Three sisters, twenty marriages, nineteen husbands and one child.
The Gabor sisters were all born during the First World War. They were born in Hungary, all three ended up in the States and between them they married twenty times. There were fifteen divorces, a couple of annulments yet only one child resulted from these many unions.
The Gabor sisters with their mother.
Zsa Zsa
Zsa Zsa Gabor was probably the most famous of the three sisters — and she was the most married. She first married when she was twenty years old; her husband was a Turkish intellectual. The marriage ended in divorce four years later.
All three girls wanted to be actresses, most likely because of the influence of their mother, and ZsaZsa’s sister Eva had already made her way to the States. Zsa Zsa joined her and made her next conquest – Conrad Hilton who was considerably older than her and the extremely rich owner of the Hilton hotel chain.
It was thanks to this marriage, that lasted five years, that the only child was born to a Gabor sister – Zsa Zsa and Conrad had one daughter, Francesca. Zsa Zsa did admit though to having an affair with Conrad’s son from a previous marriage which no doubt contributed to the breakdown of marital bliss.
Another five years marriage then took place when Zsa Zsa hooked up with British actor George Sanders. When they divorced she then had another three quick marriages. The next guy, MIchael O’Hara got lucky and lasted for almost six years before Zsa Zsa moved on to number eight, a Mexican. This marriage was immediately annulled because her previous divorce was invalid.
Despite claiming to be considerably younger, Zsa was now sixty six years old. Three years later, and at seventy years old, she married Frédéric Prince of Anhalt (twenty six years her junior and not, despite the name, a prince.) He had been married at least six or seven times before, no-one is really sure.
Magda
Magda was the oldest of the three sisters but the last one to come to America. She had remained in Europe during the Second World War. At the time she was thought to be the fiance ( read’mistress’) of an ambassador and also had a relationship with an Spanish nobleman.
Nevertheless she married a Polish count (and RAF airman) but when she arrived in the States after WW2 she proclaimed her status to be that of a divorcee. Within a year of her arrival in the States she married an American playwright. The marriage lasted for less than a year and ended in divorce.
Two years later she married another American for an equally short period of time. She then had a ten year marriage which ended when her husband died.
You’ll remember that her sister Zsa Zsa had had a five year marriage with British actor George Sands, Well, after a couple of years of widowhood Magda too married the same actor. In the sixteen years between his divorce from one Gabor sister and his marriage to another, George Sands had enjoyed another marriage.
Some people say that Magda married George to make her sister jealous or out of some bizarre form of sibling spite but whatever the reason it was a pretty quick marriage – they were wed in December 1970 and the union had been annulled by February 1971. This explains why the Gabor girls were married twenty times but only had nineteen husbands – one was ‘shared’.
Another quickie followed when Magda married a real estate broker. They split up after a few months too and were finally divorced a couple of years later.
Eva
By some standards, youngest sister Eva positively demure when compared to her sisters as she was married a mere five times and didn’t marry an ex-brother-in-law or any other relation. (Or have an affair with a stepson). Most of her marriages were quite long-lasting too — well, maybe not by your definition or mine but certainly when compared to her sisters.
She was already married when she arrived in the States — to a Swedish osteopath she had met in London. They were married for almost five years before their divorce in 1942.
The following year Eva married an investment broker for another five year stint.
Although the next guy (conveniently a plastic surgeon) lasted less than a year her fourth marriage was very long-lasting by Gabor standards – it was fourteen years before they were divorced.
Finally, in the same year of her last divorce she embarked upon another marital adventure – this time of that lasted ten years.
Zsa Zsa, the most-married and the only one to have had a child, died on December 18th, 2016 – at the age of 99.
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