Zsa Zsa Gabor
| Zsa Zsa Gabor | |
 Gabor in 1959 | |
| Background information | |
| Born as: | Sári Gábor |
| Born | Feb 06, 1917 Budapest, Austria-Hungary |
| Zodiac | Aquarian |
| Died | Dec 18, 2016 - at age 98 Los Angeles, California, U.S. Heart attack |
| Buried: | Fiume Road Graveyard, Kerepesi Cemetery in Budapest, Hungary |
| Spouse(s): | Burhan Belge (1935 - 1941) divorced Conrad Hilton (1942 - 1947) divorced George Sanders (1949 - 1954) divorced Herbert Hutner (1962 - 1966) divorced Joshua S. Cosden Jr. (1966 - 1967) divorced Jack Ryan |
| Parents: | Vilmos Gábor, Jolie Gabor |
| Children: | Francesca Hilton |
| Relatives: | Magda Gabor (sister) Eva Gabor (sister) Anette Lantos (cousin) |
| Occupation: | Actress and socialite |
| Nationality: | Hungary / Turkey / United States |
| Height: | 5' 4" (1.63m) |
| Weight: | 134 lbs (61 kg) |
| Measurements: | 36C-25-36 in (91C-63-91 cm) |
| Hair color: | Blonde |
Zsa Zsa Gabor (ZHAH-zhah GAH-bor, - gə-BOR, Hungarian; February 6, 1917 – December 18, 2016) was a Hungarian-American socialite and actress. Her sisters were socialites and actresses Eva Gabor and Magda Gabor.
Gabor competed in the 1933 "Miss Hungary" pageant, where she placed second runner-up, and began her stage career in Vienna the following year. She emigrated from Hungary to the United States in 1941 and became a sought-after actress with "European flair and style." She was considered to have a personality that "exuded charm and grace." Her first film role was a supporting role in Lovely to Look At, released in 1952. The same year, she appeared in We're Not Married! and played one of her few leading roles in Moulin Rouge, directed by John Huston. Huston later described Gabor as a "creditable" actress.
Outside her acting career, Gabor was known for her extravagant Hollywood lifestyle, glamorous personality, and numerous marriages. In total, Gabor had nine husbands, including hotel magnate Conrad Hilton and actor George Sanders. She once stated, "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."
Early life
Zsa Zsa Gabor, born Sári Gábor on February 6, 1917, in Budapest, Hungary—formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire—was the middle child among three daughters. Her parents, Jolie (née Janszieka Tillemann) and Vilmos Gábor (né Grün), owned a jewelry store in Budapest, and her father served as an officer in the Royal Hungarian Army. Both parents possessed Jewish ancestry.
Gabor received her name in honor of Sári Fedák, a renowned actress. She was affectionately known as Zsa Zsa due to her inability to articulate her name properly during childhood.
In 1941, Gabor emigrated from Hungary to the United States. While in transit, during a layover at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Nebraska, en route to Hollywood, she garnered attention by informing the Associated Press of having danced with Adolf Hitler on two occasions.
On July 8, 1944, with assistance from her husband, Conrad Hilton, Gabor's parents successfully escaped Budapest amidst the Nazi invasion and occupation of Hungary.
Gabor's elder sister, Magda, subsequently emerged as an American socialite, while her younger sister, Eva, pursued a career as an American actress and businesswoman. The Gabor sisters were first cousins of Annette Lantos, spouse of California Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA).
Career
In January 1933, following her tenure as a student at a Swiss boarding institution, Gabor achieved the distinction of being the second runner-up in the fifth Miss Hungary pageant, finishing behind Lilly Radó and the crown winner, Júlia Gál. On August 31, 1934, she performed the soubrette role in Richard Tauber's operetta, Der singende Traum (The Singing Dream), at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. This event marked her inaugural stage appearance.
In 1944, she collaborated with the writer Victoria Wolf to co-author a novel titled Every Man For Himself. According to Gabor, the fictional narrative was inspired, in part, by her life experiences. The manuscript was subsequently acquired by an American magazine. In 1949, Gabor declined an offer to portray the leading character in a film adaptation of the classic novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. As reported by the Cedar Rapids Gazette, she declined the role of Lady Chatterley due to the controversial nature of the story's theme.
Her more serious film acting credits include Moulin Rouge, Lovely to Look At, and We're Not Married!, all from 1952, and 1953's Lili. In 1958, she ran the gamut of moviemaking, from Touch of Evil to the camp oddity Queen of Outer Space. Later, she appeared in such films as Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976), and Frankenstein's Great Aunt Tillie (1984). She did cameos for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), and A Very Brady Sequel (1996), as well as voicing a character in the animated Happily Ever After (1989).
She was also a regular guest on various television programs, appearing alongside notable figures such as Milton Berle, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Howard Stern, David Frost, Arsenio Hall, Phil Donahue, and Joan Rivers. Additionally, she made guest appearances on the Bob Hope specials, the Dean Martin Roasts, Hollywood Squares, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and It's Garry Shandling's Show.
In 1968, she portrayed Minerva in an episode of "Batman", marking her as the final "special guest villain" before the show's cancellation. In 1973, she served as the guest roastee on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. Moreover, she appeared on "Late Night" with David Letterman in 1987, recounting her blind date with Henry Kissinger, which Richard Nixon had arranged.
Author Gerold 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 of Louis XV who has somehow managed to live in the 20th century, undamaged by the PTA ... She says she wants to be all the Pompadours and Du 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."
In his autobiography, television host Merv 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 the society pages and into the gossip columns so suddenly, and with such force, it was as if they'd been dropped out of the sky.
In 1998, film historian Neal Gabler called her kind of celebrity "The Zsa Zsa Factor".
Personal life
Gabor was married nine times. She was divorced seven times, and one marriage was annulled. She wrote 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.
Her husbands, in chronological order, were:
- Burhan Belge (May 17, 1935 – December 4, 1941; divorced)
- Conrad Hilton (April 10, 1942 – October 28, 1947; divorced)
- "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."
- George Sanders (April 2, 1949 – April 2, 1954; divorced)
- Herbert Hutner (November 5, 1962 – March 3, 1966; divorced)
- "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."
- Joshua S. Cosden Jr. (March 9, 1966 – October 18, 1967; divorced)
- Jack Ryan (January 21, 1975 – August 24, 1976; divorced)
- Michael O'Hara (August 27, 1976 – November 30, 1982; divorced)
- Felipe de Alba (April 13–14, 1983; annulled)
Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt (August 14, 1986 – December 18, 2016; her death)
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." When asked how many husbands she had had, she used to say: "You mean other than my own?" Gabor dated German composer Willy Schmidt-Gentner and Dominican diplomat Porfirio Rubirosa. She also claimed to have had sexual encounters with her stepson Nicky and with Turkish president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
In 1973, Gabor purchased a nearly 9,000-square-foot Hollywood Regency-style home in Bel Air. It was initially built for Howard Hughes in 1955 and featured a copper French-style roof.
Gabor's only child, daughter Constance Francesca Hilton, was born on March 10, 1947. According to Gabor's 1991 autobiography, One Lifetime Is Not Enough, her pregnancy resulted from rape by then-husband Conrad Hilton. She was the only Gabor sister who had a child. In 2005, a lawsuit was filed accusing Constance of larceny 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. However, the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Santa Monica, threw out the case due to Gabor's failure to appear in court or to sign an affidavit that she indeed was a co-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. Gabor's husband never told her about her daughter's death, out of concern for her physical and emotional state.
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 of Princess Marie-Auguste of Anhalt. Prinz von Anhalt had himself paid Marie-Auguste to adopt him when he was 36 years old.
While Gabor's parents were Jewish, she was a practicing Catholic.[18]
Legal and financial difficulties
On June 14, 1989, in Beverly 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 8551 Olympic Boulevard. 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 of Jack Daniel's—in her $215,000 Rolls-Royce. Still, they acquitted her of the charge of disobeying Kramer when she drove away from the traffic stop. 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. On June 14, 1990, Gabor dropped her conviction appeal and agreed to serve her sentence. However, she refused to participate in community service and served three days in jail from July 27 to 30, 1990.
Gabor had a long-running feud with German-born actress Elke Sommer beginning in 1984 when both appeared on Circus of the Stars, and escalating into a multimillion-dollar libel 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.
On January 25, 2009, the Associated Press reported that her attorney stated that forensic accountants determined that Gabor may have lost as much as $10 million invested in Bernie Madoff's company, possibly through a third-party money manager.
Later life and health
On November 27, 2002, Gabor was a front-seat passenger in an automobile accident on Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles. As a result of this incident, she sustained partial paralysis and became dependent on a wheelchair for mobility. She endured strokes in 2005 and 2007, subsequently undergoing multiple surgical procedures. In 2010, she experienced a hip fracture and underwent a successful hip replacement surgery.
In August 2010, Gabor was admitted to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in serious condition and received last rites from a Catholic priest, but survived.
In 2011, her right leg was amputated above the knee to save her life from an infection. She was hospitalized again in 2011 for a number of emergencies and fell into a coma.
On February 8, 2016, two days after her 99th birthday, Gabor was rushed to the hospital due to breathing difficulties. She was diagnosed with a feeding tube-related lung infection and was scheduled for surgery to have her feeding tube removed.
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, fulfilling her wish to return to the country and spend the rest of her life there.
Death
While in a coma, Gabor died from cardiac arrest at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center on December 18, 2016, at the age of 99. On her death certificate, coronary artery disease and cerebrovascular disease are listed as contributing causes. She had been on life support for the previous five years.
The funeral service for her was conducted on December 30 in a Catholic ceremony at the Church of the Good Shepherd located in Beverly Hills, attended by approximately 100 mourners. Her ashes, which were contained in a gold rectangular box, were interred at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, however, in July 2021, Prinz von Anhalt arranged for them to be reinterred in the artists' section of Kerepesi Cemetery in Budapest, following her expressed wish to return to Hungary. He stated that the remains were transported in a designated first-class airline seat.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor gallery
Filmography
- Wikipedia article: Zsa Zsa Gabor Filmography
Television
- Wikipedia article: Zsa Zsa Gabor Television
External links
- Zsa Zsa Gabor at the Internet Movie Database
- Zsa Zsa Gabor at the Turner Classic Movie Database
- Zsa Zsa Gabor @ Find A Grave
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Zsa_Zsa_Gabor ]
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