Zsa Zsa Gabor was born on February 6, 1917. She is a Hungarian-born American actress and socialite.
Zsa Zsa Gabor was born as Sári Gábor (reportedly named after a famed Hungarian actress, Sári Fedák) in Budapest (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), the middle daughter of Vilmos Gábor, a soldier, and Jolie Gábor. Her sisters, Magda and Eva, also became actresses and socialites. Their mother, Jolie (née Jancsi Tilleman), was of Jewish descent, and was related to Annette Tilleman, the wife of California politician Tom Lantos.
Following studies at a Swiss boarding-school, Gabor won the Miss Hungary beauty contest in 1936. On a trip to Vienna in the same year, she was discovered by the famous tenor Richard Tauber and was invited to sing the soubrette role in his new operetta Der singende Traum ("The Singing Dream") at the Theater an der Wien, her first stage appearance. Gabor reportedly had a romance with a composer named Willi Schmidt-Kentner, according to the 1960 "bio-autobiography" Zsa Zsa Gabor, by Gerold Frank. Her initial fame came from her work as an actress, and grew from her public appearances in the 1970s and 1980s.
Gabor has been married nine times. She was divorced seven times, and one marriage was annulled. Her husbands, in chronological order, are:
In 1974, she purchased from Elvis Presley a two-story Bel Air home with an eccentric-looking French roof, built by Howard Hughes.
Zsa Zsa was the only sister to bear a child. According to her biography, One Lifetime Is Not Enough, her pregnancy resulted from being raped by then-husband Conrad Hilton. Her only child is daughter Francesca Hilton (born March 10, 1947).
In 2005, Gabor accused her daughter of larceny and fraud, and filed a lawsuit against her in a California court.
In the late 1950s, Gabor had dinner with Frank Sinatra at LaRue's on the Sunset Strip and spent a romantic evening with him. She also had a relationship with Porfirio Rubirosa, a noted Dominican international playboy and sometime diplomat. She refused to leave George Sanders to marry Rubirosa, whereupon Rubirosa married Barbara Hutton (for 53 days) and then renewed his relationship with Gabor, who claimed that Rubirosa proposed to her every time he could, and would change the subject when she refused. They had a four-year relationship and were at one time engaged. Gabor essentially broke the engagement when she took a part in the movie Death of a Scoundrel, which starred her ex-husband George Sanders, over Rubirosa's intense objections.
The 1989 mugshot of Zsa Zsa Gabor.
On June 14, 1989, Gabor was accused of slapping the face of a Beverly Hills police officer named Paul Kramer when he stopped her for a traffic violation. She was found guilty of the assault in a well-publicized trial and sentenced to three days (72 hours) in the El Segundo jail. The judge also required her to pay $13,000 in court costs. She testified that her behavior had been provoked by the officer, who she said had behaved extremely rudely and insulted her with obscenities.
Gabor also had a long-running feud with Elke Sommer that culminated in a libel suit.
She poked fun at her role in the incident in various cameo appearances:
Gabor was a passenger in an automobile accident that occurred on November 27, 2002. She was initially reported as being in a coma when she was actually conscious at the time medical assistance arrived. She left the hospital in early January 2003, but required continued physical therapy. Gabor sued and was awarded $2 million.
On July 7, 2005, she suffered a massive stroke, leaving her in critical condition at a local hospital. She underwent surgery to remove a blockage in her carotid artery. She returned home on July 15. In early September of 2007, she underwent surgery to deal with after-effects of her previous stroke. On September 18, 2007, aged 90, she underwent surgery to treat a leg infection, which developed as a result of her immobility.
Gabor appeared in several plays, most notably Forty Carats on Broadway in 1970.
