Zsa Zsa Gabor

Zsa Zsa Gabor (born Sári Gábor; February 6, 1917 – December 18, 2016) was a Hungarian and American socialite and actress. Her sisters were socialite Magda Gabor and actress and businesswoman Eva Gabor.

Gabor competed in the 1933 Miss Hungary pageant, where she placed as second runner-up. She began her stage career in Vienna the following year. Gabor emigrated from Hungary to the United States in 1941 and became a sought-after actress with "European flair and style". 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 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 extravagant Hollywood lifestyle, and her series of marriages. Gabor had nine husbands, including hotel magnate Conrad Hilton and actor George Sanders.

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 Jolie (née Janszieka Tillemann, 1896–1997) and Vilmos Gábor (né Grün, 1881–1962). Jolie owned a jewelry shop in Budapest, while Vilmos was a Royal Hungarian Army officer. Her parents were both Jewish.

Gabor was named after Sári Fedák, a Hungarian actress. Gabor was called Zsa Zsa because, as a little girl, she couldn't pronounce her own name.

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. In 1934, she began her acting career in Vienna. 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 was her first stage appearance.

After emigrating to the United States, Gabor became a sought-after actress with "European flair and style".

In 1944, Gabor co-wrote a novel with writer Victoria Wolf entitled Every Man For Herself. According to Gabor, the fictional story was derived, in small part, from Gabor's life experiences. The book was bought by an American magazine, Ladies' Home Journal. In 1949, Gabor declined an offer to play the leading role in a film version of the classic book Lady Chatterley's Lover. According to the Cedar Rapids Gazette, she turned down the role of Lady Chatterley due to the story's controversial theme.

Gabor's film credits include Moulin Rouge (her most famous film), 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). John Huston, who directed Gabor in Moulin Rouge, later described her as a "creditable" actress. Gabor appeared in more than 70 movies, and her acting career continued into the 1990s.

Gabor was a socialite known for her glamour, her series of marriages, and her Hollywood extravagance.

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.

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

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.

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, Gabor's right leg was amputated above the knee to save her life from an infection. In 2011, she was hospitalized again for a number of emergencies, and fell into a coma.

On February 8, 2016, aged 99, Gabor was rushed to hospital after suffering from breathing difficulties. She was diagnosed with a feeding tube–related lung infection and was scheduled to undergo 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, in accordance with her wishes that she return to Hungary and spend the rest of her life there.

While in a coma, Gabor died from cardiac arrest at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California 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.

Gabor's funeral was held on December 30 in a Catholic ceremony at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Approximately 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 her ashes reinterred in the artists' section of Kerepesi Cemetery in Budapest in order to fulfill her wish to return to Hungary. He said that the remains had been transported in their own first-class airline seat.