About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Zsa Zsa Gabor

Encyclopedia : Z : ZS : ZSA : Zsa Zsa Gabor

Zsa Zsa Gabor (born Gábor Sári February 6, 1917) is a Hungarian-American actress and socialite, who, like her two sisters, is best known for her beauty and wealthy lifestyle.

Zsa Zsa is known for her affection for jewels, her quick wit, as well as referring to everyone she speaks with as "darling", but acquired a reputation for matrimony, and being famous for "being famous". Zsa Zsa is also the only Gabor sister to bear a child.

Contents

Birth

She was born in Budapest, Hungary, the second of three daughters born to Vilmos (a soldier) and Jolie Gabor (née Jancsi Tilleman). The name Zsa Zsa is a nickname for the Hungarian version of the name Susan (Zsuzsa).

Siblings

The birth years of the Gabor sisters may be fabrications to make them appear younger. Her sisters are Magda and Eva. Zsa Zsa often claimed to have won the "Miss Hungary" beauty contest in 1936, but Jolie sometimes claimed she had won it. Gabor's maternal family was Jewish. Her name was Sari and nickname for Sarolta, not Zsuzsanna.

Husbands

She has had nine husbands:

Child

She and Conrad Hilton had one daughter, Francesca Hilton. Zsa Zsa is the only Gabor sister to bear a child. George Sanders later married Zsa Zsa's sister, Magda, and committed suicide in 1972. In 2005 Zsa Zsa accused her daughter, Francesca Hilton, of larceny and fraud, and was forced to file suit against her in a California court. [link].

Porfirio Rubirosa

Zsa Zsa also had a relationship with Porfirio Rubirosa, a noted Dominican international playboy and sometime diplomat. She refused to leave George Sanders to marry him, whereupon Rubirosa married Barbara Hutton (for seventy-three days) and then renewed his relationship with Zsa Zsa.

Hollywood

How to Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man, How to Get Rid of a Man (1970)
Enlarge
How to Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man, How to Get Rid of a Man (1970)

Among the movies Zsa Zsa appeared in were her starring role as can-can dancer Jane Avril in John Huston's Moulin Rouge (1952), Lili (1953), Sang et Lumières (aka Love in a hot Climate 1954) a French film that had her co-star with Daniel Gélin, Queen of Outer Space (1958) which is considered as one of the worst (or silliest) film ever made - she jokingly recalled that the only direction she was given during production was to "not to laugh at the dialogue", and late film noir classic Touch of Evil (1958) with cinema giant Orson Welles. Only once did she play opposite ex-hubbie George Sanders, in the noirish Death of a Scoundrel (1956). Decades later she had a cameo appearance as herself in . Even though she appeared in many films, she was never really considered a successful actress, and thrived as a media personality. From the 1950s to 1970s she was a staple of television talk shows hosted by Jack Paar, Mike Douglas, Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin, where she could be counted on to be amusing, witty and combative.

Though her movies continued, their quality did not, and her later career was as a celebrity rather than a serious actress. The Gabor sisters (competing with each other for the limited number of roles they might play with Hungarian accents) often engaged in always well-publicized "feuds," but it was Zsa Zsa who seemed to thrive on adverse publicity. However, she managed to sustain her acting career on stage in the late 60s and 70s in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, Forty Carats which was her Broadway debut for Arsenic and Old Lace.

Because of her B-Movie stardom and her corresponding private life she was called Hollywood's "most expensive courtesan since Madame de Pompadour" (Ephraim Katz's "The Film Encyclopedia).

Arrest

Her 1989 mugshot
Enlarge
Her 1989 mugshot

On June 14, 1989, Zsa Zsa was accused of slapping the face of a Beverly Hills police officer when he stopped her for a traffic violation [link]. She was found guilty of the assault in a well-publicized trial and sentenced to three days in jail (and required 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 poked fun of her role in the incident by way of cameo appearances in movies such as (wherein she slapped a police car's light that was following her and remarked "This happens every fucking time that I go shopping"), the 1993 film version of The Beverly Hillbillies (in which she claimed that the officer had slapped her in what was described as a "drive-by slapping"), and A Very Brady Sequel (wherein she gloated upon the publicity she earned from the incident), and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (When Carlton accidentaly slapped a cop, when the slap was supposed to be meant for Will, and Zsa Zsa replied by saying "I have witnesses,it wasn't me".)

Recent health

Zsa Zsa was a passenger in an automobile accident that occurred November 27, 2002, that was initially reported as having sent her into a coma, but the report was in error. She was conscious by the time medical assistance arrived. She left the hospital in early January 2003, facing continued physical therapy.

On July 7, 2005, Zsa Zsa 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 and is said to be making quite an excellent recovery, given her age, and her husband appears to be taking very good care of her.

Apocrypha

Quips

Filmography

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: