The Story of the Gabor Sisters, the Kardashians’ Predecessors, Who Had Their Own TV Show and Plenty of Fans in the 1950s
Almost all of us heard of modern celebrity dynasties. But very few people remember that the Gabor sisters stole the limelight in the middle of the 20th century. Television host Merv Griffin once said, “It’s hard to describe the phenomenon of the three glamorous Gabor girls and their ubiquitous mother. They burst onto the society pages and into the gossip columns so suddenly, and with such force, it was as if they’d been dropped out of the sky.”
In the times when social media didn’t exist, it was much harder to attract attention to your personal life. However, the Gabor sister managed to do it without much effort. At CHEERY, we decided to find out how these socialites managed to be as popular as modern celebrity dynasties, like the Kardashians.
Jolie Gabor
The mother of the future socialites was born in Budapest in 1896. Her parents were jewelers who owned a jewelry shop.
Jolie would often lie about her age, saying that she was born a few years later. She claimed that the year of her birth was 1900, once jokingly stating that she had lied so much about her age she didn’t remember her actual birth date.
Her daughters were born during her marriage to Vilmos Gabor. Magda was born in 1915, Zsa Zsa 2 years later, and Eva in 1919.
In 1930, Jolie Gabor decided to continue the family business, and opened a jewelry shop in Budapest, and then another shop that was selling crystal and porcelain. The business was so successful that she opened 3 more venues.
She moved to the United States at the age of 49. However, she quickly opened a successful jewelry business there too after borrowing $7,200 dollars from her daughters.
Her New York shop opened its doors in 1946. Its owner always tried to follow fashion trends and introduce new products to her customers. In 1953, for example, the store Jolie Gabor introduced ornamental metal fingernails studded with rhinestones.
Evangelia Callas, mother of opera star Maria Callas, in the New York City jewelry store
Jolie Gabor had much fewer husbands that her famous daughters. She was married thrice. Her first husband and father of Magda, Zsa Zsa, and Eva was Vilmos Gábor. Their marriage lasted for 25 years.
Jolie married for the second time after moving to New York. Her husband was restaurant manager Howard Peter Christman. They got married in 1947 and divorced a year later.
Gabor’s third spouse was Count Odon Szigethy. They tied the knot in New York on March 3, 1957. In an interview, Jolie said, “He takes care of me; he takes care of my business, my 3 homes in Florida, New York, and Connecticut.”
Jolie Gabor and Edmund De Szigethy cutting their wedding cake
Jolie always had to be busy with something new. Even at the age of 80, she signed a contract with a lecture bureau as a motivational speaker and went on tour around the country speaking about the relationship between beauty and female empowerment.
Magda Gabor
The eldest Gabor sister was known for being intellectual. Her social lifestyle was not as active as one of her sisters, and she didn’t mind spending some time reading a book. She was the last among her sisters to move to the US.
Magda tried herself in acting while still in Hungary. She played in the 1937 comedy Modern Girls. This was the only movie role in her acting career. Later, the socialite could be seen in a few TV shows, one of which was her sister’s The Eva Gabor Show.
Magda was married 6 times: she was widowed twice, divorced thrice, and one of her marriages was annulled.
Magda’s first husband was Count Jan Bychowsky; an American playwright and screenwriter, William M. Rankin, was second; attorney Sidney Robert Warren was third, and businessman Arthur Gallucci was fourth. Magda’s fifth marriage was to actor George Sanders who had been previously married to her sister Zsa Zsa. And her sixth husband was real-estate broker Tibor R. Heltai.
Magda Gabor offers a piece of wedding cake to her fourth husband, Arthur Gallucci
Magda managed to combine social life and work, just like her sisters. She worked as a designer in her mother’s jewelry shop.
Zsa Zsa Gabor
The middle sister started acting on stage in 1934. She was invited to sing the soubrette role in the operetta Der singende Traum at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. And not long before that, she took part in the fifth Miss Hungary pageant and placed second runner-up.
Zsa Zsa’s first movie appearance happened in 1952. She played a bit part in the musical romantic comedy Lovely to Look At, and then took on the role of a dancer in the movie Moulin Rouge. After that, she never stopped filming movies and TV shows up until the middle 1990s.
Apart from her movie and television career, Zsa Zsa became famous in Hollywood thanks to her extravagant lifestyle and love of luxury. She was married 9 times, 7 of her marriages ended up in divorce and one marriage was annulled.
One of her husbands was the hotel magnate Conrad Hilton. Their marriage lasted for about 5 years, but then Zsa Zsa realized that her husband began to ignore her needs. He even wanted her to change her name to a more American one, Georgia.
Her other husband, Herbert Hutner, on the contrary, was too kind and generous. Zsa Zsa said that she almost lost all her drive because of it. Later, author Gerold Frank, who helped Gabor write her autobiography, described her, “She says: I pay all my bills. I want to choose the man. I do not permit men to choose me.”
Zsa Zsa was the only one among the Gabor sisters who had a child. Her daughter, Constance Francesca Hilton, was born in 1947.
Zsa Zsa Gabor and her 16-year-old daughter Francesca Hilton
The photos of the socialite’s luxurious mansion often appeared in the press. And in November 1961, journalists caught her digging the ruins of her Los Angeles mansion with a shovel. Zsa Zsa was in New York when California was affected by forest fires that destroyed almost 500 buildings in the Bel Air community.
Zsa Zsa’s mansion was among them. After the fire, she flew to Los Angeles, and without taking off her white gloves, began to dig the ruins looking for her jewelry.
In 1970, Gabor purchased a nearly 9,000-square-foot mansion, which once belonged to Elvis Presley.
This purchase was actively discussed in the press. It was mentioned that the mansion had 28 rooms, a pool, a red-carpeted stairway to an upstairs outdoor patio, and a closet that held some 5,000 garments. The socialite decorated the mansion with elaborate sculptures and antiques, including gilded pianos and sconces, and white lion statues that greeted guests at the entrance.
Zsa Zsa lived in this house for more than 40 years up until her death. For the last 30 years, her partner was Frederic Prinz von Anhalt whom she married in 1986.
Eva Gabor
The youngest sister, Eva, was the first among the Gabor family who moved to the US. She went to conquer this country when she was only 18. Not long before that, she married osteopath Eric Valdemar Drimmer.
At the time, the young woman didn’t think of becoming a socialite — Eva planned to lead a quiet family life. But her husband didn’t want to have children and couldn’t come to terms with his young wife. As a result, their marriage ended up in divorce, and Eva Gabor decided to become an actress. Her debut movie role was in the 1941 movie Forced Landing.
After that, she mostly played bit parts in movies, but in 1953, she was given her own television talk show, The Eva Gabor Show. In 1965, the actress played one of the starring roles in the sitcom Green Acres which tells the story of a family couple who decide to move from New York City to a country farm.
After her first divorce, Eva forgot about her dreams of having a baby. Her 4 other marriages were also childless.
The actress’s second husband was investment broker Charles Isaacs. Plastic surgeon John Elbert Williams was her third husband. Richard Brown, a textile manufacturer, was her fourth husband. And her fifth and last husband was Frank Gard Jameson Sr. who was an aerospace executive, and she became a stepmother to his 4 children.
But this marriage also ended up in divorce — they split in 1983. Since then, Eva would avoid getting married, giving preference to affairs. One of her long-term affairs was with TV producer Merv Griffin.
Eva Gabor with her fifth husband, Frank Jameson
Jolie Gabor left this world at 100 years old. Eva and Magda died at the age of 76 and 81 correspondingly. The middle sister was close to celebrating her 100th anniversary but died at 99. During her last years, she was bedridden but still managed to appear on the society pages.
In 2011, her husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, announced that 94-year-old Zsa Zsa Gabor was planning to have a baby through a surrogate.
It’s hard to say why journalists and photographers were after the life of these women. The Gabor sisters and their mother were not internationally famous actresses or TV personalities, but they were never ashamed of talking about their personal life and remained mysterious to the public at the same time.
Anyway, Jolie, Magda, Zsa Zsa, and Eva managed to go down in history and become Hollywood celebrities. And if nowadays many of us are fans of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, in the 50s, viewers enjoyed watching The Eva Gabor Show.
The Gabor sisters and their mother can also be called the predecessors of the modern celebrity dynasties. Today, we follow the life of the Kardashian and Hadid sisters. And another famous socialite, Paris Hilton, is distantly related to the Gabors. She’s a great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton, one of Zsa Zsa’s ex-husbands.
Would you want to become a socialite? Or do you prefer a quiet lifestyle? Tell us in the comments below.