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Zsa Zsa Gabor called her 1991 autobiography One Lifetime is Not Enough, and she was clearly not exaggerating.
Gabor, 93, broke her hip last July and received last rites from a priest in August after complications from surgery. She rebounded from these setbacks, until her hospitalization in Los Angeles this weekend for a blood clot that threatened amputation of her leg. She remains at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center there for observation as doctors decide whether or not to perform this procedure.
Born Sári Gábor in Budapest in 1917, Zsa Zsa came to the United States in 1941, along with her late sisters Magda and Eva, the latter of Green Acres fame. Their mother, Jolie Gabor, was also a socialite and celebrity by association.
Decades before Paris Hilton or any Kardashian woman would gain fame for being, well, famous? The Gabor family set a fairly high bar, even without the 24/7 exposure of the Internet and nary a reality show. Zsa Zsa made movies, notably Moulin Rouge in 1952 but is probably most famous for making the talk and game show rounds for decades. Merv Griffin wrote in his autobiography:
All these years later, 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.
Gerold Frank, who helped her write Zsa Zsa Gabor: My Story in 1960, told Life magazine the year before that the actress was, as the cliche goes, timeless.
Zsa Zsa is unique. She's a woman from the court of Louis XV who has somehow managed to live in the 20th century, undamaged by the PTA.... She says she wants to be all the Pompadours and Du Barrys of history rolled into one, but she also says, 'I always goof. I pay all my own bills.... I want to choose the man. I do not permit men to choose me.
She chose men frequently, actually, and married nine of them. Her first marriage, to Berhan Belge in 1937, lasted until 1941. She married hotel heir Conrad Hilton in 1942, a union that netted her 5,000 Gideon bibles, she joked later, as well as her only child, daughter Constance Francesca Hilton. Her shortest marriage, to Mexican actor Felipe de Alba, lasted one day in April, 1983, and was annulled. Her longest, to German Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt in 1986, continues after almost 25 years.
This marriage has not been without its bumps, including Frédéric's claim after Anna Nicole Smith died in 2007 that her daughter may be his. He was also found naked and chained to the steering wheel of his Rolls Royce in 2006, claiming that "three white women" took his jewelry and clothes at gunpoint. A reported plan to run for governor of California last year -- on a "Return the Good Life to California" platform -- never got off the ground.
Jacob Bernstein wrote a piece in the The Daily Beast last August, questioning Frédéric's claims to royal lineage and the truth of his reports on Zsa Zsa's health.
In one corner is her husband, Prince Frédéric von Anhalt of Germany, who seems practically to be drafting hourly press releases on the failing health of his wife. His very title is questionable. The son of a policeman, he acquired the “prince” thing in what many press reports said was a business transaction with a bankrupt member of the deposed nobility. And he has a remarkable history of telling stories to the press that don’t always turn out to be true.
Zsa Zsa got into some legal trouble herself in her later years. Accused of slapping an L.A. police officer in 1989 -- an action that she later spoofed in movies -- she also had to pay out a few million dollars for libeling German actress Elke Sommer in the early '90s.
Zsa Zsa also sued her daughter for fraud in 2005, for allegedly borrowing against Gabor's Beverly Hills mansion and leaving her with undisclosed debt. There are conflicting reports that the suit was dropped and that she and Francesca have reconciled. Leslie Bennetts wrote a fascinating profile of Zsa Zsa and Frederic in September, 2007, including some of her last formal photographs and interviews with the couple. (The
