Godspeed to Lady Zsa Zsa

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Not too sure about her consort, pictured here, from the forehead up. The headware was part of his laughable bid for Governorship of California. How laughable? Read on.

Los Angeles, California (CNN) — How well Zsa Zsa Gabor is recovering from hip replacement surgery a week ago depends on whom you ask: her husband or her daughter. Prince Frederic Von Anhalt said his wife of 24 years is in “critical” condition, but daughter Francesca Hilton said her condition is “guarded.” Gabor, 93, suffered a broken hip in a fall at her Bel Air, California, home nine days ago. “It’s up and down,” Von Anhalt said Monday afternoon. “It worries me very much.”

Zsa Zsa Gabor is from good, hearty Hungarian stock. She may well survive this trial and then the so-called Prince will have to wait a bit longer to inherit all those wedding rings from past marriages. After all, she herself said “I never hated a husband enough to give him his diamonds back.”

The so-called prince’s royal credentials certainly bear closer scrutiny. According to Wikipedia, he became the adopted son of Princess Marie-Auguste of Anhalt at the age of 37 in a business transaction put together by Hans Hermann Weyer, a former consul of Bolivia.

Not that I’m knocking this, not entirely. I mean, I’d simply adore to have a title, even if did come out of a packet of breakfast cereal. What is also… interesting is that since marrying, the couple have adopted several grown men:  Marcus Prinz von Anhalt (formerly Marcus Eberhardt), who now calls himself as “Prince Germany”; Oliver Prinz von Anhalt (formerly Oliver Bendig); and Michael Prinz von Anhalt (formerly Michael Killer.) Following their adoption, all these chaps are entitled to use the last name of “Prinz von Anhalt”. In return for what, we can only surmise. In any case, back to the ailing screen siren of yore…

“The publicist for Hilton, however, gave a more optimistic report. Edward Lozzi said the glamour icon was able to sit up in bed and talk, an improvement that followed a blood transfusion and the removal of her morphine drip over the weekend.”

Again, this is a Hungarian woman we’re talking about. You could probably shoot her full of enough morphine to keep Pete Doherty and the Libertines out of recording studios for the next decade, and she’d still be babbling away.

Gabor has “rallied” and is “more talkative,” Lozzi said.

More talkative than whom?

She is still in the intensive care unit at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, but the prince’s publicist, John Blanchette, said she could go home as soon as Thursday.

I see, so the prince’s publicist differs from the great lady’s publicist? My what a strange little band of 21st century Californian courtiers they must be when all assembled.

Von Anhalt is either Gabor’s eighth or ninth husband; depending on whether you count one marriage that was quickly annulled. The glamorous Hungarian-born actress, the second of the three celebrated Gabor sisters, is most famous for her many marriages. Among her other husbands was Oscar-winning actor George Sanders.

via Prince: Zsa Zsa Gabor’s recovery is ‘up and down’ – CNN.com.

Her older sister Magda got married to Sanders some time after he was divorced from Zsa Zsa, which would seem to indicate that he had a thing for chatty and batty Hungarian beauties. And who can blame him? Certainly not this Budapest resident. George Sanders must have felt that, after two Gabor sisters, life held little more in store for him by way of excitement, for he committed suicide, leaving behind the most urbane suicide note imaginable. It read: “Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.”

How simply wonderful. The prince I feel, is somewhat less so. You may remember he was one of the men who came forward to claim possible paternity of poor Anna Nicole Smith’s baby girl in 2006. If that wasn’t fantastical enough, less than a year later, he had a great story for the police. Found naked inside his Rolls-Royce, he claimed to have been taken in by three nubile, young beauties who at first asked him to pose for pictures with them. At this point, von Anhalt said they stripped him bare, took his car keys, wallet and money, jewellery, driver’s license and clothes, before handcuffing him to the steering wheel. Which was remarkable, given that he was able to call the cops to the scene of the crime, using his cellular phone. The culprits, he said, had driven away in a Chrysler convertible.  How common, you’d think they’d have at least had the good taste to dig up a Bentley from somewhere.

You may also recall that Zsa Zsa has had some trouble with the Old Bill herself. In 1989, while still a spritely 72 year old, she was jailed for as many hours after slapping a Beverly Hills cop who had the temerity to slap her with a traffic fine.

Be that as it may, we wish her Royal ZsaZsaness a speedy recovery. Her eventual passing will and probably should be mourned in Hungary, not only as a famous daughter of Hungarian soil, but as the last of her kind. She was born in Budapest. In 1917.