The Dizzying Gabors

There were so many of them! Mama Jolie and her daughters, Magda, Zsa Zsa and finally Eva. I'm old enough that I saw "Moulin Rouge," Zsa Zsa's only notable picture, in a theater in Kansas City, Mo. Certainly we were all around for the slapping the cop - El Segundo jail incident.

I had forgotten all about her until her husband Prinz von A began making the tabloids with some regularity. His latest project is to run for LA Mayor. Many may recall his gubanatorial campaign planks - legalize prostitution and marijuana use.

The library's bio section netted this treasure - "One Lifetime Is Not Enough" by Zsa Zsa and "assisted by edited by and put into proper English by Wendy Leigh."

The fandango of lies begins on page 13 when Zsa Zsa would have us believe that she proposed to a Turkish diplomat named Burhan Belge. He accepted and married her -- when she was 15 years old!

Uh, she was born in 1917 and the wedding license was dated in 1937 when she was actually 19 years old. The Gabors collectively have always lied about how old they are. "It's a Gabor thing, dahling, you wouldn't understand."

Probably not. Next at bat was Conrad Hilton, who fathered the only off-spring any of the Gabor sisters ever had. And naturally it was a girl - Francesca.

She married actor George Sanders when she was 32, a marriage that lasted five years, something of a record for her at that time. After George divorced Zsa Zsa he married Benita Hume until her death in 1967. Whereupon, he turned back to the Gabor stable (so to speak) and married Magda, Zsa Zsa's older sister! This union only lasted six weeks. Tired, alcoholic and sick, George committed suicide at 65. A case of Too Much Gabor-ing?

Now only Zsa Zsa is left. Magda died when she was 79; Eva at 76. Only Mama Jolie made it to 100. Magda and Mom are buried at Desert Memorial, Rancho Mirage, but Eva was planted in the Westwood cemetery among such notables as Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote.