for two weeks later that year, kept her in the headlines and newscasts well into the nineties. Arriving at court on the first day, Zsa Zsa wore a black Donna Karan dress with an enormous red silk corsage on her left shoulder. Next day, another DK original, this one a flashy leopard-spot design. Her daily fashion statements added to the Day of the Locust atmosphere, which spilled over into the courtroom.

  During preliminary testimony, Zsa Zsa busied herself sketching witnesses, prosecutor, and Judge Charles Rubin. On the fourth day, she sketched Officer Kramer before she was called to reenact the incident. Cameras, never at rest, made the reenactment look like actors and director rehearsing a scene for a crime drama. At one point, however, Zsa Zsa rushed out of court in tears but returned after a brief recess.

  Zsa Zsa’s testimony was not confined to the witness stand. Each day, upon arrival, she made snarky comments to the media about Officer Kramer, the judge, and others in her line of fire. As her comments became more inflammatory, the judge issued a gag order. Perhaps she didn’t understand the term, for she continued her stream-of-consciousness narrative as before. The prosecution then called for a contempt citation. Judge Rubin instead gave Zsa Zsa what he called “my first and last warning. You are to say, ‘No comment.’ ” The gag order included all members of the Beverly Hills Police Department. The prosecution, increasingly annoyed, raised the question of the defendant’s mental competence. At that, Zsa Zsa grimaced and whispered in her attorney’s ear.

  * * *

  When the trial finally ended, Judge Rubin sentenced Zsa Zsa to four days in jail, reduced to three owing to time served on the day of her arrest. He further imposed a two-year gag order and a fine of $12,937, along with 120 hours of community service and a psychiatric evaluation.

  In July 1990, Zsa Zsa spent a weekend in the El Segundo City Jail. After her time behind bars, she was as visible on TV as a presidential candidate. To name only a few of the shows where she told her story, often changing details and even laughing at herself: Good Morning America, A Current Affair, Entertainment Tonight, The Phil Donahue Show.

  The cop slapping followed her for the rest of her career. On an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1991, she plays egotistical movie star Sonya Lamor, a neighbor of series regulars the Banks family. At a party, Vivian Banks says, “Miss Lamor, there’s something I’m just dying to know—” To which Zsa Zsa replies, “Yes, I did it and he deserved to be slapped.”

  On an episode of Empty Nest, two of the female regulars—Carole and Laverne—end up in jail owing to a silly mix-up. In the adjoining cell is a woman with her head turned to the wall. “Why are you in jail?” Carole asks. The woman rolls over, and it’s Zsa Zsa facing the camera. “Well, dahling, it all started when I was born. The doctor slapped me, and I slapped him back.”

  The notorious slap is her raison d’être in The Beverly Hillbillies (1993). The Clampetts end up behind bars, where they encounter none other than Zsa Zsa. In her final film, A Very Brady Sequel, Zsa Zsa threatens to slap a man who outbids her for an objet d’art at an auction.

  * * *

  The judge perhaps had a point when he ordered Zsa Zsa to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Had her sanity really slipped, or was it that in her mind the year was always 1953? That question is valid because, when she tangled with the police back then, her studio squelched the story. George Sanders told it obliquely in his Memoirs of a Professional Cad: “Zsa Zsa succeeded in getting herself thrown out of jail, which takes a bit of doing. She was arrested for speeding in Santa Barbara and a rather poor view was taken of her truculent attitude by the arresting officer, who forthwith carted her off to the cooler where she put on a scene of such majestic proportions as quite pulverized the police force, who insisted that they were running a respectable jail. They threw her out with the greatest indignation.”

  * * *

  Immediately after the trial, and before serving her sentence, Zsa Zsa appeared on The Joan Rivers Show.

  Joan (mock serious): “When are you going to jail? That’s what worries me.”

  Zsa Zsa: “Well, my lawyer found out last night—the judge who of course never does his homework because he has makeup on and wants to look good on television—he said I have to make a psychiatric . . . I don’t know how to say it in English, they have to check up if I’m normal or insane—”

  Joan (a great guffaw): “You’ll never go to jail! This is wonderful news for you!”

  And Zsa Zsa joined the audience in a great cathartic belly laugh.

  Chapter 35

  Foul Deeds

  Eva’s death in 1995 removed the strongest barricade to Frederic’s agenda, so that he now drew nearer to the throne. His advance brought control of the Gabor dynasty tantalizingly near, with its spectacular emoluments and bonuses. Zsa Zsa inherited millions from Eva’s estate, which accrued to her own millions. Magda, in frail health, and Jolie, suffering from dementia and the ravages of extreme old age, both died in 1997. There now remained a single obstacle, and she a formidable one: Zsa Zsa’s daughter. Frederic, like a spider inspecting a distracted moth, inventoried Francesca’s vulnerabilities. And waited.

  * * *

  Those unfamiliar with the long tug-of-war between Frederic and Francesca might well inquire as to the provenance of this villainous stepfather, who eventually caught Zsa Zsa’s daughter in his crosshairs. Hans Georg Robert Lichtenberg was born, according to some sources, on June 18, 1943, in Bad Kreuznach, Germany. Other sources suggest an earlier birthdate. His father was a policeman, his mother a housewife. In 1980, when Lichtenberg was thirty-six years old, he was adopted by Princess Marie-Auguste von Anhalt, who died three years later at the age of eighty-six. The adoption was a financial transaction, although whether Lichtenberg, financed by a wealthy patron, paid the old lady (according to some accounts, she was bankrupt) or whether she remunerated him to become her companion, remains unclear. Owing to countless fabrications on the part of shady characters in Germany and elsewhere, the story of Lichtenberg’s metamorphosis became more tangled than any G
abor concoction, which is saying a lot. It is important to note, however, that in a republic such as Germany, holdover titles from long ago carry little weight except among the pretentious and the delusional.

  Since I have no wish to quench von Anhalt’s rabid thirst for publicity, I will abbreviate his unattractive biography except as necessary in relating Zsa Zsa’s story and the sorrows visited on her daughter. Having met him on three occasions, I state my unequivocal dislike of the man, whom I found egomaniacal, coarse, and charmless.

  Our first encounter was at lunch in August 2010, at the Caffé Roma in Beverly Hills, a meeting arranged by the late John Blanchette, who had been Zsa Zsa’s publicist and who, after her incapacitation, ostensibly represented her while primarily publicizing Frederic. At the luncheon, we discussed my plans to write the Gabor biography. Frederic seemed to believe that the book would overwhelmingly feature him as source and subject. His references to Zsa Zsa that day were unflattering and suggested minimal affection for his wife. I was reminded of sour individuals encountered in low dives. Long before coffee was served, I realized his unreliablility as informant.

  Our next meeting took place two years later, on August 19, 2012, in Zsa Zsa’s house in Bel Air. The occasion, billed as a twenty-sixth anniversary celebration of their marriage, might more appropriately have been called O Come Let Us Adore Frederic von Anhalt. Photographers, videographers, and TV journalists swarmed among the guests, with Frederic always on camera and repeating his tired yarns and opinions. Zsa Zsa, upstairs, in the throes of dementia and perhaps heavily sedated, seemed an afterthought to the merriment. Francesca, of course, was not invited.

  My final encounter with Frederic was at Zsa Zsa’s funeral. I will outline, in a later chapter, his nightmarish gaucherie on that occasion.

  Francesca, an intelligent and perceptive woman, never took Frederic seriously, and never pretended to. Brutally frank at times, and despite the lessons in charm and demeanor taught her during her time in a Swiss school for young ladies, she refused to smile and say, “Oh, how interesting,” when the response called for was, “Bullshit!” She laughed in his face when he brought out his medals and implied to hangers-on that he was heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. This made him furious, of course, but he disciplined his fury as long as Zsa Zsa remained healthy and in control of her fortune.

  In 2002, however, everything changed when Zsa Zsa was seriously injured in an automobile accident. During her hospital stay, open warfare broke out between Frederic and Francesca. The New York Post reported on November 30 that Francesca was “physically restrained from entering her mother’s hospital room” by von Anhalt. She was able to visit only after hiring a lawyer who threatened legal action against Frederic and against Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

  In a sense, Zsa Zsa never recovered from the car crash, neither physically, mentally, nor emotionally. She was not totally disabled, however, and so Francesca visited her and stayed in constant touch by phone. But the balance of power had shifted to Frederic. His legal rights as spouse exceeded Francesca’s, for Zsa Zsa had designated him as power of attorney in the event of her inability to make decisions regarding health and finances. For several years he played public caregiver to Zsa Zsa, even though Francesca accused him of neglecting her mother.

  Despite the hospital incident and other dustups, Francesca often visited Zsa Zsa at home, usually during Frederic’s absence. On June 1, 2005, however, a lawsuit was filed in Zsa Zsa’s name against Francesca. The plaintiff, of course, was in reality Frederic von Anhalt acting as his wife’s representative. The suit claimed that Francesca had forged her mother’s name and conspired with others to fraudently obtain a loan of $3.75 million on Zsa Zsa’s house, and of subsequently purchasing a house for herself in the amount of two million dollars. It is implausible that Francesca, who was not shrewd in business matters, could have hoodwinked a financial institution for such an amount.

  Francesca countersued, claiming that she suffered serious damages as a result of the false accusations. Given the state of Zsa Zsa’s health at the time, it is unlikely that she herself initiated the legal action, or that she comprehended even the basics in the case. Two years later, a judge dismissed the Gabor-von Anhalt suit owing to Zsa Zsa’s failure to appear in court and also to numerous misrepresentations. Francesca’s attorney hinted at legal action against Zsa Zsa and Frederic for malicious prosecution if they attempted further litigation against his client. There the matter stood for several years.

  * * *

  In the meantime, Frederic pulled one bizarre publicity stunt after another in his overwrought quest for attention. He became the darling of TMZ and similar outlets for news of the celebrity grotesque. In 2007, with Anna Nicole Smith hardly cold in her grave—in fact, the day after her death—Frederic made the news with a proclamation that he “might be” the father of her five-month-old daughter. Claiming that he and Anna Nicole had made their rendezvous in hotels in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, he inadvertently raised questions as to the quality of caregiving to his semi-invalid wife who was confined to a wheelchair. “You can have an affair in ten minutes,” he said, then contradicted himself with the laughable statement, “I never talk about my private life. They will never know [about the Smith affair] because I don’t talk.” On the contrary, he rarely talked of anything but himself. Whether von Anhalt ever met Anna Nicole Smith remains in doubt.

  Cindy Adams, a Gabor insider and longtime friend of the family, launched a scathing attack on Frederic in her New York Post column on February 13, 2007. After pointing out her credentials as Jolie’s coauthor, as travel companion to Zsa Zsa in years past, and adding that she and her husband, Joey Adams, had worked with Zsa Zsa in nightclub acts, she unfurled a harrowing scenario. “Today Zsa Zsa exists as a prisoner in her Bel Air mansion. She can sit, she can stand, but she remains cloistered in her room. She sees no one. She watched the clownish performance of her husband of twenty years announce that he might have been on the conga line that could have fathered Anna Nicole’s baby.”

  Adams stated that while Zsa Zsa’s body was impaired, her mind was clear. She claimed firsthand knowledge of Zsa Zsa’s distress over Frederic’s outrageous claims to have fathered Anna Nicole Smith’s baby. She also revealed that he had attempted to peddle an unflattering book on his years with Zsa Zsa. Before Zsa Zsa’s incapacitation, Adams continued, when she gave an order Frederic jumped. “I was in that house when she told him, ‘Go upstairs and put on your blue blazer and gray pants’ and he obediently trotted upstairs and put on his blue blazer and gray pants. Now he’s in charge.”

  According to Adams, Frederic padlocked the gates of Zsa Zsa’s estate each time he left. Possessing the sole key to the grounds, he made sure his wife had no visitors in his absence. In addition, he disconnected the gate phone so that no one could enter when he was away. The columnist added further that he had fired Zsa Zsa’s maid and that he monitored her phone calls as part of holding her virtual prisoner in her own home. Adams questioned, also, whether he had destroyed their prenuptial contract, which presumably would have granted various rights and responsibilities to Francesca.

  In a bid for client sympathy, the publicist John Blanchette issued a press release stating that Frederic had collapsed from exhaustion owing to his continuous vigil at the bedside of his wife. Such devotion seemed inflated at best, given his regular visits to a gym, to restaurants, and to a particular Starbucks in West Hollywood. Zsa Zsa supposedly had round-the-clock nursing care, although Francesca doubted the accuracy of Frederic’s claims in this regard. As for the Blanchette press release, it lacks the ring of truth. I liked John Blanchette, who was kind, well-mannered, and helpful. Still, his job, once Zsa Zsa had retreated to her bedroom, was to publicize Frederic in whatever unsavory project von Anhalt might dream up. Observing John and Frederic together on several occasions, it struck me that John felt embarrassed by his employer’s crude behavior. It was equally clear that he dared not gainsay anything from Frederic
’s mouth.

  Like the plot device of Rashomon—conradictory accounts of the same incident told from the point of view of several characters—the question of Frederic’s devotion to Zsa Zsa during her long illness changes from one source to another. Francesca believed him negligent; John Blanchette offered the official version despite evidence that suggested otherwise. Betsy Jentz, who worked as Zsa Zsa’s assistant from the 1970s until the early years of this century, had this to say: “There are many versions of Frederic, but his care of Zsa Zsa has the advantage over anything negative that one can say.” She is convinced that he did everything necessary to make Zsa Zsa comfortable. His claims of Zsa Zsa’s complicity in his stunts, however, leave Betsy skeptical. During our first interview, in April 2016, I asked, “Do you ever visit Zsa Zsa now?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “I was there for her birthday on February 6, when Frederic gave a party. He took me to her bedroom to say hello, but she didn’t know who I was. Nor who anybody else was, in my opinion.”

  I followed with, “Does she recognize Frederic?”

  “In my opinion, no. But he says yes.”

  “Does she speak to him at all?”

  “I don’t think she talks to anybody. I’ve only seen her twice in recent years, and to be perfectly honest I would have preferred not to see her this last time. I would rather remember her as the glamourous lady that she was, and the friend that she became when I worked for her.”

  * * *

  If Frederic had not married Zsa Zsa and her wealth, he might have found employment as a headline writer for the supermarket tabloids. Even as his wife’s condition deteriorated, his publicity schemes became increasingly perverse and distasteful. In 2011, CNN.com headlined ZSA ZSA GABOR TO BECOME NEW MOTHER AT 94, HUSBAND SAYS. According to Frederic, Zsa Zsa was to become a mother again using an egg donor, artificial insemination, and a surrogate mother. The exact biological avenues of such a conception were left untrodden. The CNN story added that von Anhalt was “working with Dr. Mark Surry of the Southern California Reproductive Center in Beverly Hills. CNN’s calls to the center have not been returned.” Technically, of course, one could claim to be “working with” a doctor based on a single phone call to his office, even if the call went unreturned.