RETRACING THE LIFE, CAREER OF ZSA ZSA

She was groomed to be rich, famous and wed to a king. She became a perpetual jet-setter, one of the most conspicuous names, faces and figures in the world. Reporters and photographers chronicled her every affair and scandal. She married well but not always wisely, nine times in all, with no monarch in the bunch, just a prince who bought the title.

In the otherwise staid cultural landscape of 1950s and 1960s, Zsa Zsa Gabor stood out as a show business personality. Across continents she was recognized for the majestic sweep of blond hair, her green eyes and porcelain skin, her swanlike neck and her fetching Hungarian accent, plump with innuendo.

“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend and dogs are a man’s best friend,” she once remarked. “Now you know which sex has more sense.”

Gabor, the voluptuous sometime-actress, international party girl, and celebrity who cut a template for later and lesser socialite-somethings with names such as Kardashian and Hilton, died Dec. 18 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 99.

Her publicist, Edward Lozzi, confirmed the death to the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets. The cause was not immediately known.

For much of her life Gabor kept her age preposterously vague. Reports of her birth year spanned from 1916 to 1930. If the latter was to be believed, she was 7 when she married for the first time.

Her prominence depended almost entirely on her gusto for extravagant living, piquant quips about jewels and sex, and her self-help tips for the modern-day paramour. Among her bon mots:

■ “Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.”

■ “I’m a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house.”

■ “I never hated a man enough to give him back his diamonds.”

■ “I want a man who’s kind and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?”

She seemed most in her element in nightclubs and on late-night talk shows, from the Jack Paar to the David Letterman eras. In a typical TV exchange, a woman seeking advice asked if she “did wrong” when she spent the night with a man.

“Dahhhling,” Gabor said in her accented English, “don’t you remember?”

The tawny-haired glamour magnet - often photographed wearing diamonds and white fur - displayed a talent for attracting men and headlines.

She said her conquests included Frank Sinatra, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, widely known as the father of modern Turkey but to her “a professional lover, a god and a king.”

In 1958, she accepted a $17,000 chinchilla coat and a Mercedes-Benz from Rafael Trujillo Jr., the son of the Dominican strongman. She was rebuked on the floor of the House of Representatives during a debate over foreign aid for the Caribbean nation.

From the well of the House floor, Rep. Wayne Hays - an Ohio Democrat whose career unraveled decades later over his own sex scandal - called her “the most expensive courtesan since Madame de Pompadour.”

That same night, Gabor flew to Washington, D.C., for a nightclub date and was mobbed by reporters seeking a comment.

“I’m a hard-working girl,” she said, blithely.

Most reviewers regard Gabor’s best screen-acting work to be in director John Huston’s “Moulin Rouge” (1952), in which she portrayed Jane Avril, the nightclub’s renowned chanteuse who modeled for artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

But Gabor said she detested working with Huston, who demanded that she suppress her considerable personality to allow the character’s to emerge.

“I was hired because I am Zsa Zsa Gabor, but when I go to work, directors try to force their methods on me,” she said. “John Huston’s intense, precise directions tortured me.” Huston was said to have advised her: “Forget about acting. Just make love to the camera.”

For the rest of her career, her performances were notable mostly for her cool and stylish looks. Gabor was a wealthy widow in “Death of a Scoundrel” (1956) and she breezed through “Queen of Outer Space” (1958) as Talleah, ruler of an all-female civilization on Venus.

She had a small part as a strip-club owner in Orson Welles’s “Touch of Evil” (1958) and played twins, one of whom sleeps with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, in “The Girl in the Kremlin” (1957).

In her later years, she was hired to play campy versions of herself in films including “The Naked Gun 2 1/2” (1991) and “The Beverly Hillbillies” (1993).

Gabor wrote advice books, including “How to Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man, How to Get Rid of a Man” (1970). The husbands she caught, kept and got rid of included Turkish diplomat Burhan Belge, hotel magnate Conrad Hilton and Oscar-winning actor George Sanders, who later married Gabor’s sister Magda.