Zsa Zsa Gabor[a] (bornSári Gábor;[b] February 6, 1917 – December 18, 2016) was aHungarian-American socialite and actress. Her sisters were socialiteMagda Gabor and actress and businesswomanEva Gabor.
Gabor competed in the 1933Miss Hungary pageant, where she placed as second runner-up. She began her stage career inVienna the following year. Gabor emigrated fromHungary to theUnited States in 1941 and became a sought-after actress with "European flair and style". Her first film role was a supporting role inLovely to Look At, released in 1952. The same year, she appeared inWe're Not Married! and in her most famous film,Moulin Rouge. Gabor appeared in more than 70 movies, and her acting career continued into the 1990s.
Outside of her career, Gabor was famous for her glamour, her extravagantHollywood lifestyle, and her series of marriages. Gabor had nine husbands, including hotel magnateConrad Hilton and actorGeorge Sanders.
Gabor's elder sister,Magda, later became an American socialite and her younger sister,Eva, became an American actress and businesswoman. The Gabor sisters were first cousins of Annette Lantos, wife of California CongressmanTom Lantos (D-CA).[22]
Gabor atMiss Hungary in 1933Gabor in 1936Gabor dancing with directorNicholas Ray in 1953Gabor at the Denver Muscular Dystrophy Telethon,c. 1955Gabor arriving at a film premiere in 1962
In January 1933, following her time as a student at a Swiss boarding school, Gabor placed second runner-up in the fifthMiss Hungary pageant behind Lilly Radó and crown winner Júlia Gál.[6] In 1934, she began her acting career in Vienna.[6] On August 31, 1934, she sang thesoubrette role inRichard Tauber'soperetta,Der singende Traum (The Singing Dream), at theTheater an der Wien inVienna.[6] This was her first stage appearance.
After emigrating to the United States, Gabor became a sought-after actress with "European flair and style".[23]
In 1944, Gabor co-wrote a novel with writerVictoria Wolf entitledEvery Man For Himself. According to Gabor, the fictional story was derived, in small part, from Gabor's life experiences. The book was bought by an American magazine.[24] In 1949, Gabor declined an offer to play the leading role in a film version of the classic bookLady Chatterley's Lover. According to theCedar Rapids Gazette, she turned down the role of Lady Chatterley due to the story's controversial theme.[25]
She did cameos forA Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987),The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), andA Very Brady Sequel (1996), as well as voicing a character in the animatedHappily Ever After (1989).[27] John Huston, who directed Gabor inMoulin Rouge, later described her as a "creditable" actress.[28] Gabor appeared in more than 70 movies,[3] and her acting career continued into the 1990s.[29]
Gabor was a socialite[39] known for her glamour, her series of marriages, and her Hollywood extravagance.[40][41]
AuthorGerold Frank, who helped Gabor write her autobiography in 1960, described his impressions of her:
Zsa Zsa is unique. She's a woman from the court ofLouis XV who has somehow managed to live in the 20th century, undamaged by thePTA ... She says she wants to be all thePompadours andDu Barrys of history rolled into one, but she also says, "I always goof. I pay all my own bills. ... I want to choose the man. I do not permit men to choose me."[42]
In his autobiography, television hostMerv Griffin, who was known to spend time with Gabor's younger sister Eva socially, wrote of the Gabor sisters' arrival in New York and Hollywood:
All these years later, it's hard to describe the phenomenon of the three glamorous Gabor girls and their ubiquitous mother. They burst onto thesociety pages and into the gossip columns so suddenly, and with such force, it was as if they'd been dropped out of the sky.[43]
In 1998, film historianNeal Gabler called her kind of celebrity "The Zsa Zsa Factor".[44]
Gabor was married nine times. She was divorced seven times, and one marriage wasannulled.[45] She wrote the following in her autobiography:
All in all – I love being married ... I love the companionship, I love cooking for a man (simple things like chicken soup and my special Dracula's goulash from Hungary), and spending all my time with a man. Of course I love being in love – but it is marriage that really fulfills me. But not in every case.[46]
Gabor also said, "Men have always liked me and I have always liked men. But I like a mannish man, a man who knows how to talk to and treat a woman—not just a man with muscles."[47]
"Conrad's decision to change my name from Zsa Zsa to Georgia symbolized everything my marriage to him would eventually become. My Hungarian roots were to be ripped out and my background ignored. ... I soon discovered that my marriage to Conrad meant the end of my freedom. My own needs were completely ignored: I belonged to Conrad."[46]
"Herbert took away my will to work. With his kindness and generosity, he almost annihilated my drive. I have always been the kind of woman who could never be satisfied by money – only excitement and achievement."[46]
Joshua S. Cosden Jr. (March 9, 1966 – October 18, 1967; divorced)[54]
Jack Ryan (January 21, 1975 – August 24, 1976; divorced)[55]
Michael O'Hara (August 27, 1976 – November 30, 1982; divorced)[56]
Gabor's divorces inspired her to make numerous quotable puns and innuendos about her marital and extramarital history. She commented: "I am a marvelous housekeeper: every time I leave a man I keep his house."[60] When asked how many husbands she had, she used to say: "You mean other than my own?".[61] Gabor dated German composerWilly Schmidt-Gentner,[62] and Dominican diplomatPorfirio Rubirosa.[20] She also claimed to have had sexual encounters with her stepsonNicky[20] and with the first Turkish president,Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.[63]
Gabor's only child, daughterConstance Francesca Hilton, was born on March 10, 1947.[50][67] According to Gabor's 1991 autobiography,One Lifetime Is Not Enough, her pregnancy resulted from rape by then-husbandConrad Hilton.[68] She was the onlyGabor sister who had a child.[20]
In 2005, a lawsuit was filed accusing Constance oflarceny and fraud. She allegedly forged her mother's signature to get a US$2 million loan by using her mother's Bel Air house as collateral. TheLos Angeles County Superior Court, Santa Monica, threw out the case due to Gabor's failure to appear in court, or to sign anaffidavit that she indeed was aco-plaintiff on the original lawsuit filed by her husband, Frédéric von Anhalt. Francesca Hilton died in 2015 at the age of 67 from a stroke.[69][70] Out of concern for Gabor's physical and emotional state, Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt never told her about her daughter's death.[71]
Gabor and her last husband,Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, adopted at least ten adult men who paid them a fee of up to $2 million to legally become descendants ofPrincess Marie-Auguste of Anhalt. Prinz von Anhalt had himself paid Marie-Auguste to adopt him when he was 36 years old.[72]
While Gabor's parents were Jewish,[73] she was a practising Catholic.[19][3]
On June 14, 1989, inBeverly Hills, California, Gabor was accused of slapping the face of Beverly Hills police officer Paul Kramer when he stopped her for a traffic violation at 8551Olympic Boulevard.[74] At trial three months later, a jury convicted her of slapping Kramer. They also found her guilty of driving without a license and possessing an open container of alcohol—a flask ofJack Daniel's—in her $215,000Rolls-Royce, but acquitted her of the charge of disobeying Kramer when she drove away from the traffic stop.[75]
On October 25, 1989, Beverly Hills Municipal Judge Charles G. Rubin sentenced Gabor to serve three days in jail, to pay fines and restitution totaling $12,937, to perform 120 hours of community service, and to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.[76] On June 14, 1990, Gabor dropped her conviction appeal and agreed to serve her sentence.[77] She refused to take part in community service and served three days in jail from July 27 to 30, 1990.[78]
Gabor had a long-running feud with German-born actressElke Sommer beginning in 1984 when both appeared onCircus of the Stars, and escalating into a multimillion-dollarlibel suit by 1993. The suit resulted in an order for Gabor and her husband to pay Sommer $3.3 million in general and punitive damages.[79]
On November 27, 2002, Gabor was a front seat passenger in an automobile crash onSunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, from which she remained partially paralyzed and reliant on a wheelchair for mobility.[80][81] She survived strokes in 2005 and 2007 and underwent surgeries. In 2010, she fractured her hip and underwent a successful hip replacement.[82][83]
In 2011, her right leg was amputated above the knee to save her life from an infection.[86] In 2011, she was hospitalized again for a number of emergencies, and fell into a coma.[87][88]
On February 8, 2016, two days after her 99th birthday, Gabor was rushed to hospital after suffering from breathing difficulties. She was diagnosed with afeeding tube-related lung infection and was scheduled to undergo surgery to have her feeding tube removed.[89][90]
In April 2016, it was reported that Prinz von Anhalt was arranging to move with Gabor to Hungary in time for her 100th birthday in 2017, in accordance with her wishes that she return to Hungary and spend the rest of her life there.[71]
Her funeral was held on December 30 in a Catholic ceremony at theChurch of the Good Shepherd inBeverly Hills. Approximately 100 mourners attended.[93] Her ashes, placed in a gold rectangular box, were interred at theWestwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.[94] In July 2021, Prinz von Anhalt had her ashes reinterred in the artists' section ofKerepesi Cemetery in Budapest in order to fulfil her wish to return to Hungary. He said that the remains were transported in their own first-class airline seat.[95][96]
^Gabor subtracted as much as 11 years off her birthdate when filling out official documents, including her driver's license and passport applications.[4] Her true age was exposed in November 1989, when former boarding school classmate Elizabeth Nussbaum alerted the press.[5] To fix the chronology of Gabor's pre-fame life, biographer Sam Staggs said he had to conduct "an investigation as vast as that of the Watergate scandal."[6]
^Providing belated clarification, Gabor toldThe Washington Post in 1988 that it was actuallyJosip Broz Tito she danced with, not Hitler. "Somehow, a Yugoslavian communist dictator and a Nazi tyrant occupy the same mental pigeonhole," commented the interviewer,Henry Allen.[17]
^ab"Folder 11 Gabor, Vilmos (Mr. and Mrs.)"(PDF).Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. RetrievedApril 30, 2023.(1944-07-08): Vilmos Gabor and Ganka Gabor. They were formerly owners of one of the prominent jewelry stores in Budapest, and we are informed that the Portuguese Embassy ... (1944-07-11): Information received here to the effect that Portuguese legation Budapest has extended refuge to Vilmos and Ganka Gabor, Hungarian Jews who are the parents of Mrs. Conrad N. Hilton the wife of an American citizen. The Portuguese Minister Budapest is reported to have arrived in Switzerland with another daughter Magda Bichovska.
Turtu, Anthony; Reuter, Donald F. (2001).Gaborabilia: An Illustrated Celebration of the Fabulous, Legendary Gabor Sisters. Three Rivers Press.ISBN0-609-80759-5.
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg)
