long list of lovers included Ava Gardner, Eartha Kitt, Eva Peron, Rita Hayworth, Judy Garland, and Kim Novak, to name only a few. Rubirosa spent lavishly on Zsa Zsa, and their affair lasted most of the decade. She once called Rubi “a disease of the blood. I cannot be without him.” The 1960s saw Zsa Zsa marry first Herbert Hunter in 1962, then oil magnate Joshua S. Cosden Jr in 1966 (this one only lasted a year). After her brief success in film, Zsa Zsa’s roles settled into a style of performance that suited her well: the cameo. She was featured in seven films in the 1960s, and already in four of those roles she was playing herself. In the two notable performances from this time, Zsa Zsa plays rich sex pots in the forgettable 1966 film Drop Dead Darling, a black comedy starring Tony Curtis as a murderous playboy, and in 1967s Jack of Diamonds, in which Zsa Zsa, as herself, is featured as one of a few victims of George Hamilton’s cat burglar lead. Around this time, Zsa Zsa also became a regular on talk shows and latenight television as the genre blossomed, beginning the climb to a level of celebrity fascination closer to what we know today.
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wrote in How to Catch a Man, “I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.” Entering 1970 single and flush with the winnings from four prior divorce settlements, Zsa Zsa acquired perhaps the crown jewel of luxury living in 1973: the iconic home at 1001 Bel Air Road in Los Angeles, California. Eccentric director and producer Howard Hughes built the home in 1955. An apocryphal Hollywood story tells of a crumbling home on the property ready to be torn down until Howard Hughes sped onto the scene and declared he would buy the property and rebuild the home for whatever the price might be. The resulting house—a bright mustard yellow French Regency exterior with an intricate copper Regency roof, as well as a vibrant red-carpeted staircase connecting the upstairs outdoor patios to the downstairs Monte Carlo-style terrace and pool with respondent views of the city—saw thousands of Hollywood fixtures through its doors. The house had been previously owned by Elvis Presley, who entertained The Beatles there in 1965. The one-acre property is tucked away on an LA hilltop, a six-bed, seven-bath home with 28 individual rooms across 9000 square feet, plenty of space for Zsa Zsa Gabor, her beloved Shih Tzu dogs. (At one time, she had nine dogs total and often threw them parties. The main course: hot dogs.) Zsa Zsa’s closet in the main bedroom spanned 30 feet long, 12 feet deep, and 14 feet high, with room for over 5000 individual garments. In the main room, portraits of Zsa Zsa filled the walls. Zsa Zsa lived in the home for 40 years, until she died in 2016. She hosted hundreds, if not thousands of parties there, one of her favorite things to do, and guests included Hollywood icons like Frank Sinatra, and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Queen Elizabeth II herself. The home appeared in HBO’s 2013 limited series Behind the Candelabra as the set for Liberace’s home, and one of his pianos was a centerpiece in the home for many years. As if the American iconography could not stack up higher, her husband just after the time of this exciting purchase was Jack Ryan, Mattel designer of Barbie, Catty Cathy, and Hot Wheels. Zsa Zsa Gabor’s home last sold in 2020 for $16 million. At the time of her death, the house represented, perhaps even more than she did in her last years, the time of her prime, the opulent legacy of Old Hollywood. When she purchased the property in 1973, she bought its history with it. Then 57 years old, she had been a part of that history for nearly 20 years. In the same year, she was the featured guest on Dean Martin’s Roast, and comedian Corbett Monica joked: “Look at Zsa Zsa, sitting there: famous, beautiful wealthy—how you must be laughing at those people who said you’d be through when talking pictures came in.” If Zsa Zsa’s purchase of the house was indeed a look back in time for her, in 1976, she made a brief cameo appearance in Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood. A strange, dated riff on Rin Tin Tin, which ran from around 1922-1933, the movie follows the acting career of an incredibly intelligent German shepherd brought to 1920s Hollywood by an aspiring actress (Madeline Kahn), a bus driver and aspiring director (Bruce Dern, in a break into mainstream film), and a studio chief (Art Carney). Once the early plot setup brings the gang to
• le printemps 2023 • l’édition pour animaux de compagnie et mode • readelysian.com
