Zsa Zsa Unrepentant After 3 Days in Jail : Punishment: The actress pays her debt to society. The jailers were 'more than nice,' but the accommodations? Don't even ask. - Los Angeles Times
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Zsa Zsa Unrepentant After 3 Days in Jail : Punishment: The actress pays her debt to society. The jailers were ‘more than nice,’ but the accommodations? Don’t even ask.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

With a rose in her hand and an opinion or three on her lips, a defiant Zsa Zsa Gabor strode out of the El Segundo slammer Monday afternoon after serving a 72-hour sentence for slapping a Beverly Hills police officer.

Gabor’s coming out drew dozens of pushy paparazzi and more than 100 other curious onlookers. Her exit was delayed 15 minutes while she applied makeup.

The Hungarian-born actress informed reporters that her cell had been too chilly, that her meals had been too salty, but that her jailers had proven charming and good-looking.

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“I was very happily surprised--everybody was more than nice and sweet,” Gabor said. “I found out one thing, guys. They are much handsomer police officers in here than Paul Kramer (the Beverly Hills officer she was convicted of slapping). And they are much nicer.”

Had she learned a lesson? reporters shouted.

“Never,” Gabor replied. “ . . . I never done a damn thing.”

She had been sentenced to the three-day term--as well as 120 hours of community service, nearly $13,000 in fines and a psychiatric evaluation--after a circus-like, three-week trial that stemmed from a routine traffic stop last year. Accused by the trial judge of “milking” the case for publicity, Gabor was convicted of slapping Kramer, driving without a license and possessing an open flask of whisky in her $215,000 Rolls-Royce.

Dropping her planned appeal--but deciding against serving the sentence in a county facility, where, she said, she was afraid of attack by lesbians--the former Miss Hungary opted to pay $85 a night for a “Graybar Hotel” room in the El Segundo Jail under a weekend program offered to many county convicts.

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Gabor, 72, had a four-bed cell to herself, and was visited daily by her husband, Prince Frederick Von Anhalt of West Germany. He brought her pillows, blankets (“I was given a horse blanket in jail,” she explained) and ice cream, but he was denied permission to deliver Gabor sausages and goulash.

Upon her fashionably late exit, Gabor was surrounded by a media phalanx so unruly that it resembled a British soccer crowd. Behind the reporters stood more than 100 El Segundo residents, several cheering but others booing or waving picket signs, including one that read, “Darling, the rules are for everyone.”

Mindy McManus, 13, explained the size of the crowd in this way: “El Segundo is boring and there’s nothing else to do.”

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Gabor, garbed in a yellow sweat shirt from a Beverly Hills fashion emporium, told reporters that she had spent her incarceration finishing work on her autobiography and filing papers for her jailers.

Asked if she also had done some thinking, Gabor snapped, “I always have time to think, you dummy. How could I live without thinking?”

As for the jail food, she declared, “it was terrible--I wouldn’t give it to my dog.”

With that, Gabor waved goodby, kissed a 3-year-old toy Doberman pinscher, handed her rose to an onlooker and hopped into the passenger seat of a black Mercedes-Benz. It was parked directly across the street from a gift shop called the House of Cards.

Gabor then headed back to Beverly Hills, where she said she had one immediate plan: “To take a hot bath.”

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