by Sam Staggs
Although Rubirosa cannot be called the defining man in her life, he stands at the fork in her road. With him, she took the off-ramp that led in the opposite direction from MGM and Fox, away from name directors like John Huston and Vincente Minnelli, and from Oscar night at the Pantages Theatre, from cover stories in Photoplay and Life. Like figures in mythology, and in Kafka, she didn’t recognize her metamorphosis until it had taken place. Afterward, she remained in many ways the same Zsa Zsa across the decades, from the late 1950s until her final appearances in the twentieth century’s dying days. But a change occurred as she traveled on twisting, shadowy Rubirosa Road. After a few years, she found herself on a one-way street with turn-offs to cheapo pictures like Country Music Holiday in 1958, and a long, narrow trail of depressing TV game shows, weekly dramas, daytime programs aimed at housewives, variety specials, and finally Jack Paar’s late-night talk show, where she became a regular for several years. When Paar retired, Zsa Zsa talked the same talk for thirty years more as she drifted into self-parody.
Onscreen, she devolved to such embarrassments as Frankenstein’s Great Aunt Tillie in 1984, punctuated by a long string of cameos in sad endeavors until her final two minutes in A Very Brady Sequel, in 1996, as herself—the only character, finally, that she knew how to play.
Chapter 22
Honky-tonk Gabor
Throughout 1953, Zsa Zsa’s euphoria resembled the delirious effects of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. If Rubi wasn’t on a plane from Paris or South America to see her in New York or Hollywood, she was flying to him. Telegrams arrived daily; if no telegram then an intercontinental phone call. The lyric of every love song had come true for Zsa Zsa, their limerence embodied in Rubirosa.
And yet she loved her husband, difficult, sardonic, lazybones George Sanders. Extreme, giddy happiness with Rubi notwithstanding, Zsa Zsa found herself in a state of cognitive dissonance, defined as a person’s unease in a situation where two or more emotions or judgments compete for dominance. Zsa Zsa’s heart stretched in opposite directions. At the erotic end of the spectrum, Rubirosa and orgasmic ecstasy. A hundred and eighty degrees distant, laughter and fun with George, and deep love, for he understood her and kept her always a bit off kilter, which she liked. With George, she could linger at breakfast in a robe and no makeup, hair uncombed, looking every day of thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five. . . He helped with bathing the dogs: he handed her the soap. George was the old one, he often said so himself, and to him she was always Sari the kid, and Cokiline, his spicy little cookie.
But for Rubi, she must outdo even the Jane Avril that had earned her such plaudits. He demanded a Zsa Zsa raised to the tenth power. Or else. After all, as she well knew, any woman in the world would come if he beckoned. Rubi’s lifted eyebrow meant conquest. At times, she felt herself on a swinging bridge high in the air, rocked by Rubi’s assurance that no other woman mattered but unsettled by the vertigo. And always a high-pitched little question wafted on those lofty breezes, as if chirped by a skittish greenfinch, What if? What if?
What if Rubi ran short of money, not an impossible scenario in view of his spending. Women owed him a living, this Zsa Zsa recognized as his moral and financial credo, even as she tried to push away that insight. At least she had the distraction of work, and in mid-April 1953 she began filming, in Paris, L’Ennemi public numéro un (aka The Most Wanted Man), with French superstar comedian Fernandel.
* * *
His trademark was a long, expressive horse face, which made his good-natured, blunderbuss goofiness irrestibly funny. Fernandel was the Woody Allen of France, or more specifically the Allen of Take the Money and Run and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex—that is, before Allen mistook himself for a matinee idol. Fernandel wanted Zsa Zsa, and no other, to costar in his next picture. Watching it, you can see why. In French, she’s not only a deadpan comedienne but also an impeccable, disciplined comic actress. For once, her onscreen vanity doesn’t trip her up.
Fernandel’s character is a friendly beast of a man who works in a department store. Fired after a series of mishaps, he goes to the movies, where he seats himself beside a man who turns out to be a dangerous gangster. The gangster inadvertently takes Fernandel’s overcoat; a bit later, unsuspecting Fernandel leaves the theatre wearing the gangster’s. In the subway, he reaches into a pocket and, to his astonishment and the shrieking panic of fellow riders, pulls out a handgun. He is arrested, the police announce the capture of Public Enemy Number One, and local mob boss Lola—played by Zsa Zsa—plots his escape from jail. (Since the shadowy real boss is unknown to his syndicate, she takes wimpy Fernandel for the capo. After all, the headlines called him that. It adds to the comedy that she’s much tougher and smarter than he.)
When, in her first scene, a mobster underling dares to address her as Lola, she glowers like Gale Sondergaard and snaps: “Mademoiselle Lola!” Masterminding the jailbreak and subsequent hideout, Zsa Zsa commands her every scene with timing and movement. Nor is glamour sacrificed. She’s as chic as Audrey Hepburn, especially in a scene where she wears slacks and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and another where a turban covers her hair and she foils the police chief with designer glasses.
Another revelation: her voice. Under control, it sounds an octave lower than her usual shrill nasality. Zsa Zsa speaks French with a slight accent, though it doesn’t take over as so often in English. Directed by Henri Verneuil, she underplays. Zsa Zsa Gabor is nowhere in sight; she’s entirely Mademoiselle Lola.
* * *
For two months, during the filming of L’Ennemi public, Zsa Zsa’s official residence was the luxurious Plaza Athénée on the Right Bank. In reality, her suite saw little use, since Rubirosa collected her at the end of each day’s shoot and drove her in his Ferrari or another car from his fleet to his house on the Left Bank, in the rue de Bellechasse. From time to time, little Francesca came to visit, for she liked Uncle Rubi enormously.
The house was run by a staff of half a dozen, including concierge, chef, maids, and Rubi’s valet. “Within,” Zsa Zsa recalled, “all was perfect and in exquisite taste: the paintings, the Aubusson rugs, the furnishings, polished and gleaming, even the scents I loved: leather, tobacco, sandalwood.” On her first visit, Rubi gave her a tour. They began in the kitchen, continued “to his dining room with apple-green and gold paneling identical to that at Versailles, and wall cabinets holding his collection of china and porcelain. We mounted to the upper floors. On the third floor was a gymnasium complete with boxing ring, rubbing table, and a steam bath.” In another room, he showed her “saddles and riding equipment of every kind, and to my surprise bullfighting costumes and paraphernalia. On the walls were photographs of his favorite polo ponies, the standard of his team which had won the world’s championship in Deauville the year before, and his helmets. Everywhere in the house—in the bathrooms, the library, the kitchen, the concierge’s rooms, the maids’ rooms—trophies, trophies, trophies, the gold and silver loving cups awarded him in polo, or for racing his Ferraris and Mercedes-Benzes on courses in Europe and South America.”
Like France and like Paris, Rubi’s world, whatever its flaws, seemed for a time more real and more attractive to Zsa Zsa than the world of Hollywood. Had she pursued a career in France, she might now occupy a place in cinema history alongside Martine Carol, Geneviève Page, and Michèle Morgan. Nor would l’affaire Rubirosa have sullied her reputation; quite the contrary.
During her protracted stay in Paris, Zsa Zsa geared up for a visit to the Hungarian embassy on behalf of her father. “The young chargé d’affaires received me,” she recalled. “The picture with Fernandel was a huge success behind the Iron Curtain. Father wrote how proud he was of me—‘Our Zsa Zsa is on all the marquees.’ At the embassy, the young man said, ‘Miss Gabor, it’s so nice to see you and talk to you. We all love you in Hungary. Why don’t you come back to your own country and become our national actress?’ He said I would receive a villa and an allowance from the government.”
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Rubirosa accompanied her to the embassy and, owing to his jealousy, waited until she finished her interview. The chargé d’affaires invited her to a later café rendezvous, which she dared not accept because of watchdog Rubi. She did consider how she might arrange an assignation with the young man if her charms could secure the release of Vilmos. Such a meeting did not take place, however, but her request was partially granted all the same. Eight months later Vilmos and his wife were allowed to leave the peasant house in Budakeszi and return to Budapest. There they lived first in a government apartment, then in a somewhat better one that his daughters secured for him. Soon it also became easier to reach him by telephone.
* * *
George Sanders: “The Las Vegas act of the three Gabor Sisters—Zsa Zsa, Eva, and Magda—is the greatest agricultural achievement of all time. Never before have three hens laid a single egg.”
Eva agreed. She had misgivings from the start, but under pressure from Zsa Zsa, Magda, and of course Jolie, she finally agreed to the nightclub act called “The Gabors: This Is Our Life.” Opening on December 28, 1953, at the Last Frontier Hotel, they did two shows nightly during a two-week engagement. “Men,” a specialty number from the act, was singled out by the reviewer in Billboard magazine as proving that “the girls can’t sing, either.” But given this sample lyric from the act, who could: “Our mother told us we should have the skin that men love to touch—MINK!”
Owing to generally poor reviews and the circus-like atmosphere that surrounded their Las Vegas engagement, Eva refused to continue in the show after their initial commitment. The resulting loss of a hundred thousand dollars in future bookings caused many an abrupt hang-up and slammed door in Gaborland. Perhaps to spite Zsa Zsa, Eva spoke out. “It was horrible!” she told a reporter. “The lines were bad and the act was bad and yet everybody came to see all three Gabor sisters in one place.”
It might have turned out worse. A fourth hen—Jolie—flapped her wings and squawked to join the act, but the girls were having none of it despite Mama’s claims that the hotel wanted her onstage, as well. “You are not an actress!” they scolded. Her snarky rejoinder: “Such actresses like you are, I am!”
Not onstage, but stage managing her daughters—this became Jolie’s role during the final week of December 1953. Before their noisy descent on the desert city, however, all the Gabors had assembled at Zsa Zsa’s house for Christmas. Unlike the little town of Bethlehem, no stillness lay over Bel Air. George had recently filed for divorce, and Zsa Zsa was shattered. In her confusion, she clutched Rubirosa like a life raft. Believing that because they loved each other, she and George could stray but always retrace their steps to the marriage bed, she had misjudged his limit. Had she conducted her affair with Rubirosa with discretion, meaning a minimum of headlines, George might have busied himself elsewhere for a time. His mother-in-law advised precisely that. He spoke frankly to her in his distress, telling her that Zsa Zsa had embarrassed and humiliated him with her scandalous behavior.
“Don’t you see,” said Jolie, looking up from a pearl necklace she had been examining through a magnifying glass, “it is only pour passer le temps.” More bewildered than ever by Hungarians, he soon decided that the time had passed when he could excuse Zsa Zsa’s Dominican pastime.
* * *
On Christmas Eve, presents having been exchanged, they all sat down to dinner—Zsa Zsa, Rubi, Eva, Magda, Jolie, and six-year-old Francesca. Unrestrainable, the little girl jumped up and ran to the Christmas tree to play with her gift from Rubi: an elaborate electric train that he had set up himself and that tooted and squealed as it whizzed along the track. “Oh, Uncle Rubi,” she exclaimed when she saw it, running to kiss him.
But cheer was absent. Rubi seemed preoccupied, even depressed. Jolie resented her exclusion from the Las Vegas engagement, and Eva’s intuition urged her to run away, but of course it was too late. Magda, always the most serious, didn’t care for the too-muchness of this holiday, nor for Rubirosa and his drinking, and she had agreed to Las Vegas only for the money. Since the war, Magda made an effort at gaiety, but for a Holocaust survivor merriment verged on sacrilege. She remembered the suffering, she remembered the dead.
And stage fright gripped them all. Despite attempts at cheer, this was neither a Merry Christmas nor a Boldog Karácsonyt like those of old back in Budapest. The Gabors sipped Tokay and champagne, while Rubirosa, whose alcoholic excess rankled Jolie in particular, barely touched his food. Empty cocktail glasses encircled his plate. Holiday fatigue sent everyone to bed early.
Zsa Zsa and Rubi in bed, the conversation resumed, or more precisely the debate.
“Why won’t you marry me?” he demanded, as he had done dozens of times in recent days.
“Because I love George,” was her standard answer.
“But he is divorcing you! How can you be so stupid?”
“He is always my husband. You don’t understand what we have.”
On and on, past midnight, into the small hours, as Rubi drank from the bottle he kept nearby.
“I ran into Barbara Hutton in Deauville recently,” he said, and his words hung in the air. “At the Casino. And we went out together.”
“Rubi, why are you telling me these things? I know that when we are not together you—”
“She wants to marry me, but I love only you.”
“Marry you? And do you want to marry her?”
“What you won’t do, she will. And her millions . . .”
* * *
George, having filed for divorce, learned from his lawyer the financial consequences to a husband in California: heavy alimony directed to the wife. If caught in flagrante, however, the court might find more favorably for the aggrieved party.
Several years after George’s death, his close friend, British actor Brian Aherne, published a book about their friendship. The title: A Dreadful Man, which Aherne used ironically since he knew George’s good points as well as the less attractive ones. Aherne’s account of the remainder of that Christmas night seems the most accurate, since he heard George’s version, then Zsa Zsa’s, and even Rubirosa’s. As a disinterested third party, Aherne recounted events with dry understatement not available to the participants themselves.
“Late at night on Christmas Eve,” he wrote, “wearing dirty blue jeans, a sweatshirt and a beard, accompanied by two detectives and carrying a brick that he had carefully gift-wrapped, George stealthily crossed the lawn of Zsa Zsa’s house and placed a ladder against the wall.” What followed recalls a prank from any one of a thousand Hollywood comedy-mysteries, for George and the detectives climbed to the balcony outside Zsa Zsa’s window and, after a quiet moment of coordination, George shattered the window and stepped like a younger, more trim, and unbearded Santa Claus into her boudoir. Well acquainted with the layout, he switched on the light, held out his holiday offering, and said, “Merry Christmas, my dear!” Zsa Zsa’s companion sprang up and rushed into the bathroom—too late, for the detectives had got their incriminating photos before the sleepers could realize what was happening.
“Zsa Zsa behaved with perfect aplomb. Smiling and putting on a lacy dressing gown, she said, ‘George dahling, how lovely to see you! You are just in time to get your Christmas present, which is under the tree. Let’s go down and have a glass of champagne and I will give it to you.’ She led the way downstairs, laughing gaily, gave George his present, gift-wrapped, and poured champagne for the detectives, who were enchanted with her.” George, not really surprised at anything Zsa Zsa did, joined the merriment as though auditioning for a remake of Miracle on 34th Street. Zsa Zsa was sorry that George and his vonderful detectives couldn’t stay for breakfast.
Francesca, dreaming of Father Christmas, learned a few years later that he, or rather Uncle Christmas, took chilly refuge in her mother’s en suite bathroom. As for other members of the family—had their breakfast-table repartee the next morning been transcribed, the Ortonesque comedy might still be playing off-Broadway or in the West End
. It was decided, however, that what happens in Gaborland stays in Gaborland. The same was not the case in Vegas. What happened there remained private for less than a day.
* * *
For Rubirosa, that Christmas Eve gathering, despite its Agatha Christie possibilities, ended not with murder but a bang and a hangover. Late on December 25, a caravan of limousines arrived to convey everyone to the airport, along with voluminous luggage. They were off to Vegas, where the actresses, Jolie sniffed, were to open at the Last Frontier on December 28.
Dress rehearsals for the Gabor opening were arduous, Zsa Zsa said, “for when I am with my sisters, each of us has her own will.” Rubi, still drinking heavily, telephoned constantly with his same question, “Are you going to marry me?”
Newspapers coast to coast, with their many gossip and entertainment columns, buzzed with news of the Gabors in Las Vegas, but even more with wild speculation: Will Zsa Zsa marry Rubirosa? Then, on December 27, the day before the Gabor opening, a trusted columnist tipped her off: he is planning to marry Barbara Hutton.
At last she knew the truth. Zsa Zsa flung open the door of her suite. “Now, Rubi,” she commanded, “get out of this room and as long as I live I never want to see you again.”
“No!” he said. “Say you’ll marry me or I go back to New York and marry Barbara.”
“Now get out,” Zsa Zsa repeated.
“Why not? Tell me why not!”
“Because I love George, I’ve always loved him, and I’ll always love him! Now get out of here and marry that woman.”
Zsa Zsa piled into him and shoved. He slapped her, she fell against the door and banged her forehead. Screaming at him, she landed another punch and Rubirosa was gone.
From nearby suites, they flew to her side, Eva, Magda, Jolie, and Russell Birdwell, Zsa Zsa’s publicist and the mastermind of the Las Vegas show. Birdwell called a doctor, who applied ice packs and administered a sedative to hysterical Zsa Zsa. Everyone knew by evening, less than twenty-four hours before the first show, that she would have an enormous shiner.