Zsa Zsa Gabor facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Zsa Zsa Gabor
Gabor in 1959
Born	Sári Gábor (1917-02-06)February 6, 1917 Budapest, Austria-Hungary
Died	December 18, 2016(2016-12-18) (aged 99) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting place	Kerepesi Cemetery, Budapest
Citizenship	Hungary United States
Occupation	Actress socialite
Years active	1933–1998
Spouse(s)	Burhan Belge ​ ​ (m. 1935; div. 1941)​ Conrad Hilton Sr. ​ ​ (m. 1942; div. 1947)​ George Sanders ​ ​ (m. 1949; div. 1954)​ Herbert Hutner ​ ​ (m. 1962; div. 1966)​ Joshua S. Cosden Jr. ​ ​ (m. 1966; div. 1967)​ Jack Ryan ​ ​ (m. 1975; div. 1976)​ Michael O'Hara ​ ​ (m. 1976; div. 1982)​ Felipe de Alba ​ ​ (m. 1983; ann. 1983)​ Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt ​ (m. 1986)​
Children	Francesca Hilton
Parent(s)	Jolie Gabor (mother)
Family	Magda Gabor (sister) Eva Gabor (sister) Anette Lantos (cousin)

Gabor in 1936

Zsa Zsa Gabor (/ˌʒɑːʒɑː ˈɡɑːbɔːr/, Hungarian: [ˈɡaːbor ˈʒɒʒɒ]; born Sári Gábor [ˈɡaːbor ˈʃaːri]; February 6, 1917 – December 18, 2016) was a Hungarian-American socialite and actress. Her sisters were actresses Eva and Magda Gabor.

Gabor competed in the 1933 Miss Hungary pageant, where she placed as second runner-up, and began her stage career in Vienna the following year. She emigrated from Hungary to the United States in 1941. Becoming 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 (1952). She later acted in We're Not Married! (1952) and played one of her few leading roles in the John Huston-directed film, Moulin Rouge (1952). Huston would later describe her as a "creditable" actress.

Outside her acting career, Gabor was known for her extravagant Hollywood lifestyle and her glamorous personality.

Early life

Zsa Zsa Gabor was born Sári Gábor on February 6, 1917, in Budapest, Hungary, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The middle of three daughters, her parents were Vilmos, a soldier, and Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman). Her parents were both of Jewish ancestry. While her mother escaped Hungary during the period of the Nazi occupation of Budapest, Gabor left the country in 1941, three years prior to the takeover. During a layover at Eppley Airfield en route to Hollywood, she made headlines by telling the Associated Press that she had danced with Adolf Hitler twice.

Gabor's elder sister, Magda, eventually 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 Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA).

Career

In January 1933, following her time as a student at a Swiss boarding school, Gabor placed second runner-up in the fifth Miss Hungary pageant, behind Lilly Radó and crown winner Júlia Gál. On August 31, 1934, she sang the soubrette role in Richard Tauber's operetta, Der singende Traum (The Singing Dream), at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. This would mark her first stage appearance.

Dancing with director Nicholas Ray (1953)

In 1944, she co-wrote a novel with writer Victoria Wolf entitled Every Man For Himself. According to Gabor, the fictional story was derived, in small part, from Gabor's life experiences. The book was subsequently bought by an American magazine. In 1949, Gabor declined an offer to play the leading role in a film version of the classic book Lady Chatterley's Lover.

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 (1990).

She was also a regular guest on television shows, appearing with Milton Berle, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Howard Stern, David Frost, Arsenio Hall, Phil Donahue, and Joan Rivers. She was a guest 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 appeared in the role of Minerva on an episode of Batman, becoming the show's final "special guest villain" before it was cancelled. In 1973, she was the guest roastee on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. She appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in 1987, where she told host David Letterman about her blind date with Henry Kissinger, which was arranged by Richard Nixon.

In 1998, film historian Neal Gabler called her kind of celebrity "The Zsa Zsa Factor".

Personal life

Gabor at the Denver Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, c. 1955

Gabor was married nine times. She was divorced seven times, and one marriage was annulled.

Her husbands, in chronological order, were:

1. Burhan Belge (May 17, 1935 – December 4, 1941; divorced)
2. 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".

3. George Sanders (April 2, 1949 – April 2, 1954; divorced)
4. Herbert Hutner (November 5, 1962 – March 3, 1966; divorced)
5. Joshua S. Cosden Jr. (March 9, 1966 – October 18, 1967; divorced)
6. Jack Ryan (January 21, 1975 – August 24, 1976; divorced)
7. Michael O'Hara (August 27, 1976 – 30 November 1982; divorced)
8. Felipe de Alba (April 13–14, 1983; annulled)
9. Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt (August 14, 1986 – December 18, 2016; her death)

Gabor arriving at a film premiere in 1962

In 1970, Gabor purchased a nearly 9,000-square-foot Hollywood Regency-style home in Bel Air. It was originally 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. 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.

While Gabor's parents were Jewish, she was a practicing Catholic.

Later life and health

On November 27, 2002, Gabor was a front seat passenger in an automobile crash on Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, from which she remained partially paralyzed and reliant on a wheelchair for mobility. She survived strokes in 2005 and 2007 and underwent surgeries. In 2010, she fractured her hip and underwent a successful hip replacement.

She was hospitalized again in 2011 for a number of emergencies, falling into a coma.

On February 8, 2016, two days after her 99th birthday, Gabor was rushed to hospital after suffering from breathing difficulties.

In April 2016, it was reported that Prinz von Anhalt was arranging to move with Gabor to Hungary in time for her hundredth birthday in 2017, in accordance with her wishes that she 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.

Her funeral was held on December 30 in a Catholic ceremony at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, where around 100 mourners attended. Her ashes, placed in a gold rectangular box, were interred at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery; in July 2021, Prinz von Anhalt had them reinterred in the artists' section of Kerepesi 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.

Filmography

Film

Television

Theatre

See also

In Spanish: Zsa Zsa Gabor para niños

• Gabor sisters