Not this guy. Without so much as a sociable "I loved your Pee-wee Herman special," Officer Paul KRAMER [son of Swaledale native Paul KRAMER] ordered an up-close of her license. Well!

GABOR fished it out of her glove compartment, but as it turned out, it had expired. A bad start. One thing led to another, most of which are in dispute, but it seems safe to say that after the two exchanged unpleasantries and had a little road chase, KRAMER told Zsa Zsa to get out of her $110,000 coupé. When she did, she slapped him across the face, knocking his regulation sunglasses to the ground.

That did it.

KRAMER arrested GABOR and called for backup to take her to the station. He handcuffed her so tightly, she claimed, she had to cancel a charity appearance because her wrists were an unsightly black and blue. Despite the two broken fingernails — never recovered — she got up the pluck to host a dinner for 36 a few days later. A sheer act of will.

The bruises may be gone, but the skirmish isn't over yet. This Monday, GABOR squares off with KRAMER again — this time in a Beverly Hills municipal courtroom. In The People of the State of California vs. Zsa Zsa GABOR, the Hungarian-born defendant, 70ish, is charged with five offenses: battery upon an officer, disobeying an officer, driving without registration, driving without a license and having an open container of alcohol. (That silver flask of bourbon in the glove compartment belongs to her eighth and current husband, Prince Frederick von ANHALT, of West Germany. "Sometimes I use it to sweeten my Diet Pepsi," he explains.)

Zsa Zsa admits that the license was outdated. As for the registration, not only had she paid it ("It gives me a heart attack to write the check"), she had overpaid it, causing a bureaucratic bungle that left her with outdated tags. Of all the luck.

And that disobedience charge is just the result of a cultural misunderstanding. While KRAMER was running her license by the folks back at HQ and finding out that her registration had expired too, Zsa Zsa got antsy. After 12 minutes, according to the police report, she shouted, "You are an a——. I'm leaving," and sped off. According to GABOR, she asked what was taking so long, KRAMER told her to "[Bleep] off," and Zsa Zsa took him literally. "On my word of honor, I thought he meant I should go," she says. "That's what they say in London, and that's where I was raised."

Zsa Zsa has always had a remarkable knack for self-defense, and what a handy skill it has been. Last January she was removed from a Delta Airlines flight for letting her Shih Tzu loose in the first-class cabin. "He was in a Louis Vuitton carrying case the whole time," Zsa Zsa maintains. "My dear, the stewardess hated me." Months before that, she threw entertainment reporter Claudia COHEN (wife of megabucks Revlon chief Ron PERELMAN) out of the Regis PHILBIN Show dressing room and marched on-camera calling Cohen a bitch in front of millions of viewers. "I had no idea the cameras were on," demurs GABOR. In 1982 she made headlines for demanding that a row of handicapped people be moved to the back of a Philadelphia theater where she was performing. It was an usher, she says, who moved what she calls the "paraleptics. The theater owner, a terrible man, wanted me to take the rap." Victimized again.

"I like her as a person and think she's a good lady," says Larry KING, who recently had Gabor on his TV show, "but we all have to get a little older, and Zsa Zsa refuses to see that. Poodles on leashes being walked by doormen is yesterday. I guess it must be very hard on her." . . .

Zsa Zsa simply doesn't get old. In fact, she often gets younger. The driver's license she gave to Officer KRAMER had been physically altered to change her birthdate from 6/6/23 (already suspect) to 2/6/28. "You can say I'm full of s—, but don't say I'm old," she says.

Zsa Zsa's traffic court appearance is just one more trial to bear. Slapping Officer KRAMER was an intuitive kind of thing. Although he claims that GABOR said, "You are an a——-, you are a f—er," when he told her to get out of the car, she says he said, "Get out, you f—," and grabbed her wrist. "It was like Nazi Germany," says Zsa Zsa. "They killed half of the gorgeous girls. You should have seen the hatred in his eyes." So she slapped him. "This is a woman's reaction," she says. "I admit I have a Hungarian temper. Why not? I am from Hungary. We are descendants of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun."

The defense rests.

NOTE: GABOR was sentenced to 72 hours in the El Segundo Jail, 120 hours of community service at a women's shelter and $13,000 in court costs.

GABOR was quoted as saying, "He [KRAMER] should have apologized and kissed my hand -- that's what a European gentleman would have done." A couple of years later, KRAMER sued GABOR for going on TV to say that he was on drugs and he was a homosexual, both claims which he denied. KRAMER and GABOR evenutally settled out of court.

In 1990, the famous 1979 Rolls-Royce Corniche was sold at auction for $90,000 in Las Vegas. The slapping incident provided late-night monologue fodder for months.

~ Margot Dougherty, David Marlow, Robin Micheli and Tee Wohlfert in Los Angeles

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, October of 2011