The Peculiar Truth about the Gabor Sisters

Zsa Zsa, Magda, and Eva Gabor

• Long before the Kardashians were born, America’s tabloid queens were Eva, Magda, and Zsa Zsa - the Gabor Sisters. They were famous for being famous and, though not tremendously gifted as actresses, they knew how to command the public stage.

• Between the three of them, the Sisters were married 20 times - five marriages for Eva, six for Magda, and nine for Zsa Zsa. They unapologetically flaunted lives of excessive, insouciant, Old World wealth and glamor.

• Magda, the oldest, was the most private. Compared to her other two sisters, she was even less famous than, say, Rob Kardashian or Zeppo Marx. Eva, the youngest, achieved the most success as an actress. Zsa Zsa had acting credits, too, but flourished as a TV talk show guest with her witty, campy personality. She also became the most scandalous.

• The three sisters were born in Budapest, Hungary during WWI. Their perfectionist mother was fond of pitting her little girls against one another and groomed them for the high life.

• Magda got her only film role in a 1937 Hungarian movie before she left for the US. She appeared on a few American television shows in the mid-1950s but then mostly disappeared from the public eye.

• Eva and Zsa Zsa got all the notoriety. Neither of them stood taller than 5’ 4”, but they had giant ambitions.

• 1935: Zsa Zsa won the Miss Hungary beauty pageant at age 18 and then was immediately swept off her feet into matrimony to an older Turkish diplomat.

• 1937: When Eva turned 18, she married a Swedish doctor, and they left Europe for the United States where she planned an acting career.

• Six years later, with World War II at its height, Zsa Zsa left her husband to join Eva in California. She, too, wanted to get into the motion picture business.

• Throughout the 1940s, Eva had minor roles in forgettable films. Meanwhile, Zsa Zsa married the wealthy hotel baron Conrad Hilton. She considered that marriage “the end of my freedom,” so they divorced in 1947. Zsa Zsa then married actor George Sanders.

• With the advent of television in the 1950s, Eva and Zsa Zsa received more acting roles, but nothing of much quality. Eva had her own variety show for one season, and she appeared in 3 Broadway flops. Zsa Zsa popped up in numerous odd films, including as the title character in 1958’s Queen of Outer Space.

• Then in 1965, Eva got the role of her lifetime as Lisa Douglas on the sitcom Green Acres. It ran for six seasons and still airs today. Thanks to the popularity of that hit show, the Gabor Sisters became household names.

• They continued to appear on TV guest roles for the rest of their lives. Zsa Zsa was a staple on talks shows and game shows where she often joked about her many marriages and divorces. “My husband taught me housekeeping,” she quipped. “When I divorce I keep the house.”

• Like Zsa Zsa, Magda also married actor George Sanders but in her case for only one month.

• The Gabors weren’t big on motherhood. Zsa Zsa had only one child in nine marriages - a daughter born to Conrad Hilton. Despite eleven marriages in total between the two of them, Magda and Eva had no children at all.

• 1989: Zsa Zsa made the tabloids with a circus trial. A Beverly Hills cop pulled her over in her lavish Rolls Royce because the car had expired tags. While he ran a search of her license plate, Zsa Zsa drove off. When he stopped her again, he found open liquor and a revoked license. She grew belligerent, eventually slapping the officer. At trial, Zsa Zsa created pandemonium by accusing the cop of being both gay and a Nazi. The judge called it a publicity stunt. She was fined thousands of dollars and served three days in jail.

• The Gabor Sisters’ careers and lives faded away after that.

• Eva was vacationing in Mexico when she slipped in a bathtub and injured herself. That brought on pneumonia. She died in 1995. Magda died two years later in Southern California at age 82.

• Zsa Zsa’s final marriage was to a much younger German man who was involved in the practice of adult adoption for the purposes of establishing inheritance rights. She also supposedly lost millions to Bernard Madoff.

• Despite numerous debilitating health issues later in life, Zsa Zsa lived to within a few weeks of her 100th birthday.

• Her widower sent her cremated remains to be buried in her native Hungary. The ashes were placed in a gold box and shipped overseas in a first class airline seat.