The Many Marriages of Zsa Zsa Gabor

"I am a marvelous housekeeper: every time I leave a man I keep his house."

I’m not sure many of the younger generations know about Zsa Zsa Gabor. She was never heralded as a great talent, nor did she star in a ton of masterpieces. She hasn’t been adopted as a grand camp icon or referenced as heavily as other stars of her time, like Joan Crawford or Elizabeth Taylor. I’m a nerd for both classic Hollywood and celebrity gossip, and I couldn’t tell you much about her beyond a few scant details: her dramatic name, her sister Eva (a.k.a. Miss Bianca in The Rescuers!), her very brief appearance in Touch of Evil, and, of course, her many marriages. Liz got to eight, but Zsa Zsa had nine.

Sári Gábor was the middle daughter of a Jewish-Hungarian family headed by an ambitious jewellery shop owner and socialite named Jolie. Nicknamed Zsa Zsa as a kid, she went to America with her sisters and the trio - Magda, Zsa Zsa, and Eva - became known as gorgeous socialites who appeared at every party. Zsa Zsa started doing small film roles, but was mostly known to American audiences as a talk show guest. Here was a woman who had stories to tell: she claimed to have danced with Hitler on two separate occasions and gone on a blind date with Henry Kissinger.

Zsa Zsa's a great example of the phenomenon of "famous for being famous." TV host Merv Griffin said of the Gabor sisters, "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." Before reality TV, we had It Girls like this, who seemed to be everywhere without doing much of anything. Zsa Zsa always seemed game for a bad B-movie or juicy interview or cameo in the most random of projects (she's in Nightmare on Elm Street 3, The Naked Gun 2 ½, and A Very Brady Sequel.)

She remained enticing because she was such an oddity, a flung-out-of-time socialite who lived like a queen and rejected the changing times. She was once pulled over by a cop for a traffic violation - she drove a Rolls-Royce - and she slapped him. When she was sentenced to serve three days in jail and 120 hours of community service, she refused to do the latter. Everything about her seemed like it had been taken from a parody of out-of-touch celebrity living. So, of course she had nine husbands. She even published books on her prowess: Zsa Zsa’s Complete Guide to Men and How to Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man, How to Get Rid of a Man.

And since I got such positive feedback on my piece on Liz Taylor’s husbands, I thought it’d be fun to dive into Zsa Zsa’s gang of men.

ONE: BURHAN BELGE

After studying at a Swiss boarding school, as any socialite in waiting would have done in the early 1930s, Gabor became a beauty queen and bit-part stage actress. Back in Hungary, she met and married Burhan Belge, a Turkish intellectual and politician who was something of a left-wing stalwart. Belge was serving as the Ambassador of Turkey to Budapest when he met the teenage Zsa Zsa. While being a diplomat’s wife had its perks, Zsa Zsa was half her husband’s age and quickly grew bored of him. In her memoir, she claims to have lost her virginity to Mustafa Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey and its first President (and a genocidal maniac.) “He gave me lessons in love, in passion, and in intrigue. He also ruined for me every other man I would ever love, or try to love...” wrote Zsa Zsa. Yikes. She divorced Belge and moved on to bigger things in America.

TWO: CONRAD HILTON SR.

Liz Taylor had a notoriously bad time with Nicky Jr., and I’m not sure it will surprise you to hear that the elder Hilton heir did not treat Zsa Zsa well either. Conrad had told her to change her name to something more Hungarian, so she, for a brief time, became Georgia. "My Hungarian roots were to be ripped out and my background ignored. [...] I soon discovered that my marriage to Conrad meant the end of my freedom. My own needs were completely ignored: I belonged to Conrad." They had one child together, Zsa Zsa’s only one, a daughter named Francesca Hilton. Francesca later wrote in her own memoir that she was conceived through marital rape. Zsa Zsa herself confirmed this. She also revealed that she had an affair with Nicky Jr. Neither of these issues was what ended the marriage, she said. Rather, Conrad Sr. was guilt-stricken over divorcing his first wife to marry someone outside of his Catholic faith. They split up after five years.

Oh, and if you were wondering what Zsa Zsa thought of her ex's granddaughter, fellow "famous for being famous" It Girl Paris Hilton, she sniffed to Vanity Fair, "I think she's rather silly. She does too many things for publicity."

THREE: GEORGE SANDERS

Zsa Zsa went Hollywood for husband number three and landed George Sanders, the legendary character actor (and descendant of a Dundee family, yay) who you probably know best from Rebecca, All About Eve, and the Batman TV series. He's an icon, and we love him.