A Thanksgiving Memory: Zsa Zsa and the Turkeys

One of the most famous mugshots of its day was of Zsa Zsa Gabor, the Hungarian-born beauty queen turned international celebrity in the 1950s due to her extravagant style, glamour and revolving door of husbands that gave her enormous media exposure. "A girl must marry for love, and keep on marrying until she finds it," Gabor once said. She found nine husbands over her 99 year life.

And while she epitomized being "famous for being famous," she also had a quite active film and television career that ranged from "Bonanza" and "Batman" to "Touch of Evil" and "The Queen of Outer Space," which kept her in the public eye. But it was her delightfully eccentric personality that endeared her to audiences from her appearances on talk shows, her last being an appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman" in 1996 at the age of 78.

It was those television appearances that likely gave made her a camp icon, that and some terrible career choices. "Two appalling films in the late 1950s made Gabor a camp icon. 'The Girl in the Kremlin' had her playing a double role as twin sisters. She did not play the title role in 'Queen of Outer Space' (1958), but was cast as a rebel Venusian in a slit skirt who falls in love with four earthmen whom her man-hating queen wants to destroy," wrote the Guardian in her obituary.

The incident that led to the mugshot occurred in 1989 in which "she was arrested for slapping a police officer who had pulled her over for a traffic violation and found that her license had expired and that she had an open vodka bottle in her car, a Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible. Breezing into court, she took the stand and, by turns haughty, coquettish, weepy and coarse, spoke of Gestapo tactics in Beverly Hills. The judge gave her 72 hours in jail," wrote the New York Times in their obituary.

"You just cannot drive a Rolls-Royce in Beverly Hills anymore, because they have it in for you," she said after things had blown over.

One of the more memorable moments in her trial testimony came when she accused the policeman, Beverly Hills Cop Paul Kramer of being gay, saying: "Don't you know, a gay man would not like a woman like Zsa Zsa Gabor. Why would he? I marry all the men he would want to have."

Immediately prior to her conviction, according to a report in the Daily Mail, Zsa Zsa expressed her fear of being incarcerated. "She had moaned that 'they are all lesbians in jail. And I'm so scared of lesbians. Can you imagine being in jail with all those women?'

But her sentence went without incident, and here's where the turkeys come in.

Upon release, a revitalized Zsa Zsa turned to community service with vigor, spending time at a homeless shelter in Venice. "In November 1989 during her sentence, she brought turkeys for the residents of the shelter on Thanksgiving, beginning what became a yearly tradition," writes the Daily Mail.

The work, she said in 1990, was 'nothing for me. I do much more a year. I love it. As a matter of fact, I fed, last Thanksgiving, the homeless and they all came up to me and kissed me: "I love, you, Zsa Zsa, you're the only person who understands me."'

She would later need to extend her community service time after it was revealed she was skimping on her hours, charging time for hair and make-up for time served performing tasks. But she remained in close contact with the homeless shelter and its director Vera Davis and in November 1989 during her sentence, she brought turkeys for the residents of the shelter on Thanksgiving, beginning what became a yearly tradition.

In 1997 the establishment was officially rechristened the Vera Davis McClendon Youth & Family Center, and the turkey deliveries from Zsa Zsa kept coming, the Daily Mail explained.

Even as Zsa Zsa's health declined, the tradition was continued by her ninth and last husband 'Prince' Frédéric - who bought his title from a German princess he paid to legally adopt him.

'We decided to make Thanksgiving a part of the people's lives at the center when Zsa Zsa was helping out and bought them all turkeys that year,' he told NBC in 2009.

'Vera passed away a few years ago, but we have continued the tradition of giving turkeys to the poor families that the center helps support to make it a happy Thanksgiving for everyone there.'

But with Zsa Zsa passing and the closing of the Vera Davis McClendon Youth & Family Center, the tradition came to an end.