Acknowledgments

My greatest gratitude goes to the Austrian cabaret entertainer, Greta Keller, who once shared a house with meover a period of threeyears. Overflowing with anecdotesabout the social protocols of the Weimar Republic, Old Vienna, and pre-communist Budapest, and the counter-cultural scandals of Hollywood during its so called “Golden Years,” she was the unofficial godmother of the Gabor sisters. For many of the insights into the early years of the Gabor sisters, I drew upon our unpublished manuscript describing Greta’s turbulent life.

Greta’s longtime friend was Jolie Gabor, who was a frequent visitor, gossipingwith Greta andchurning out Austro-Hungarian meals in my kitchen. What Zsa Zsa, Magda, and Eva didn’t tell, Jolie did. A sometimes cantankerousfont of ever-flowing information, she could be honest about the foibles and shortcomings of her famous daughters. She loved each of them dearly. ZsaZsa was her favorite.

The advertising executive, Stanley Mills Haggart, worked on various commercial endorsements with both ZsaZsa and Eva, and told wonderful stories about each of them. Much material for this book was drawn from his unpublished memoirs, which are especially rich in Gabor anecdotes from the late 1940s and throughout the 50s.

He didn’t want to be listed as a source, but a famous Anglo-American actor on the island of Majorca granted me an audience (“I don’t haveanything else to do”) when I was researching the Balearic Islands for Frommer’s Guide to Spain. He knew more about the Gaborsthan most men. He should, because he married two of them.

Many famous people, and hundreds not so famous, contributed over the decades. Special thanks to Tamara Gevaand Tallulah Bankhead (the former wives of actor John Emery), Susan Hayward, Merv Griffin, Ben Gazzara, Lana Turner, Jack Paar, John Huston, Howard Keel, Jimmy Donahue, Merle Oberon, Jack Ryan (Zsa Zsa’s former husband), José Luís de Vilallonga, and to my friend, Helga de Bordes, the late and long-time social director and duenna of the Techniker-Cercle Ball der Industrie und Technik (one of the Vienna Opera Balls), who befriended me during my research in Budapest and Vienna for anecdotes associated with the Gabors during their formative years in those glittering and endlessly fascinating cities.

Endless thanks go to all the people in various European and American cities who knew, loved, or were critical of the Gabors. I massed previously unknown information about them while researching such books as Frommer’s Los Angeles, Frommer’s Budapest, Frommer’s Vienna, Frommer’s Austria & Hungary, Frommer’s San Francisco, Frommer’s Italy, Frommer’s France, Frommer’s Madrid, Frommer’s Lisbon, Frommer’s London, Frommer’s Rome, Frommer’s French Riviera, Frommer’s Paris, Frommer’s Switzerland, Frommer’s Jamaica, and Frommer’s Dominican Republic.

In Santo Domingo, I met two Spanish filmmakers who wanted to raise money for a film about Zsa Zsa’s most famous lover, Porfirio Rubirosa. They were willing to share boxes of the material they’d compiled from the local and international press.

In essence, Zsa Zsa and Eva—and to a much lesser extent, Magda—wrote the story of their own lives.

Their favorite subject was the Gabors, and they constantly spoke of their social and romantic adventures around the world, at dinner parties, to friends, on talk shows, and to their legion of spouses and lovers. Their critics also had a lot to say as well. The roundup took only half a century.

Everyone who came into contact with the Gaborshad a story or revelations to tell. It could be something they said about themselves, or something they said about a third party. Invariably, their statements were piquant and, in many cases, fascinating.

The difficulty involved organizing this vast array of material into some form of coherent order. The Herculean task was made more difficult because Eva and Zsa Zsa would often deny something during one decade and, with the passage of time, reveal in another decade that the tale had been true after all.

Dozens of TV and movie crews, who worked behind the scenes with Eva and Zsa Zsa, relayed the details of revealing incidents. The British theatrical and film producer, Jimmy Woolf, was particularly helpful, as was comedian Phyllis Diller, who visited Zsa Zsa right before her own death.

I alsoowe a large debt to the greatest of the Gabor fans, Herbert Jacobson, originally a native and long-time resident of Brooklyn who retired to Miami. Over the course of his lifetime, he collected four large trunks of Gaborabilia in both English and other languages. In the 1970s, based on my role as the Key West Bureau Chief and Entertainment Columnist of The Miami Herald, he allowed me to wade through his trove of treasures.

When I learned of his death in 1979, I journeyed to Miami to purchase the ephemera from his estate.

To my regret, I discovered that his heir was a young man who obviously did not share Herbert’s fascination for the Gabors, and who didn’t realize what a (historically) valuable collection of memorabilia he’d inherited. He had consigned the dust-covered collection of clippings to the dustbin.

Fortunately, I had already gleaned tons of useful information before the collection was destroyed as garbage.

Although I’ve painted a portrait of the Gabors that is both flattering and horrific, it is, nonetheless, a tribute to these vonderful vimmen who in some strange way enriched our lives by sharing the planet with us.

Darwin Porter

New York City, July 2013