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Zsa Zsa Gabor's Husband May Be Baby's Father

Friday, February 09, 2007

LOS ANGELES, February 9, 2007 -- The husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor had a decade-long affair with Anna Nicole Smith and may be her daughter's father, he told The Associated Press on Friday.

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 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. He said he would file a lawsuit if Dannielynn is turned over to Stern or Birkhead.

Von Anhalt, 59, and Gabor, who turned 90 on Tuesday, have been married for more than 20 years.

Gabor, a one-time 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.

Edward Lozzi, who worked as Gabor's publicist during her celebrated "cop-slapping trial" in 1989, told the AP he doubted von Anhalt's claim, calling him a "chronic fabricator."

"There are some people who are married to famous people and take advantage of it," said Lozzi, who added that he himself dated Smith three times. He said he last spoke with her sometime during the past year.

Lozzi handled publicity for Gabor when she was arrested for slapping a Beverly Hills police officer who pulled her over for a traffic violation. She was convicted of misdemeanor battery on an officer, driving without a valid license and having an open container of alcohol in her car. She was sentenced to 72 hours in jail and fined $10,000.

Von Anhalt's royal credentials have been the cause of speculation over the years. According to stories in the British press, he was born Robert Lichtenberg, the son of a German policeman, and bought his title after being adopted as an adult by a bankrupt daughter-in-law of the last kaiser.

Von Anhalt said he never admitted the Smith affair to his wife, but that he's sure she knows. She would sometimes answer the phone when Smith called him late at night, von Anhalt said.

"The next morning my wife would always ask 'Who are you talking to?"' he said. "'Oh Europe.' I always said it was Europe."

Von Anhalt expressed some regret about the affair, saying "Men do things we shouldn't do."

"She was a very sexy woman," he added. "To have an affair with her is the top, you know."

Von Anhalt and Gabor were married in 1986. Some records list him as her ninth husband but one of those marriages was annulled.

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