At Home with Zsa Zsa Gabor

At home with Zsa Zsa Gabor in 1967 in her palatial Bel Air mansion! For aficionados of kitsch, this represents a goldmine and a fascinating oddity - 28 minutes and 20 seconds of pure bliss!

The TV show Good Company was apparently some kind of atomic-era variation of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or MTV Cribs with celebrities inviting you behind the security gates into their private inner sanctums. It begins with the Hungarian glamourpuss, famous-for-being famous movie diva, glorified courtesan and camp icon addressing the viewer directly (“Hello, darlings!”) from her bubble bath with soap suds up to her décolletage. Her décor is spectacular: check out the golden cherubs festooning the bathtub – a testament to her baroque / rococo taste. While waiting for Zsa Zsa to dress, host F. Lee Baily interrogates her queen-y gay male private secretary Karl. Is it a difficult job? Karl breaks into a sweat, attempting tactful diplomacy. “I can’t say it’s not difficult,” he stammers. “I guess it is. She’s very complex.” Read between the lines: she’s a temperamental nightmare! Karl backpedals, adding, “She really is this beautiful, this chic, this exciting, this witty, this unpredictable!” Phew!

/ Zsa Zsa Gabor’s ultra-glamorous passport, issued in 1966: I love that her passport photo is a beautifully lit and re-touched soft-focus Hollywood portrait and that she’s clearly doctored her birth date with a pen (which in theory should make the document invalid!). For the record, Gabor was apparently born in 1917! /

/ If this blue gown isn't the actual ensemble Zsa Zsa wears in this episode of Good Company, it's an awfully good facsimile! /

Post-bubble bath, fragrant chatelaine Zsa Zsa sweeps down the staircase and joins them. She’s donned a powder-blue, fur-trimmed floor-length muumuu and bouffant ringleted wiglet for the interview that Lady Bunny herself might covet. Zsa Zsa graciously takes Baily for a tour of her ostentatious nouveau riche home. Her closest neighbor, we learn, is Nancy Sinatra! We see the swimming pool, the Steinway gold grand piano (the one borrowed later for the 2013 Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra) covered with family photos, Zsa Zsa’s ultra-flattering idealized portrait above the fireplace, her collection of original Renoirs and various objets d’art and antiques.

/ This is the portrait of Zsa Zsa with her young daughter Francesca above the mantelpiece she contemplates with Baily /

Things turn seriously interesting and awkward when Zsa Zsa’s 18-year old aspiring actress daughter Francesca joins them. Dressed like a matronly socialite and looking like an escapee from Valley of the Dolls, the ultra-poised Francesca is one world-weary teenager.  Baily asks Francesca some outrageously intrusive, lecherous and tactless questions like if she’s “going steady” and what age of men she’s attracted to. “Between 25 and infinity,” she snarls. Zsa Zsa think Francesca says, “Between 25 and 70” and admits she doesn’t understand what “infinity” means. When Francesca leaves the room, Baily complements Zsa Zsa on how well-bred she is. “It’s not “groovy” to be polite nowadays,” Zsa Zsa laments. Postcript: the troubled Francesca’s acting career never took off and she never managed to carve a satisfying niche for herself. Later Francesca would repeatedly clash with Zsa Zsa’s ninth and final husband (the parasitic gold-digging ersatz “Prince” Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt) and she pre-deceased her mother, dying in 2015. (Wracked with ill health and dementia by then, Zsa Zsa herself died in 2016 without ever having been informed of her daughter’s death).

/ Zsa Zsa's bed - an exact replica of  Empress Joséphine’s. apparently /

/ Zsa Zsa and Francesca lounging on mama's bed. This is very how much how they both appear in this episode /

Zsa Zsa coquette-ishly invites Baily to see her boudoir, guiding him by the hand upstairs. “If I don’t come back after this next commercial, you know where I am,” Baily leers to the camera. Her bed, draped and canopied in lurid green, is an exact replica of Empress Joséphine’s, Zsa Zsa claims. Baily asks if the bed expresses her personality and Zsa Zsa nonsensically responds, “Well of course it does! It’s blue and green. Sometimes I’m blue and most of the time I’m green!” Huh? Lounging in bed, Zsa Zsa then lists the men she thinks are sexy: Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, Frank Sinatra. Turning to Baily she flutters her false eyelashes: “I’m sure you are a very sexy and glamorous man!” Watch and squirm!

/ Little sister Eva Gabor (1919 - 1995) and Zsa Zsa (1917 - 2016) sharing a laugh - and a wig /

/ Now that's what I call art: trompe l'oeil portrait of Zsa Zsa by Margaret Keane / 

Pretty much all of the photos illustrating this post are swiped from the Heritage Auctions' website for The Estate of Zsa Zsa Gabor Signature Auction later this month. The video below is a handy guide to the deluxe glitzy trash on offer /