Bizarre Zsa Gabor: The ailing star's former Man Friday reveals the eccentric side of
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As Zsa Zsa Gabor clung to life in a Los Angeles hospital this week after suffering a serious infection, the eulogies were already being written. But what is the truth behind the wisecracks and the coquettish smile? DAVID GERRIE is a British writer who found himself witness to her extraordinary lifestyle when he was hired as her personal assistant at the height of her fame.
To a young man who had left the grey skies of Britain for the sunshine of Los Angeles, it seemed like I’d finally found my ticket to the Hollywood high life.
It was 1977, and after a few months of touting my typing skills around Hollywood’s heavyweight talent agencies, I was being offered the post of PA to a bona fide celebrity.
Not just any celebrity, but Zsa Zsa Gabor, the epitome of big-screen glamour.
I’d been working for a public relations agency, and one day the woman who helped to run it called to say Miss Gabor was looking for a new assistant, and that she’d arranged for me to go and see her. I made the call to the Gabor *residence at the prearranged time, only to hear that famous Hungarian voice inform me in no uncertain terms she didn’t have a clue who I was or what I was calling about.
It should have been an omen, but I let it pass in my naive enthusiasm to be a legitimate *passenger on the Hollywood Express.
Once my interview was re-arranged, the long-suffering female executive at the PR company — who was all too accustomed to the many moods of La Gabor — looked me straight in the eye and said: ‘Don’t think it’ll be like any job you’ve had before.’
In the months to come, I wished I had taken greater note of that veiled warning.
Naturally, the PR boss could never have told me what was really in store for me — that’s not the way that town works. She could certainly never have explained that Zsa Zsa was a monster beside whom Joan Crawford looked like a Barbie doll.
Her ex-husband George Sanders may have said being with Zsa Zsa was like permanently swimming in vintage bubbly, but the truth is she is more cyanide than champagne.
An overriding narcissistic ego, an outrageous temper and a vindictive love of making defenceless people *suffer, combined with foul-mouthed racism and a scant regard for the truth, make her easily the most unpleasant person it has ever been my misfortune to meet.
Monstrous employers come with the territory in LA, but in the space of a few short months the woman supposedly loved by her audience for her chirpy bons mots brought me close to the edge of a nervous breakdown.
It started on a sunny weekend as I turned off Sunset Boulevard through the imposing gates guarding the exclusive Bel Air estate, and started my climb past the multi-million-*dollar mansions which line Bel Air Road.
Arriving at Zsa Zsa’s electric gate, her barrier against the real world, I nervously pressed the button on the entry phone to be greeted by the soft yet slightly menacing tones of her then-husband, Irish-American lawyer Michael O’Hara.
As the gate swished open and I drove up to the hilltop house, I could never have suspected what a prison it was to become.
As O’Hara ushered me into the *palatial lounge, with its commanding views over the pool and estates below, I had my first glimpse of Zsa Zsa, and, I have to say, she looked every inch the movie star — except there were many more inches to her circumference than recent publicity pictures suggested.
This was not a large house by Hollywood standards, but the couple told me previous residents had included Elvis Presley and Howard Hughes, and that those nice Reagans lived across the street.
I was told Zsa Zsa was looking for much more than a secretary — she was hoping I would be her confidant, public relations adviser and, more importantly than I could ever have realised, her buffer against life’s little inconveniences.
I was shown the trappings of the job. These included a comfortably *furnished office, with en suite *bathroom. Her files were chaotic and her contacts book filled with wildly out-of-date names and numbers entered in a random fashion.
I was told to take anything I wanted from the kitchen for lunch — an apparent perk, until I discovered there was a complete absence of fresh food; the fridge contained only an open can of dog food and a half-empty bottle of Dom Perignon.
I was later to find out Zsa Zsa’s notion of cooking — on the rare *occasions she attempted it — was to throw half-a-pound of butter into a frying pan before drenching whatever she was cooking in it.
But forget the food, I’d hit the big time! I floated down from Bel Air half an hour later in a dream, clutching my passport to the ‘real’ Hollywood — a key hanging from a pink ribbon which would open Zsa Zsa Gabor’s electric gate every morning as I showed up to do her bidding.
Within only a few days, reality kicked in. My new employer exhibited what many see as a clear sign of madness: a relentless desire to move paintings and furniture around on an almost daily basis. And there was an internal madness at work, too, in the way she lashed out with a stream of invective at people who couldn’t fight back.