Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor dead at 99
Zulekha Nathoo | CBC News | Posted: December 18, 2016 11:32 PM | Last Updated: December 19, 2016
The retired actress and socialite died Sunday at her home in Los Angeles
Zsa Zsa Gabor, who many argue pioneered the business of being a celebrity and paved the way for socialite stars like the Kardashians, has died at age 99.
Multiple reports suggest she died of a possible heart attack at her Los Angeles home Sunday, two months away from her 100th birthday.
Born Sari Gabor in Budapest, Hungary, she fled Europe during the Second World War in 1941 to join her younger sister, Eva, also an actor, in the United States.
Gabor's Hollywood career began with television appearances and her first film was MGM's Lovely to Look At, in 1952, co-starring Kathryn Grayson and Red Skelton, but her big break came later that year in John Huston's Toulouse Lautrec biopic, Moulin Rouge, opposite Jose Ferrer.
She subsequently slipped back into supporting roles with parts in movies such as Lili (1953), Death of A Scoundrel (1956) and the Orson Welles classic Touch of Evil (1958).
Actress married 9 times
She was best known for her tumultuous love life. She was married nine times, including to hotelier Conrad Hilton.
"A girl must marry for love," she once said, "and keep on marrying until she finds it."
Seven of those marriages ended in divorce and one was annulled. She was married to Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt in 1986 and remained with him until her death.
'Dahling'
She often referred to people as "dahling" and was considered a sex symbol in the 1950s and 60s. Gabor flaunted expensive jewelry as part of her glamourous persona and welcomed publicity of any kind.
Gabor's flashy lifestyle was paused in 1990, when she spent three days in jail after being convicted of slapping a police officer when she was stopped for a traffic violation.
But she was always able to laugh at herself, poking fun at the police incident in the 1991 movie The Naked Gun 2 ½ and in a 1991 episode of the television sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
In 2010, The Associated Press reported that Gabor and her husband, may have lost as much as $10 million US that they had invested with Bernard Madoff, the U.S investment adviser who operated one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history.
Health problems
The actress was left partially paralyzed in 2002 after a car accident and became reliant on a wheelchair. Her health began to deteriorate, with numerous stays in hospital. In 2011, one of her legs was amputated after contracting an infection.
Von Anhalt was granted control of her care in 2013, after a long battle with Gabor's only daughter, Constance Francesca Hilton, who died last year after a stroke.