Zsa Zsa Gabor, Budapest-born socialite and actor, dies at 99

For half a century Zsa Zsa Gabor was a show business and society phenomenon. From her arrival in the US from Hungary in 1941 — aged 23 or 24 (depending on which of two disputed birth dates, 1917 or 1918, you credit) — to the publication of an autobiography declaratively titled One Life is Not Enough, the Budapest-born beauty, socialite and screen personality seemed to travel with a VIP entry pass to the world’s gossip columns.

She appeared in more than 30 films, but few people can remember the titles. She was never a major movie star. At best, as in Moulin Rouge (1952), she could cling precariously to exotic supporting roles, using her thick Hungarian accent like an adhesive. In other movies she settled for cameos. Sometimes she played herself or comically referenced her own well-known off-screen escapades.

Guest-starring in The Naked Gun 2½ (1991) she replayed an infamous 1989 incident in which she slapped a police officer’s face after being pulled over for a traffic violation. Gabor’s three days in jail, after arrest, made her America’s best-known incarcerated diva before Paris Hilton.

She married nine times, outdoing Elizabeth Taylor, with whom she shared a nuptial connection with the Hilton dynasty. Gabor’s second husband was Conrad Hilton, father of Taylor’s husband-to-be Nicky.

Her best-known show business spouse was film star George Sanders: a five-year union (1949-1954) with an actor who later, briefly, wedded Zsa Zsa’s sister Magda (in 1970).

Zsa Zsa (Sariá) was the middle of three Gabor siblings — Magda the oldest, Eva the youngest — born in Austria-Hungary after the first world war. She made her stage debut in Vienna at the age of 15. She was Miss Hungary in 1936. The three sisters emigrated to the US in 1941.

I am a great housekeeper. Every time I get a divorce I keep the house

Zsa Zsa’s first film was Lovely to Look At (1952), a Red Skelton comedy. In the early 1950s she made two to three films a year. Seldom the bride but often the scene-stealing bridesmaid, she offered beauty, bizarre charm and the most unwieldy accent before her later fellow central European, Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Dah-link!” became Zsa Zsa’s campy catchword, regularly heard on television in countless comedy shows, game shows and chat shows.

She could be called one of the first celebrities in the modern “famous for being famous” style. It was hard to pin down actual talent; easy to see the charm, effervescent eccentricity and telegenic presence.

Her politics were as extrovert, and for detractors as skin-deep, as her showbiz personality: she campaigned for Richard Nixon in the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections. Her first two books of memoirs — Zsa Zsa Gabor, My Story, co-written with Gerold Frank (1960); How to Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man and How to Get Rid of a Man (1970) — were flamboyant ego trips, combining memories from Zsa Zsa’s past with present and future life advice for readers.

How to get rid of a litigious movie rival was a different matter. In 1993 Gabor paid $2m in legal settlement to actress Elke Sommer after a long quarrel of obscure origin, ending in a defamation suit.

The witticisms helped. Schooled by long experience in sex and marriage, Gabor could run Mae West a close second in bons mots. “A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.” “A husband is like a fire. He goes out if unattended.” “I am a great housekeeper. Every time I get a divorce I keep the house.”

Custom cannot stale a socialite/superstar. But age may inevitably wither her. In her 90s Gabor fell victim to doctors and surgeons. After losing part of a cancer-affected right leg to amputation, she was seen regularly re-escorted to hospital by her husband of 20 years, Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt.

Nigel Andrews