WAS ZSA ZSA GABOR THE SECRET "LOVE CHILD" OF A 2500 YEAR OLD GREEK KOUROS?

This blog is about Hungarians and why I love them. A great example is the legendary Hungarian movie star, Zsa Zsa Gabor. She (and this post) have nothing to do with antiques except that she passed away when she was really really old. BREAKING NEWS: 4/2/15-I just found out from a reader that Zsa Zsa is NOT dead.  I made a slight boo boo.  And thanks to Alan Deal of BAMO for alerting me to this! Side comment: I'm SO sorry Zsa Zsa! Get well Soon! :) Buzz

Then why am I writing this? Well it was an honest mistake I swear! Plus, serious writing (this would not be a good example) is my calling-I wasn't meant to "blog" the rest of my life! And I don't want my tombstone to read "Here Lies Buzz Kaplan-Yeah that blogger dude who said Zsa Zsa was dead."

So I'm going to forge on and spread my literary wings here to show you, Houghton Miflin and the world that I'm a serious auteur (even though the whole premise of this post is now discredited) as well as a "blogger to watch" who needs to fact-check more carefully.

Anyhow, let's get back to Zsa Zsa, pronounced "JHASHA gab Bore"; or uh, "Za Za gah BORED"--it's very hard to phonetically spell, but this last pronunciation was vetted in music (albeit dead wrong) by none other than Dion Dimucci (of Dion and the Belmonts) in 1963 in his unforgettably toe tapping hit "Donna, the Prima Donna":

And who could forget her electrifying win as Miss Hungary of 1936? OK, everyone has forgotten it. But it really did happen and it's worth mentioning because it launched her meteoric rise to the heights of Hollywood Royalty (that's royalty with a small "r"). Even the great John Huston raved, "At her acting best, she was credible." I think he meant to say INcredible but unfortunately he didn't.

Her dizzying rise to stardom (cinched into her signature "Clamato" dress) culminated in the film cult classic "Queen of Outer Space," a Technicolor extravaganza released in 1958 by a studio that refuses to divulge its name.

But the plot was riveting:  A bunch of astronauts crash land on Venus only to find that it's an all-female planet ruled by the evil queen Yllana (played by an actress who's name I forget). And for some reason, this Queen wears a mask all the time. Plus she's banished all men from the planet. Ugh.

Anyhow, the astronauts are taken captive by the glamazon Venusians and brought to Yllana's palace. Luckily, one of the courtiers at the palace is the beautiful, overly ripe and very lusty courtier named Talleah (Zsa Zsa Gabor). She and a few of her co-courtiers, all "long for the love of a man" (isn't that quaint!) and so they're plotting to overthrow the evil Queen to get some desperately needed lovin'. After all, a girl's got needs, right?

Next scene: one of the astronauts distracts the Queen by twerking wildly to show her how cultured and refined we are on Earth. And as she's transfixed oggling his gyrations, he yanks off her mask, poignantly revealing that she's horribly disfigured (oddly resembling a burnt Kraft Jet Puff Marshmallow-I suspect that this was an early version of product placement.) 

Anyhow, so her face looks like a s'more and the tragic reason is shocking: she was exposed to radiation burns "caused by men and their wars." Damn those men! In a fury, the Queen decides to destroy Earth and its tweaking inhabitants but then she dies because Talleah/Zsa Zsa and her handsome astronaut BF foil her plot. The Venusians are free to once again enjoy the love of men. Yay. Ding dong the Vitch is dead! (Note my authentic Hungarian pronunciation of W's. They say them kind of like Russians saying Wodka.)

Wait! I forgot the most important part! Right before Talleah/Zsa Zsa overthrows the queen, she hisses to her new boyfriend (the cutest of the imprisoned astronauts), "I HATE ZAT KVEEN!" I know Zsa Zsa meant "I hate that queen"--but it's Zsa Zsa's perfect delivery of that line in pigeon English that has made it a classic. Much like Wodka. Try her line yourself the next time you get upset with a gay guy. It's fun, he'll like it  and it'll be therapeutic all at the same time.

Oh: my other favorite Hungarian/Austrian/German (they all sound the same to me) line is from Blazing Saddles, where an exhausted Madeline Kahn (using a Marlene Dietrich Hungarian cum German accent) comments after a long night of….uh…lovemaking: "I'm tired from the vaist down." 

Am I the only one who thinks this stuff is funny? Sometimes I worry… :(

P.S. Anyhow just to make this a real post about antiques, here's a good word to know: Kouros, pronounced "COO rohs." It's a sculpture form of a young male from Ancient Greek sculpture dating to around 500 BC to the onset of the Hellenistic style around 323 BC. They appear very stiff, much like Zsa Zsa's acting. Zing!