Were you aware that in 1989 Zsa Zsa Gabor was convicted of slapping a motorcycle cop right across the face during a traffic stop? TMZ didn’t invent celebrity shenanigans, people.
This astounding factoid is via the AP, which captions the photo above: “Zsa Zsa Gabor talks with the media outside the courthouse in Beverly Hills, Sept. 30, 1989, after she was found guilty of slapping a motorcycle cop.” According to the L.A. Times, Gabor was sentenced to three days in jail and 120 hours of community service, as well as being “fined $2,350 for slapping Kramer, $352 for driving without a license and $235 for possessing an open container of alcohol—a flask of Jack Daniels—in her Rolls-Royce.”
You see, she was initially pulled over for expired tags (a bureaucratic mixup, she would explain). People interviewed Gabor about what followed:
While Kramer was running her license by the folks back at HQ and finding out that her registration had expired too, Zsa Zsa got antsy. After 12 minutes, according to the police report, she shouted, “You are an a——. I’m leaving,” and sped off. According to Gabor, she asked what was taking so long, Kramer told her to “[Bleep] off,” and Zsa Zsa took him literally. “On my word of honor, I thought he meant I should go,” she says. “That’s what they say in London, and that’s where I was raised.”
(People added: “That silver flask of bourbon in the glove compartment belongs to her eighth and current husband, Prince Frederick von Anhalt, of West Germany. ‘Sometimes I use it to sweeten my Diet Pepsi,’ he explains.”)
The officer then pulled her back over, which is when the slap happened. The New York Times reported from the courtroom:
The officer had been rude, crude and abusive, she said, finally dragging her out of the car, slapping handcuffs on her and plunking her down on the curb in the hot sun, her flowered skirt bunched indecorously up around her thighs: Zsa Zsa as Everywoman, manhandled by the law.
By turns haughty and humorous, coarse and coquettish, weepy and willful, she was every inch the virtuoso ham of ‘’Hollywood Squares’’ (the television game show she appeared on), the shrewd, self-parodying glamour queen transported lock, stock and diamonds into a court of law.
Of course it was a media sensation. She gave an interview to Larry King wearing a dress borrowed from one of my Barbie dolls, circa 1992:
Please watch this amazing clip from the Phil Donahue Show, in which some random lady tries to come for Zsa Zsa and Zsa Zsa does not allow it.
