One night in July 1951, Zsa Zsa Gabor was stuck at home, bored, in Bel Air, Calif., while her husband, the actor George Sanders, was away filming in England. Suddenly her brother-in-law called — he needed to fill a vacancy on a panel TV show “Bachelor’s Haven” and asked if she could step in.
Zsa Zsa was hesitant to do live television, but she was ultimately convinced. She turned up on set in a black Balenciaga gown that perfectly showcased her creamy complexion and feminine curves, and quickly charmed the audience. When the host asked her about all the jewelry she was wearing, she quipped, “Dahling, zese are just my working diamonds” in her thick, sultry Hungarian accent. The crowd roared.
A week later, Daily Variety proclaimed her an “instant star” and she was offered a regular role on the show. By October of that year, she was on the cover of Life magazine.
She was “truly an overnight sensation,” said Sam Staggs, author of the new book “Finding Zsa Zsa: The Gabors Behind the Legend” (Kensington Books), out Tuesday. Her appearance on “Bachelor’s Haven” launched a five-decades-long career in film and television with Zsa Zsa usually playing some version of herself.
“Zsa Zsa said things on television that were extremely funny, but they were so outrageous, I’m surprised she didn’t get bleeped,” Staggs told The Post. “Somebody asked her, ‘How many husbands have you had?’ and she said, ‘You mean apart from my own?’ ”
Born Sari Gabor in 1917 in Budapest, Hungary, Zsa Zsa was the middle of three sisters in a secular Jewish family. Her mother, Jolie, had ambitions of becoming an actress that she projected onto her beautiful daughters. They were “forced to live Jolie’s dream, to learn languages, to acquire social graces and, most of all, as Jolie drummed into the heads of her young show ponies, to be agreeable to a man,” writes Staggs.
At age 15, Zsa Zsa was a runner-up in the Miss Hungary pageant, and by age 18 she had embarked on her first of nine marriages, to a Turkish government official twice her age called Burnam Belge. She lived with him in Ankara, where she claimed to have had an affair with Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
“Atatürk ruined me for every other man I would ever love, or try to love,” she would later say. “He knew exactly how to please a young girl. He was a professional lover, a god and a king.”
But Staggs is skeptical of some of her accounts, writing that with the threat of Hitler and Mussolini on the horizon in the 1930s, it’s unlikely that Atatürk would be able to “escape the presidential office for long afternoons spent sipping sweet liqueurs and lounging on cushions with Zsa Zsa.”
Her marriage to Belge grew stale, and in 1941 she left Turkey to join her younger sister, Eva, an actress in the US. She couldn’t journey west through occupied countries, so she headed east, with 21 suitcases, and traveled across Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq — where she spent two months arranging her travels and living with a young sheik who wanted to marry her — before eventually boarding a ship from India to New York.
“She was on the high seas for about six weeks during wartime,” said Staggs. “There was a very real danger that the boat could be blown up.”
(Sanders would later say: “Whatever else could be said about Zsa Zsa … one thing is certain, she has a lot of guts.”)
By 1942, Zsa Zsa was onto husband No. 2, marrying hotelier Conrad Hilton, one of the wealthiest men in the country. But, the initial excitement of arriving in the US soon gave way to darkness. Zsa Zsa suffered from bipolar disorder and worried what would become of her parents and older sister Magda, who remained in Hungary. Doctors prescribed heavy medications to help with her anxiety. “Zsa Zsa fell into the pattern of prescription barbiturates for sleep and amphetamines to energize her when overcome by worry and depression,” Staggs writes.
In 1944, the Bel Air home she shared with Hilton burned to the ground. Zsa Zsa wasn’t in town, but her beloved dog Ranger died in the fire, which weighed on her heavily. “I could not sleep,” Zsa Zsa said. “I saw Mother and Father killed. I saw Magda struggling in the arms of soldiers — were they Nazis, were they Russians? I saw every member of my family tortured.”
She had good reason to worry. When Hitler invaded Hungary in March 1944, Magda and her parents were arrested by the Hungarian political police one month later. But the Portuguese ambassador (who was also Magda’s lover) secured passports for the family to get out of Hungary and find safety in Portugal. One year later, they got their papers to come to the US. Eventually, Magda told Zsa Zsa of the horrors she’d seen: “Slaughter in the streets, the yellow badges, the men and women — our family physician, our lawyer, merchants we knew — taken to Tattersall, the famous riding academy, and there machine-gunned to death.”
Zsa Zsa Gabor with her husband Prince Frederic von Anhal in 1992AP
Meanwhile, in New York, Zsa Zsa was losing her mind and on a bender. She grilled meats in her suite at the Plaza and held wild shish-kabob parties, spent $15,000 on new furniture for the hotel, slept on benches in Central Park, racked up hundreds of dollars in long-distance phone calls, went on spending sprees at Van Cleef and Arpel and stayed out dancing all night. In April of 1945, she filed for divorce from Hilton. He agreed that it was the right decision, but he was also concerned about her welfare. Partnering with Eva, he had Zsa Zsa committed to a sanitarium. She spent almost two months there, undergoing barbaric insulin shock therapy.
“She was an unwilling participant in medical experimentation,” Staggs writes.
She and Conrad divorced in 1946, but Zsa Zsa turned up pregnant soon after. Conrad put his name on the birth certificate, though it was uncertain the child, a daughter named Francesca, was actually his. (It was rumored that Nicky Hilton, Zsa Zsa’s stepson, was actually the father.)
In 1949, she wed Sanders. A few years into their marriage, she met a Dominican playboy named Porfirio Rubirosa and fell in deep lust. The two carried on a passionate public affair, but Zsa Zsa didn’t want to leave Sanders. “He understood her and kept her always a bit off-kilter, which she liked,” Staggs writes.
In December 1953, he filed for divorce, leaving Zsa Zsa shattered. The two would go on to be good friends, and in 1967 Zsa Zsa convinced him to marry Magda, by then an invalid after suffering a stroke, to keep him in the family.
Through Rubirosa, Zsa Zsa met Rafael “Ramfis” Trujillo, the son of a brutal Dominican dictator of the same name. She helped Trujillo get into the Hollywood scene and introduced him to various stars. As a thank you, he sent her a Mercedes convertible and a fur coat. In 1958, news broke of her involvement with him, and Zsa Zsa found herself at the center of a publicity crisis. She was even censured by Congress.
“No one ever accused her of reading US News and World Report,” writes Staggs. “In her ignorance, she resembles those wives and mothers in ‘The Godfather’ who ask no questions and have no wish for answers.”
(While Zsa Zsa had the most scandalous love life, her sisters also kept busy. According to Francesca, Eva was bisexual and had an affair with Marlene Dietrich. She married and divorced five husbands and went on to serve as a beard for her friend Merv Griffin. Magda sought a quieter life but still went through six husbands.)
After Sanders, Zsa Zsa had a string of short, unremarkable marriages. “She could not bear to live alone,” Staggs writes. “Although a strong woman, she firmly believed that without a man she was incomplete.”
In 1986, a then 70-year-old Zsa Zsa married Frederic von Anhalt, a 43-year-old German businessman who claimed to be a prince after he was adopted by a deposed European royal. They remained married until Zsa Zsa’s death in 2016, but there were indications he was a lousy husband, keeping Francesca from seeing her mother and creating a “circus” atmosphere around Zsa Zsa as her health declined.
He was hardly the only questionable decision Zsa Zsa made later in life. In June 1989, she was driving her white Rolls-Royce in Beverly Hills when a cop pulled her over for having outdated registration. They argued, things escalated and Zsa Zsa slapped him across the face. She was eventually charged with five offenses, including battery upon a police officer and having an open container of alcohol in the car — she kept a silver flask of vodka in the glove compartment — and sentenced to three days in jail and 120 hours of community service.
Unfortunately, Staggs says, “this is probably what she’s remembered for better than anything else, especially by younger people.” But, he hopes his book will shine a light beyond such moments and show that Zsa Zsa and her sisters weren’t a bunch of dumb blondes. Zsa Zsa was a huge animal-rights activist and also donated significant sums of money to the Hungarian revolution. Magda was a Holocaust survivor. Eva was a serious actress whose comedic work on “Green Acres” is more influential than many realize.
“They were outrageous and over-the-top and subversive,” he said. “They were so different from everything else in the US.”