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Zsa Zsa Gabor

 
Who2 Biography: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Actor
 
zsa zsa gabor
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  • Born: 6 February 1917
  • Birthplace: Budapest, Hungary
  • Best Known As: Much-married celebrity sister of Eva Gabor

Name at birth: Sari Gabor

Though officially an actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor is more famous as a whimsical old-school celebrity sex symbol. Married nine times, Gabor made a career of joking about her man-hungry ways and her love of jewelry and furs. (She married her final husband, Prince Frederick Von Anhalt, in 1986, when he was 38 and she was 69; their marriage lasted into the 21st century.) Her film credits include the campy Queen of Outer Space (1958), Moulin Rouge (the 1951 version, not Nicole Kidman's 2001 version), and a small role as a nightclub manager in the Orson Welles classic Touch of Evil (1959). Gabor gained fresh notoriety in 1989 after she slapped a Beverly Hills policeman who pulled her over for a traffic violation. Another traffic accident, in 2002, left her temporarily in a coma. Gabor's sisters Magda and Eva are also well known; Eva played the scatterbrained wife in the 1960s TV series Green Acres.

Zsa Zsa Gabor was Miss Hungary of 1936... Her true year of birth is, not surprisingly, a matter of some confusion; most sources agree on 1917, but others list 1918 or 1923... She played the villainess Minerva in the final episode of the 1960s TV series Batman... Gabor is the mother of actress Francesca Hilton, her daughter with her ex-husband Conrad Hilton... Frederick Von Anhalt made waves in 2007 when, after the death of Anna Nicole Smith, he claimed he was the father of Smith's infant daughter Dannie Lynn. Von Anhalt said he and Smith had carried on a multi-year affair during his marriage to Gabor.

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Actor: Zsa Zsa Gabor
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  • Born: Feb 06, 1918 in Budapest, Hungary
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: '50s-'60s, '80s-'90s
  • Major Genres: Comedy, Drama
  • Career Highlights: Moulin Rouge, Lili, Lovely to Look At
  • First Major Screen Credit: Lovely to Look At (1952)

Biography

Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor is the prototypical "professional celebrity": famous merely for being famous. She started her stage career in 1933 and three years later won the title of Miss Hungary. She followed her sister Eva to America in 1941, but unlike Eva, did not devote herself to acting. Rather, she inaugurated her lifelong career of collecting jewelry, husbands, and front-page publicity. Among her many spouses were actor George Sanders (who much later in life would marry her sister Magda) and hotel magnate Conrad Hilton. Operating on the theory that any publicity is good publicity, Gabor has kept herself in the public eye through a series of contretemps with the law. She was once arrested and fined for using profanity in public; she was sued by a "fantasy" theme park thanks to her cavalier attitude toward written contracts; and, in 1990, she provided a cornucopia of material for innumerable nightclub comics by slapping a traffic cop who had given her a speeding ticket (an act which she herself capitalized upon with cameo roles in The Naked Gun 2 1/2 [1991] and The Beverly Hillbillies [1993]). Gabor also joined the ranks of the politically incorrect for flaunting her many animal-fur coats and for refusing to appear in a nightclub when wheelchair-bound patrons threatened to impede her performance. Gabor also made a few movies. She actually came close to a performance in Moulin Rouge (1952), but the bulk of her cinematic achievements were along the lines of The Girl in the Kremlin (1957) -- in which her head was shaved -- and the imperishable Queen of Outer Space (1958). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
 
Quotes By: Zsa Zsa Gabor
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Quotes:

"Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do."

"You never really know a man until you have divorced him."

"I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house."

"Conrad Hilton was very generous to me in the divorce settlement. He gave me 5, 000 Gideon Bibles."

"Husbands are like fires. They go out when unattended."

"A man in love is incomplete until he has married -- then he's finished."

See more famous quotes by Zsa Zsa Gabor

 
Wikipedia: Zsa Zsa Gabor
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The native form of this personal name is Gábor Sári. This article uses the Western name order.
Zsa Zsa Gabor

from the trailer for Lili (1953)
Born Sári Gábor
February 6, 1917 (1917-02-06) (age 92)
Budapest, Austria-Hungary
Occupation Actress
Years active 1952–present
Spouse(s) Burhan Asaf Belge
(1937-1941)
Conrad Hilton
(1942-1947)
George Sanders
(1949-1954)
Herbert Hutner
(1962-1966)
Joshua S. Cosden, Jr.
(1966-1967)
Jack Ryan
(1975-1976)
Michael O'Hara
(1976-1982)
Felipe de Alba
(1983)
Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt
(1986-present)

Zsa Zsa Gabor (pronounced /ˈʒɑːʒɑː/; born February 6, 1917), also known as Sári Prinzessin von Anhalt, is a Hungarian actress, socialite and former beauty queen.

Contents

Early life

Zsa Zsa Gabor was born as Sári Gábor (reportedly named after a famed Hungarian actress, Sári Fedák,[citation needed] in Budapest (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), the middle daughter of Vilmos Gábor, a soldier, and Jolie Gábor.[1] 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.[2]

Following studies at a Swiss boarding-school, Madame Subilia's, Gabor competed in the Miss Hungary beauty contest in 1936, but was disqualified for being underage (according to her mother's biography). 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 Gábor, My Story, written by Gabor with Gerold Frank. Her initial fame came from her work as an actress, and grew from her public appearances in the 1970s and 1980s.

Personal life

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.[3]

Zsa Zsa was the only sister to bear a child. According to her 1991 autobiography One Lifetime Is Not Enough, her pregnancy resulted from being raped by then-husband Conrad Hilton.[4] Her only paternal child is daughter Francesca Hilton (born March 10, 1947).

In 2005, Gabor accused her daughter Francesca of larceny and fraud, alleging that her daughter forged her signature to get a $2 million loan on her mother's Bel Air house, and filed a lawsuit against Francesca in a California court.[5]

In the late 1950s, Gabor had dinner with Frank Sinatra at LaRue's on the Sunset Strip and spent a "forced" romantic evening with him, also according to One Lifetime Is Not Enough. 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 (1956), which starred her ex-husband George Sanders, over Rubirosa's intense objections. Gabor, along with her current husband Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, has adopted four men. Under the adoption, these men were given new names. The three best known adopted children of Gabor are Oliver Prinz von Sachsen-Anhalt, Michael Prinz von Anhalt, and Marcus Prinz von Anhalt.

Legal difficulties

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.[6] 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. This fiasco was published in the documentary, The People vs. Zsa Zsa Gabor, without her consent.

She poked fun at her role in the incident in various cameo appearances:

  • In the 1991 film The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear, Gabor was pulled over by the police car at the end of the opening credits. She then proceeded to step out of the car and slap the red light, then walked away, muttering, "Ach, this happens every fucking time when I go shopping."
  • In the 1993 film version of The Beverly Hillbillies, Gabor claimed that the officer had slapped her in what was described as a "drive-by slapping."
  • In A Very Brady Sequel, she was shown enjoying the notoriety she derived from the incident.[citation needed]
  • In the November 18, 1991, season 2, episode 10 of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, when Gabor showed up as a guest at the Banks' residence, Hilary Banks asked, "There's something that I'm just dying to know." Gabor responded by saying, "Yes, I did it ... and he deserved to be slapped." Subsequently, when Carlton Banks accidentally slapped a cop with a pair of gloves while trying to slap his cousin Will Smith, Gabor replied by saying, "I have witnesses, it wasn't me."
  • She discussed the incident in an appearance on Howard Stern's show, making her the oldest celebrity to appear on Stern's program. She also debunked rumours of George Sanders' sexuality, which Stern called into question.

Gabor also had a long-running feud with Elke Sommer that culminated in a libel suit.[7]

Recent health

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 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. [8]

Financial problems 2009

On January 25, 2009, the Associated Press reported that attorney Chris Fields has stated that forensic accountants have determined that as much as $10 million may have been lost by Gabor when it was invested with swindler Bernard Madoff, possibly through a third-party money manager.[9][10] Marcus Prinz von Anhalt, German brothel owner and adopted son of her husband Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, helped out with a cheque over $6 million.[11]

Filmography

Television

Plays

Gabor appeared in several plays, most notably Forty Carats on Broadway, and Blithe Spirit as Elvira in the national tour.

Bibliography

  • Zsa Zsa Gabor, My Story By Zsa Zsa Gabor with Gerold Frank, The World Publishing Company, 1960.
  • How to Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man, and How to Get Rid of a Man, by Zsa Zsa Gabor, Doubleday, 1970.
  • One Lifetime Is Not Enough, by Zsa Zsa Gabor, assisted by and edited by Wendy Leigh, Delacorte Press, 1991. ISBN 0-385-29882-X
  • Gaborabilia, by Anthony Turtu and Donald F Reuter, Three Rivers Press, 2001. ISBN 0-609-80759-5

References

External links


 
 

 

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Who2 Biography. Copyright © 1998-2008 by Who2, LLC. All rights reserved. See the Zsa Zsa Gabor biography from Who2.  Read more
Actor. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Quotes By. Copyright © 2008 QuotationsBook.com. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Zsa Zsa Gabor" Read more

 

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