Zsa Zsa Gabor smiled and ate ice cream on Saturday, a day after doctors amputated much of the actress' leg to fight a gangrene infection that could have killer her, her husband said.

"She talks to me and she smiles a little bit," Frederic Prinz von Anhalt, told Reuters.

Von Anhalt and John Blanchette, a spokesman for the 93 year-old Gabor, said the star of 1950s movies "Moulin Rouge" and "Lili" still does not know her leg was amputated.

"I told them (doctors) not to talk to her, because I didn't want her to get hysterical and the blood pressure goes up," he said.

He said Gabor is on morphine to take away the pain, and that in the coming days he will tell her about the surgery that removed most of her right leg.

Gabor ate ice cream and some sausage on Saturday, her husband said.

Blanchette said doctors are "guardedly optimistic" about the actress' recovery. "She was chatty and feisty this morning," he said.

Gabor is currently hospitalized at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Los Angeles. She fell at home and broke her hip in July last year and since that time has been in and out of the hospital.