Boasts, Not Bucks for Zsa Zsa? : The Marketing of a Misdemeanor Loses Steam

Question: What crime crusader could compete with Batman on video store shelves?

Answer: Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Uh, maybe not.

“From what I can see, nobody’s buying it,” chortled Mark Elliott, a sales clerk at Tower Video where the $9.95 cassette, “The Trial of the Decade: The People vs. Zsa Zsa Gabor,” chronicling the slap heard ‘round the world, went on prominent display this week.

But, even if somebody wanted to buy it, Gabor won’t profit from the sale because this “news documentary” released by IVP Inc. boasts that it is “unauthorized.”

Which leads to the question: How has Double-Z cashed in on the publicity blitz that surrounded her trial? Has her fame led to any fortune besides bootleg videotapes, more ribbing from Johnny Carson and the biggest laughs at Sunday’s 14th annual Pasadena Occasional Doo Dah Parade when the Great Zsa Zsa Drill Team acted out her arrest?

Though Gabor herself has been heard boasting at parties that she may make as much as $3 million in ventures resulting from the brouhaha, the truth seems to be that whoever said “crime doesn’t pay” surely had Zsa Zsa in mind.

According to conventional wisdom, the sometime actress refused to settle out of court because she wanted all the media attention she knew would come her way. And, cynics said, the Hungarian has-been wanted to use the trial to become a here-again.

Certainly, that has occurred. “Zsa Zsa has always been in demand,” claims her agent Cal Ross, “but the number of requests for personal appearances are more since the trial.”

Gabor is now an even more ubiquitous fixture on the Hollywood party circuit, despite that National Enquirer headline naming her “the most hated woman in America.” And yet paparazzi reveal that the demand for Gabor photographs in media markets has not risen at all.

“Who wants to run Zsa Zsa pictures now?” asks celebrity photographer Peter Borsari. “I even couldn’t sell one of Milton Berle putting his hand over her mouth that was taken at Sidney Sheldon’s party at Jimmy’s.”

As colleague Scott Downie sees it, “When the verdict was delivered, demand for her peaked. Then she quickly hit the skids.”

Still, interest was high enough for ABC-TV’s “The Home Show” to broadcast a weeklong interview with Gabor Nov. 13-17 at her Bel-Air manse. The most memorable segments captured Gabor frugging in her ‘70s-style disco, sprawling on her bed or guiding host Robb Weller through her maze of clothes closets. “The trial certainly put Zsa Zsa back in the limelight,” admits producer Marty Tenner, noting that overnight ratings showed an increase in viewership, “whereas a year ago, no one would touch her.”

Still, adds Tenner, “my gut feeling is she has not reaped a harvest off this.”

And what sort of money did Gabor receive for the series of interviews? “An insignificant amount of money,” Tenner says. “We pay all celebrities the same rate regardless of what publicity they’ve been getting.”

Minimal sums also were paid for her appearances on “Donahue” and “A Current Affair.” But negotiations for Gabor to do a regular segment on “A Current Affair,” which had been in the works for some time, fell through after the start of her legal troubles, according to sources. Apparently, the tabloid show’s producers had second thoughts about a deal that would have featured Zsa Zsa interviewing the likes of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon.

“That’s not her milieu,” explains her publicist. “She’s not Brenda Starr.”

Then movie offers must be pouring in, right?

Wrong.

According to Gabor’s agent Cal Ross, Double-Z will start shooting two small films in December and January that had been in negotiation “long before the trial.” In “Moonshadows,” Gabor plays what is described as a “lady agent,” while in “Animal Heaven” she runs a parlor for--what else?--wayward poodles. No other movies are in the offing.

Gabor does have a book deal with Delacorte, but that, too, was negotiated a year before she ever set foot in Beverly Hills Municipal Court. Publishing sources say she received a $125,000 advance on the autobiography, but Ross now says the deal is “in limbo.”

“We’re having some editorial differences over what the book should be,” he says.

Even Zsa Zsa’s commercial career is in a slump. During the ruckus, “Wheel of Fortune” hired her to do a TV ad which showed her hurrying home in her Rolls to watch Pat and Vanna and then getting arrested by a beefy Beverly Hills policeman. But insiders say she didn’t think she was paid enough for it. And, so far, she’s not pitching other products.

Meanwhile, Gabor’s publicist Phil Paladino maintains that, since the trial, sales have “gone down” of the two products bearing Gabor’s name: Zsa Zsa face cream and the Zsa Zsa Diamond, a $39 cubic zirconia.

Nor has she been able to unload her Bel-Air house, which has been for sale off and on for at least a decade. (One year, Beverly Hills super-realtor Mike Silverman tied a big red ribbon around it as a publicity gimmick during Christmas.) And though Platinum Triangle real estate prices usually operate on the premise that the bigger the star, the more valuable his or her mansion, Silverman says the price of Zsa Zsa’s home is the same as it was before the trial: $15 million.

“The fact that the Reagans moved into the neighborhood had more to do with the home’s value than Zsa Zsa’s trial,” Silverman laughs.

Given all this, did Gabor lose more in the trial than just the verdict?

“The woman doesn’t need money,” sniffs her publicist. “You and I should have her money.”

Perhaps, but she did lose something very precious: about a decade, actually. Poor Zsa Zsa can’t lie about her age anymore now that a school chum has come forward with her real birth date.

So what if everyone knows Zsa Zsa better because of the trial. Everyone also knows she’s 72.