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sa Zsa, dahling. Her childhood nickname and it says it all. Effortless yet extravagant, old-world yet modern, both extremes all at once. Actress and socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor titled her third published book One Life-time is Not Enough. Considering the sheer number of experiences she packed into her long life, it’s clear that she had it right, at least for herself. A brief article is hardly enough to gloss over the heights her celebrity climbed from the time she emerged as a competitive beauty in the Miss Hungary Pageant of 1933 to her death in 2016, just shy of 100 years old. In the years between, Zsa Zsa Gabor starred in over 60 films and as many television programs, often playing herself, married 8 men (9 if you count her one-day marriage at sea), and in her 60-odd years in Hollywood collected an incalculable number of stories. An influencer before Instagram, she was perhaps one of the first celebrities who was famous for being famous, paving the way for the likes of Paris Hilton (whose grandfather she once married) and Kim Kardashian. Gabor modernized a long tradition of diamonds-and-furs celebrity and feminine power. She had the fun everyone wished they were having, behaving exactly how she wanted without batting an eyelash. Her aura was one of coquettish delight, the kind of woman who (famously) never told you her age, who could sweep you up before you realized it, who was surrounded by such wealth, and such joy in it, that she was impossible to ignore. Zsa Zsa was born Sarí Gábor in 1917 in Budapest to affluent parents. Her father, Vilmos, was a soldier, and her mother, Jolie Gabor, was an heiress of the Tilleman family jewelry business, though some sources claim her family’s fortune came from owning brothels. Even before she became known for her extravagant lifestyle, Gabor lived a life of relative luxury. All three Gabor sisters attended Madame Subilia’s School for Young Ladies in Lausanne, Switzerland, where on top of the Hungarian and German they spoke at home, they learned English and French. They emerged, beautiful and accomplished, onto the social scene in the 1930s. If there is a gene that predicts celebrity, the Gabor family had it. Her sisters, eldest Madga and youngest Eva, would also grow up to become socialites in the United States. Gabor’s earliest appearance in the spotlight after the famed Miss Hungary pageant was her stage debut in 1934. At 17, Zsa Zsa had already begun establishing the character she would portray her whole life. On the boards of the Theatre van den Wien in Vienna, Zsa Zsa played the “soubrette” role in the operetta The Singing Dream, an archetype for just the sort of girl she seemed to set out to be: a flirt, a gossip, a mischievous feminine presence who pulls focus every moment she stands on stage. She was cast
Gabor from the 1954 drama Beauty and the Bullfighter, where dashing matador Ricardo (Daniel Gélin) resists getting back into action after a fellow bullfighter is killed in the ring, even if it means losing his fickle actress mistress. SMITH ARCHIVE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
