One might hear the phrase ‘Old Hollywood Thanksgiving‘ and conjure up images of wholesome, retro luxury – but Zsa Zsa Gabor had a seasonal tradition that sprang from a rather more lurid scene.
Zsa Zsa used to send 200 turkeys every year to the homeless shelter where she was sentenced to community service for slapping a Beverly Hills cop in 1989.
Her trial deteriorated into a vaudevillian media circus, with her issuing scathing bon mots while glammed up to the high-camp max as ‘Free Zsa Zsa’ protesters gathered outside the courtroom.
She spent three days behind bars after expressing her fear of all the lesbians in prison. ‘Can you imagine being in jail with all those women?’ she fretted.
After her brief incarceration, she also performed court-ordered service work at a homeless shelter in Venice, California – setting the stage for her lasting generosity to them every year on Turkey Day.
This Thanksgiving, DailyMail.com looks back at the scandal that birthed a Hollywood holiday ritual…
Mug shot: Zsa Zsa used to send 200 frozen turkeys every year to the homeless shelter where she was sentenced to community service for slapping a Beverly Hills cop
In the dock: Her trial, The People vs Zsa Zsa Gabor, unfolded in a blaze of publicity with throngs of reporters and ‘Free Zsa Zsa’ protestors massing at the courthouse
Giving back: Zsa Zsa’s legal fracas began on June 14, 1989 when she was pulled over by a Beverly Hills cop for having expired tags on her Rolls Royce; she is pictured five days earlier
Zsa Zsa’s legal nightmare began on June 14, 1989 when she was pulled over by a Beverly Hills cop for having expired tags on her Rolls Royce.
The policeman in question was one Paul Kramer, who was later often noted for a smoldering sex appeal that forced even Zsa Zsa to admit dolefully on TV: ‘He’s too good-looking, that son of a gun.’
Paul Kramer pulled Zsa Zsa over and started investigating, ultimately unearthing multiple legal problems with her situation.
One was her expired license, on which a ballpoint pen had been used to change her birth year from 1923 to 1928 (she was in fact born in 1917).
Another was a silver flask of vodka in the glovebox, left there by her ninth husband Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, who used it on occasion to spike his Diet Pepsi.
In Zsa Zsa’s version of events, Officer Kramer spent so long on his investigation than she demanded to know whether she could finally leave and he responded: ‘F*** off,’ which she misinterpreted as an order to go away.
She duly drove off in her Rolls Royce – setting off a full-on, sirens-blaring car chase that ended in a physical showdown once he caught up with her.
There has been a blizzard of competing allegations about what happened next, but according to Sam Staggs’ biography Finding Zsa Zsa, Officer Kramer bodily heaved her out of her car and she flew into such an enraged panic that she slapped him.
Hunk: The officer was one Paul Kramer, who later was often noted for a sex appeal that forced even Zsa Zsa to admit dolefully on TV: ‘He’s too good-looking, that son of a gun’
Terrified: ‘When he was chasing me I thought of the Gestapo,’ said Zsa Zsa, who escaped Hungary before the Nazi occupation but lost Jewish family members to the Holocaust
Allegations: She also accused Officer Kramer of homosexuality, arguing in court that he was jealous because ‘I marry all the men he would want to have’
Zsa Zsa subsequently accused him of hurling obscene insults at her and cuffing her so roughly that she was bruised for weeks afterwards.
According to her, he would not even let her out of the handcuffs so that she could pull her skirt down from where it had bunched up at the thigh.
Zsa Zsa was arrested and booked for misdemeanor battery on a police officer, having an open container of alcohol in her car, disobeying a police officer’s orders, driving with an expired license and having an expired car registration.
Her trial, The People vs Zsa Zsa Gabor, unfolded in a blaze of publicity with throngs of reporters and ‘Free Zsa Zsa’ protestors massing at the courthouse.
Facing up to two years behind bars plus a $4,000 fine, she pleaded not guilty and insisted that Paul Kramer had a habit of targeting celebrities.
She flounced into court in designer clothes, wearing a different bedazzled cross for every trial date because ‘If one has a cross to bear, it might as well be diamonds.’
In defiance of a gag order, she denounced one prosecution witness as a ‘a little punk with a hairdo like a girl,’ then tried to make up with him by pointing out that she spoke Turkish, only to be informed he was Persian. ‘Well, that’s close,’ she said.
She delivered splashy press conferences outside the courthouse, dismissing one adversarial female reporter as ‘another jealous blonde.’
‘Can you imagine being in jail with all those women?’: She spent three days behind bars after expressing her dread of all the lesbians in prison; pictured 1994
Detail: When she was pulled over, she had a silver flask of vodka in the glovebox, left there by her ninth husband Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, whom she is pictured with in 1995
At one point, the prosecutor accused her of exploiting the trial for ‘media attention’ and not knowing ‘the meaning the truth,’ so she stormed sobbing out of court.
In her own testimony, she said the cop she slapped ‘was very handsome’ but ‘very, very scary to me,’ adding that she could see ‘in his eyes’ that he ‘hated’ her.
‘When he was chasing me I thought of the Gestapo,’ said Zsa Zsa, who married her way out of her native Hungary before the Nazi occupation but lost her Jewish grandmother and uncle to the Holocaust.
‘In Hungary we had the Nazis, we had the Russian tanks. But I was more scared on Olympic and La Cienega,’ she said tearfully on the stand.
She also accused the policeman of homosexuality, arguing in court: ‘Don’t you know, a gay man would not like a woman like Zsa Zsa Gabor. Why would he? I marry all the men he would want to have.’
Possibly complicating this line of reasoning, she later went on TV and told Phil Donohue that Kramer targeted her because he wanted to sleep with her.
After a three-week trial and 14 hours of jury deliberation, Zsa Zsa was convicted and sentenced to jail, plus community service, fines, probation and therapy.
‘I’m disappointed. I can’t believe it,’ she told the media at the courthouse. ‘I can’t believe that in a country as great as ours that a six-foot-four policeman can beat up a lady of five-foot-four and use dirty language as if she was a street walker. I think Russia can’t be worse, or communist Hungary.’
Moments after she made those remarks, everyone on the scene was forced to flee the area because of a bomb threat.
Throwback: Zsa Zsa’s community service took place at what became the Vera Davis McClendon Youth & Family Center, pictured in 2012
Present: The star started an annual tradition with her turkeys (stock image)
Zsa Zsa was handed a three-day jail sentence, having previously revealed her terror at the lesbians she would encounter behind bars.
Just before the trial began, she had moaned that ‘they are all lesbians in jail. And I’m so scared of lesbians. Can you imagine being in jail with all those women?’
However she emerged from prison with her career revitalized, and began doing community service at a Venice homeless shelter run by one Vera Davis.
In November 1989 during her sentence, she brought turkeys for the residents of the shelter on Thanksgiving, beginning what became a yearly tradition.
The work, she said in 1990, was ‘nothing for me. I do much more a year. I love it. As a matter of fact, I fed, last Thanksgiving, the homeless and they all came up to me and kissed me: “I love, you, Zsa Zsa, you’re the only person who understands me.”‘
However even the community service turned out to be a source of controversy when it emerged that Zsa Zsa had been skimping on her required hours.
Vera Davis had tried to give Zsa Zsa a fair bit of leeway – for example, by marking her down as having done five hours of community service just for applying her makeup before going on TV and promoting the shelter.
But even Vera testified that Zsa Zsa had only done about 50 hours of work, against the 120 hours she was supposed to have completed by then.
Oops: However even the community service turned out to be a source of controversy when it emerged that Zsa Zsa had been skimping on her required hours; pictured 1995
The judge was unmoved and sentenced Zsa Zsa to an extra 60 hours, prompting her to call him a ‘son of a b****’ under her breath in court.
Yet Zsa Zsa’s friendship with Vera remained intact, as she began a trend of sending 200 frozen turkeys to the shelter each year on Thanksgiving.
In 1997 the establishment was officially rechristened the Vera Davis McClendon Youth & Family Center, and the turkey deliveries from Zsa Zsa kept coming.
As Zsa Zsa retreated from the public eye during her long final decline, the tradition was continued by her ninth and last husband ‘Prince’ Frédéric – who bought his title from a German princess he paid to legally adopt him.
‘We decided to make Thanksgiving a part of the people’s lives at the center when Zsa Zsa was helping out and bought them all turkeys that year,’ he told NBC in 2009.
‘Vera passed away a few years ago, but we have continued the tradition of giving turkeys to the poor families that the center helps support to make it a happy Thanksgiving for everyone there.’
Zsa Zsa died in 2016 at the age of 99. Three years later, the Vera Davis McClendon Youth & Family Center closed down for remodeling and never opened back up.
