February 11, 2009 5:22 PM
- Text
Is Zsa Zsa's Hubby Anna's Baby's Daddy?
Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor and her husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, leave court in Beverly Hills, Calif., in this July 13, 1989 file picture. (AP Photo/Doug Sheridan, file)
(CBS/AP)
The husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor said Friday that he had a decade-long affair with Anna Nicole Smith and may be her infant daughter's father.
The claim by Prince Frederick von Anhalt comes amid a paternity suit over Smith's 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn. The birth certificate lists Dannielynn's father as attorney Howard K. Stern, but former Smith boyfriend Larry Birkhead is waging a legal challenge, saying he is the father.
"If you go back from September, she wasn't with one of those guys, she was with me," von Anhalt told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.
Von Anhalt, 59, and Gabor, 90, have been married for more than 20 years.
Gabor, a onetime sex symbol and star of such 1950s films as "Moulin Rouge" and "Queen of Outer Space," has been in declining health in recent years and suffered a stroke in 2005. She was partially paralyzed in a car crash in 2002.
Von Anhalt, who is Gabor's eighth husband, said he and Smith first met in the 1990s when Smith was still married to elderly oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II. He said Smith approached him and Gabor at the Plaza Hotel in New York.
"She was a very big fan of Zsa Zsa and wanted to be like Zsa Zsa," he said. "She wanted to be a princess."
He said the two started an affair soon after, meeting over the years in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. For much of that time, he said, Smith urged him to make her a princess like his wife.
But short of divorcing the actress, he said the only solution would have been adopting Smith. Von Anhalt said he did consider that and even filled out adoption papers, but Gabor refused to sign them.
2 Meanwhile, a judge on Friday refused to order an emergency DNA test on the body of Anna Nicole Smith as part of a paternity suit involving her infant daughter, but he ordered that the body be preserved until a hearing in 10 days, attorneys said.
A medical examiner began an autopsy Friday on Anna Nicole Smith, whose mother blamed drugs for the former Playboy playmate's sudden death that ended an extraordinary tabloid life at just 39.
The issue of drugs is only one thread of a complex legal web surrounding Anna's death — and the future of five month old Dannielynn, her daughter and potential heir to a multi-million dollar fortune. It too is still tied up in court, CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella reports.
"I think she had too many drugs, just like Danny (Smith's late son)," her mother, Vergie Arthur, told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday. "I tried to warn her about drugs and the people that she hung around with. She didn't listen."
"She was too drugged up," Arthur said. "By the last interview I saw of her, she was so wasted."
Smith's attorney, Ron Rale, said the one-time reality TV star had been ill for several days with a fever and was still depressed over the death five months ago of her 20-year-old son from what a private medical examiner determined was a combination of methadone and two antidepressants.
On Thursday, authorities say, a private nurse found Smith unconscious in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and called 911. A bodyguard performed CPR, Seminole Police Chief Charlie Tiger said, but Smith was declared dead at a hospital.
Late Thursday, sheriff's deputies carried out at least eight brown paper bags sealed with red evidence tape from Smith's hotel room.
Several detectives are reviewing the hotel surveillance tapes to see if they might provide a clue to what happened, Deputy Police Chief Michael Browne said Friday. He said they had interviewed everyone connected to the death and no one was under suspicion.
"Nothing about this death seems suspicious. We're not treating it that way," Browne said. "We're being very thorough. We're going to look at everything."
Edwina Johnson, chief investigator for the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office, said an autopsy was under way Friday morning to try to determine the cause of death.
If Smith died of natural causes, the findings will likely be announced quickly, but definitive results could take weeks, said Dr. Joshua Perper, who was performing the autopsy.
"I am not a prophet, and I cannot tell you before the autopsy what I am going to find," he said.
The claim by Prince Frederick von Anhalt comes amid a paternity suit over Smith's 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn. The birth certificate lists Dannielynn's father as attorney Howard K. Stern, but former Smith boyfriend Larry Birkhead is waging a legal challenge, saying he is the father.
"If you go back from September, she wasn't with one of those guys, she was with me," von Anhalt told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.
He said he would file a lawsuit if Dannielynn is turned over to Stern or Birkhead.Photos: Anna Nicole Smith
Von Anhalt, 59, and Gabor, 90, have been married for more than 20 years.
Gabor, a onetime sex symbol and star of such 1950s films as "Moulin Rouge" and "Queen of Outer Space," has been in declining health in recent years and suffered a stroke in 2005. She was partially paralyzed in a car crash in 2002.
Von Anhalt, who is Gabor's eighth husband, said he and Smith first met in the 1990s when Smith was still married to elderly oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II. He said Smith approached him and Gabor at the Plaza Hotel in New York.
"She was a very big fan of Zsa Zsa and wanted to be like Zsa Zsa," he said. "She wanted to be a princess."
He said the two started an affair soon after, meeting over the years in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. For much of that time, he said, Smith urged him to make her a princess like his wife.
But short of divorcing the actress, he said the only solution would have been adopting Smith. Von Anhalt said he did consider that and even filled out adoption papers, but Gabor refused to sign them.
A medical examiner began an autopsy Friday on Anna Nicole Smith, whose mother blamed drugs for the former Playboy playmate's sudden death that ended an extraordinary tabloid life at just 39.
The issue of drugs is only one thread of a complex legal web surrounding Anna's death — and the future of five month old Dannielynn, her daughter and potential heir to a multi-million dollar fortune. It too is still tied up in court, CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella reports.
"I think she had too many drugs, just like Danny (Smith's late son)," her mother, Vergie Arthur, told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday. "I tried to warn her about drugs and the people that she hung around with. She didn't listen."
"She was too drugged up," Arthur said. "By the last interview I saw of her, she was so wasted."
Smith's attorney, Ron Rale, said the one-time reality TV star had been ill for several days with a fever and was still depressed over the death five months ago of her 20-year-old son from what a private medical examiner determined was a combination of methadone and two antidepressants.
On Thursday, authorities say, a private nurse found Smith unconscious in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and called 911. A bodyguard performed CPR, Seminole Police Chief Charlie Tiger said, but Smith was declared dead at a hospital.
Late Thursday, sheriff's deputies carried out at least eight brown paper bags sealed with red evidence tape from Smith's hotel room.
Several detectives are reviewing the hotel surveillance tapes to see if they might provide a clue to what happened, Deputy Police Chief Michael Browne said Friday. He said they had interviewed everyone connected to the death and no one was under suspicion.
"Nothing about this death seems suspicious. We're not treating it that way," Browne said. "We're being very thorough. We're going to look at everything."
Edwina Johnson, chief investigator for the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office, said an autopsy was under way Friday morning to try to determine the cause of death.
If Smith died of natural causes, the findings will likely be announced quickly, but definitive results could take weeks, said Dr. Joshua Perper, who was performing the autopsy.
"I am not a prophet, and I cannot tell you before the autopsy what I am going to find," he said.
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