ZSA ZSA GABOR

(6 February 1917 - 18 December 2016)

The Hungarian-American actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was born in Budapest. Having been crowned Miss Hungary, Zsa Zsa moved to the US and made her name playing exotic and glamorous parts, including the can-can dancer Jane Avril in John Huston’s Moulin Rouge (1953), probably her best film. Always publicity-conscious, she became known not for her acting but for having nine husbands, including the hotelier Conrad Hilton and actor George Sanders in marriages that seldom lasted more than five years, apart from her last to Prinz von Anhalt which ran for thirty years. Zsa Zsa was a socialite with a very likeable personality which she was always willing to parody. Having claimed she was a good housekeeper, she admitted that “every time I leave a man, I keep his house.” Her first Hollywood film was Mervyn LeRoy’s Lovely to Look At (1952), then We’re Not Married with Ginger Rogers. After Moulin Rouge she was in Lili, Three Ring Circus, and later Touch of Evil, but for every good film there was a complete opposite, such as the camp classic Queen of Outer Space. She was in For the First Time, Pepe (with Cantinflas), Drop Dead Darling, and Up the Front with Frankie Howerd. She played herself in Nightmare on Elm Street 3, The Naked Gun 2½ and The Beverly Hillbillies. Much of Zsa Zsa’s career was spent on TV often playing herself, as she did in her last film, A Very Brady Sequel (1996).

MICHAEL DARVELL