For most Hollywood stars, Thanksgiving offers a cherished retreat from the relentless glare of the spotlight, a time for peaceful family gatherings. Yet for the late, great Zsa Zsa Gabor, the holiday served as an annual reminder of the bizarre legal scandal that came to define her public image for decades.
In an act of lasting generosity that emerged from courtroom chaos, Gabor made it her tradition to send 200 frozen turkeys every year to the very homeless shelter where she was sentenced to perform community service after being convicted for slapping a Beverly Hills policeman in 1989.
The Traffic Stop That Sparked a Media Circus
Gabor's extraordinary legal nightmare began on June 14, 1989, when Officer Paul Kramer pulled over her Rolls Royce for displaying expired registration tags. The subsequent investigation revealed a cascade of violations that would fuel a sensational trial.
Officer Kramer discovered Gabor was driving with an expired licence, on which a ballpoint pen had been used to alter her birth year from 1923 to 1928. She was actually born in 1917. Further scrutiny revealed a silver flask of vodka in the glove compartment, left there by her ninth husband, Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, who occasionally used it to spike his Diet Pepsi.
The situation escalated dramatically when Gabor, believing she had been dismissed after what she claimed was Officer Kramer telling her to 'f*** off,' drove away in her Rolls Royce. This triggered a full-scale police chase with blaring sirens that ended once Officer Kramer caught up with her vehicle.
According to Sam Staggs' biography Finding Zsa Zsa, what followed was a physical confrontation where Officer Kramer bodily removed Gabor from her car, prompting her to slap him in a state of panicked rage. Gabor later accused him of using obscene language, applying handcuffs so roughly they left her bruised for weeks, and refusing to let her adjust her bunched-up skirt.
A Spectacle in Court: The People vs Zsa Zsa Gabor
Gabor was arrested and formally charged with misdemeanor battery on a police officer, possessing an open alcohol container, disobeying an officer, and driving with both an expired licence and expired registration.
Her trial, officially titled The People vs Zsa Zsa Gabor, rapidly deteriorated into a vaudevillian media circus. Throngs of reporters and 'Free Zsa Zsa' protesters gathered outside the courthouse, creating a frenzied atmosphere that Gabor seemed to relish.
Facing a potential sentence of up to two years in prison and a $4,000 fine, she pleaded not guilty and claimed Officer Kramer specifically targeted celebrities. She made grand entrances to court in designer outfits, famously declaring she wore a different bedazzled cross for each appearance because 'if one has a cross to bear, it might as well be diamonds.'
In defiance of a gag order, she launched verbal attacks, dismissing one prosecution witness as 'a little punk with a hairdo like a girl.' She gave splashy press conferences outside the courthouse, telling one female reporter she was 'another jealous blonde.'
Her testimony took several surreal turns. She stated the policeman she slapped 'was very handsome' but 'very, very scary to me,' claiming she could see 'in his eyes' that he 'hated' her. She compared the experience to Nazi persecution, saying, 'When he was chasing me I thought of the Gestapo,' referencing her escape from Hungary before the Nazi occupation, though she lost Jewish family members in the Holocaust.
In one of the trial's most memorable moments, she accused Officer Kramer of homosexuality, arguing in court: '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.'
Conviction and an Unlikely Thanksgiving Tradition
After a three-week trial and 14 hours of jury deliberation, Gabor was convicted. She was sentenced to three days in jail, 120 hours of community service, fines, probation, and therapy.
Prior to her incarceration, she had expressed profound anxiety about the prospect, fretting, 'they are all lesbians in jail. And I'm so scared of lesbians. Can you imagine being in jail with all those women?'
Following her brief jail term, she began court-ordered community service at a homeless shelter in Venice, California, run by Vera Davis. In November 1989, during her sentence, she brought turkeys for the shelter residents at Thanksgiving, initiating what would become her enduring annual tradition.
She spoke fondly of the work in 1990, saying, '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."'
However, even her community service became contentious when it emerged Gabor had completed only about 50 hours of the mandated 120 hours. Vera Davis had shown considerable leniency, even crediting Gabor for five hours of service merely for applying makeup before a television appearance promoting the shelter. The judge sentenced her to an additional 60 hours, prompting Gabor to mutter 'son of a b****' under her breath.
Despite this, Gabor's relationship with Vera Davis remained cordial, and she continued sending 200 frozen turkeys to the shelter every Thanksgiving. This tradition persisted even after the establishment was officially renamed the Vera Davis McClendon Youth & Family Center in 1997.
As Gabor retreated from public life during her final years, her ninth husband, Frédéric, maintained the turkey deliveries. He explained the tradition's origins to NBC in 2009: '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.'
Zsa Zsa Gabor died in 2016 at the age of 99. The shelter that received her annual turkeys for decades, the Vera Davis McClendon Youth & Family Center, closed for remodelling in 2019 and never reopened, marking the end of an era born from one of Hollywood's most entertainingly scandalous court cases.
