Jolie Gabor

Author, Socialite. She gained fame as the mother of Zsa Zsa, Eva, and Magda Gabor, three Hungarian beauties, who became Hollywood actresses. Born in a Galician Jewish Hungarian household, she was named Janka "Johnny" by her parents, who had wanted a son. Her mother's family, the Reinharz, were successful jewelers with their "House of Diamonds." Escaping her dull first marriage to Vilmos Gabor, a Hungarian army officer, she had lost any hopes of stardom even though she was as glamorous as her daughters. At this point in her life, she started persuading her three daughters towards fame and fortune with a vengeance. "You will be rich, famous and married to kings," she told them. With that end in sight, she drove them to master everything they began. Fleeing the Nazi invasion of her homeland during World War II, she made it to the United States in 1939, newly divorced and with only $100 and a big diamond to her name. Her brother, mother and other relatives were casualties of World War II. On the other hand, Zsa Zsa had immigrated earlier and married hotel baron Conrad Hilton. With Zsa Zsa's financial backing, she opened a costume jewelry shop in 1946 that was later relocated to the prestigious address of Madison Avenue in New York City and then expanded to Palm Springs, California. She sold the business in the late 1980s. Like her daughters, she called everyone with her thick Hungarian accent, "Dahlingk," and was a socialite, loving parties and was always ready to "pawn a diamond to pay for champagne." "Life's a gamble," she said, "you must know how to play it." In 1975 she had a career as a motivation speaker on the subject of a woman's beauty and empowerment. She published her 1975 autobiography "Jolie Gabor" and the 1962 cookbook "Jolie Gabor's Family Cookbook," which had copious amounts of paprika and sour cream in all the recipes. Between 1950 and 1960, she had a bit part in at least four television productions. In 1970 she and her daughter Zsa Zsa made a television commercial for La Grande Bug Volkswagon. Besides Gabor, she married Howard Peter Christman in 1947 but was divorced by 1948, and in 1957, she married the Hungarian Count Odon de Szigethy. The couple had known each other from their younger years in Hungary and were married 32 years before his death. In 1966 she and her husband, Count Odon de Szigethy, purchased a modest home in Ridgefield, Connecticut. After redecorating the home, they sold the place in 1970 with much publicity and purchased another home in the neighborhood. She had only one grandchild, Zsa Zsa's daughter, Francesca Hilton.