Finding Zsa Zsa

Zsa Zsa hated her role as the poor refugee living with relatives in a new world teeming with rich men and rich opportunities. Here I am in a bungalow, she thought, when a mile away are ten thousand mansions. Surely one of them was destined for her? And an American husband to go with it, since her second desire—or third, after money and fame—was the security of U.S. citizenship. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, and the American declaration of war against Axis nations, she risked being declared an enemy alien owing to her Hungarian nationality. Once more, that Turkish diplomatic passport served her well. Still, with divorce from Burhan pending, she could not clutch it indefinitely.

It is unlikely that Zsa Zsa knew the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty, though certainly its spirit inflamed her. Had she read those words as her ship sailed into New York Harbor—“I lift my lamp beside the golden door”—she might have fancied herself the very one that Lady Liberty had in mind. A sentiment echoed by Oscar Levant, who cracked in 1955, “Zsa Zsa not only worships the Golden Calf, she barbecues it for lunch.”

On April 10, 1942, ten months after arriving in the U.S., she married one of the richest men in America, Conrad Hilton. To the public, Zsa Zsa’s name is now better known than his. Everyone of course knows the Hilton hotels, and viewers of Mad Men, season three, may recall a ruthless character named Conrad Hilton who frustrated and annoyed Don Draper. That character, played by Chelcie Ross, neither looked nor sounded like the actual Conrad Hilton. The producers might as well have cast Meryl Streep. By contrast, compare on youtube.com Conrad Hilton’s appearance as a guest on Art Linkletter’s House Party in 1954. There he exudes bonhomie and sincerity, whether genuine or not. He was sixty-seven years old at the time and as sexy as—well, a senior Don Draper, though minus Draper’s tightly wound intensity. Throughout a long career, Hilton used his Southwest accent and easy Western charm, along with the confidence of a super-rich man, to project affability. Unlike today’s robber barons, many of them robbing even more efficiently in politics, Hilton was as upright as a multimillionaire capitalist can be. As J. Randy Taraborelli writes in The Hiltons, “Generally speaking, he was well liked and had a stellar reputation among his colleagues. He was known as much for his philanthropy as for his hotel empire.” It’s easy to see how Zsa Zsa, or any woman who liked older men, might go for Conrad Hilton, “Connie” to his friends. What Zsa Zsa didn’t realize in 1942 was this: she had met her match.

And so had he. Hilton married her against his better judgment, for he was a devout Roman Catholic who had divorced his first wife, the mother of his sons Nicky, Barron, and Eric. His remarriage meant estrangement from the Church. In his 1957 autobiography, Be My Guest, Hilton recalled his sadness at being denied the sacraments. “Sundays when we went to church, for I went as I had always done, and Zsa Zsa went with me, there was this difference: When the congregation rose and made its way toward the altar rail to receive Holy Communion, I stayed on my knees in the pew, chained, as it were, to the side of my beautiful wife.”

His better judgment surely told him, too, that beautiful Zsa Zsa, exactly thirty years younger than he, was not unaware of his affluence. Had their marriage lasted longer than five years, she might have depleted the riches of his empire. Turned loose among such bounty, Zsa Zsa toiled not, neither did she spin. But frugal Connie gasped to see her spend.

Before the start-up of her conspicuous consumption, however, she must marry the man, and so she lost no time waiting for him to propose. Zsa Zsa took charge herself. It came about like this. Early in December 1941 she and Eva went to Ciro’s, the Sunset Strip nightclub, with their dates. Zsa Zsa’s escort that night was Greg Bautzer, a handsome, high-profile Hollywood attorney who had dated every star in town and would continue to do so until his marriage, in 1956, to actress Dana Wynter. As it happened, Conrad Hilton had also come to Ciro’s with a date, and during the evening someone pointed him out to Zsa Zsa. She didn’t know his exact age—fifty-four—but he reminded her of Vilmos and of the other older men she had swooned over. When she learned that he was in the hotel business, that he had no wife, and that he liked respectable women as long as they didn’t carry decency to extremes—she dazzled him with a smile that flashed the signal she meant it to.

He asked her to dance, for he was a good dancer, and as soon as he held her in his arms he realized what an unusual girl he had come across. The accent, the unpronounceable name, the erotic aggression that she, unlike American girls, even in Hollywood, didn’t try to cover up. Several times he attempted to wrap his tongue around “Zsa Zsa,” but finally gave up. She suggested her stage name from Vienna, and he announced, “I’m going to call you Georgia.” And so he did for the next thirty-eight years, for he and “Georgia” Gabor remained friends long after their divorce. He didn’t approve of her, and often she irritated him beyond endurance, but that smile like a simultaneous declaration of war and peace, along with the blonde hair and the outrageous wit that really should be censored, Conrad thought, even as he roared at her latest ribald remarks—all of that made her impossible to let go. “She brought more laughter and gaiety than I had ever known in my personal life,” he said.

On the dance floor at Ciro’s she looked up at him, smiled like an odalisque, and said in her most cunning English, “I think I vill marry you.” He had been around, he knew how to play the game, and so he quipped, “Is that what you think, Georgia? Well, why not? I dare you!”

“Our marriage was doomed before it started,” Conrad Hilton wrote sixteen years later in his autobiography.

* * *

Lest Zsa Zsa appear as a complete mercenary, I quote further from Be My Guest. “Zsa Zsa was not always on the receiving end by any means. She herself loved to give. She showered presents and attention on my mother; she would drive halfway across the city to take her a nosegay. Mother was enraptured and, much as she regretted that our church would not welcome Zsa Zsa, referred to her affectionately as ‘that dear girl.’ Zsa Zsa also bought tennis rackets and fishing poles for Nick and Barron.”

Had it not been for Zsa Zsa’s inconvenient previous marriage, she might have become a fixture in the Hilton family’s place of worship, the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. There Francesca’s confirmation took place, and Zsa Zsa herself attended from time to time over the years along with scores of other stars including Eva, Merv Griffin, Loretta Young, Irene Dunne, Gary Cooper, Carmen Miranda, and Rosalind Russell, who dubbed the church “Our Lady of the Cadillacs.”

Conrad and Zsa Zsa had more in common than was evident to casual observers of their marriage. Both loved animals, especially dogs and horses, and both thrived on work, although not until her entry into show business did Zsa Zsa begin the grueling agenda that belied her playgirl image. A look at her schedule, and Eva’s, makes one wonder how either had time for the occasional rendezvous, let alone fourteen marriages between them. Neither knew the meaning of nine to five. Their days often stretched in the opposite direction—from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. or later, with hours of socializing still to come. Zsa Zsa also loved the trappings of Old World romance, and Connie, while courting, sent roses every day.

Even as the roses faded, romance faded. Before long, Zsa Zsa realized that Connie had only two passions in life: his religion, and Hilton hotels. At home on Bellagio Road, in the grandiose Spanish-inspired Hilton estate, he formulated an austere budget for Zsa Zsa to follow. Next, he declared that his wife would have her own bedroom, and he would keep his. He offered two reasons for this: well along in middle age, he had his routines and sleep habits that he did not wish to change. He also disliked witnessing a woman’s elaborate beauty rituals—makeup, hair, fussing over this dress versus another one and switching outfits as if in a house of couture. He prayed regularly on his knees at the prie-dieu near his bed, and a sprightly young wife of Zsa Zsa’s temperament would surely claim that kneeling bagged her nylons. “Can I stop him from praying?” she wondered, a line that belongs in a Molière comedy. According to members of the Hilton family, separate bedrooms soon precluded conjugal visits.

So the marriage lumbered on, and despite the prestige and financial security of her coveted title, Mrs. Conrad Hilton, Zsa Zsa declined, her self-confidence wavered. Why did her husband no longer find her attractive? Why couldn’t she make him laugh? What did the future hold for her? Once she had dreamed of becoming an actress, but here she was in Hollywood and her husband’s name and reputation overshadowed her. Zsa Zsa’s great consolation, during her empty days in what came to be known as her wing of the vast Hilton house, was Ranger, Conrad’s German police dog. “Until I began to lavish love on her, she hid from everyone,” Zsa Zsa recalled. “Little by little she grew to have confidence in me and became my constant companion, sleeping on the chaise longue in my room at night. Sometimes when I walked about aimlessly, she would nudge her wet nose into my palm as if she sensed my loneliness.”

Zsa Zsa visited Eva almost daily. Bundy Solt, their school friend from Budapest, joined them and “for an hour we were back home again, chattering in Hungarian, our plates piled high with salami and green peppers.”

* * *

Almost two years into the marriage, on March 19, 1944, Zsa Zsa heard the worst possible news from Hungary. Hitler, losing patience with his lackadaisical ally, Admiral Horthy, had invaded the country. All Jews were to be rounded up and systematically destroyed. Adolf Eichmann arrived in Budapest to supervise the job. Horthy, meanwhile, attempted to negotiate an armistice with any Allied nation not under German control, whether Britain or the United States. Despite his antipathy to communism, he even decided that the Soviet Union was a lesser evil than Germany, and made plans to surrender Hungary to the Red Army. Hitler, learning of Horthy’s intent, removed him from office on October 15, 1944. To render Horthy completely impotent, Hitler kidnapped his son to Germany. (These events, and the plight of Hungarian Jews under Hitler, are represented with unusual accuracy in Mark Schmidt’s 2014 film, Walking with the Enemy, in which Ben Kingsley portrays Admiral Horthy.)

Up to the time of the invasion, most Jews in Hungary, at least those in the middle classes, remained at least dimly optimistic that the war would soon end and normality return. As Mrs. Annette Lantos, Jolie’s niece, told me: “From 1940 to 1944, Hungary was a pleasant place to live if you had money.” Nevertheless, during this time many Jewish men, including Mrs. Lantos’s father—Jolie’s brother, Sebestyn Tillemann—were inducted into a nonmilitary labor brigade. Mrs. Lantos said that he, unlike some, was treated well “because he was known for his charitable works and giving money to many worthy causes.” Since the time had now passed when he, and countless others like him, could leave the country, it seemed wise to face, accept, and let time pass.

Jolie, Vilmos, Magda, and others in the Tillemann and Gabor families, along with thousands of others identified as Jews by Hungarian fascists and German authorities, now wore the yellow star. So shameful was this badge of bigotry and hate that no Gabor ever mentioned it. Mrs. Lantos, on the other hand, like many Holocaust survivors, kept hers as a symbol. I do not presume to speak for anyone who did or did not preserve the yellow star, for each person surely had enormous cause either to remember, or to forget.

* * *

Several years prior to the German invasion of Hungary, Magda had joined the anti-Nazi underground. Owing to her marriage to a Pole, and to her time in Warsaw, she spoke passable Polish. When Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Magda had already returned to Budapest. Her family gave various accounts of her wartime activities, though Magda herself said almost nothing. For that reason, it is difficult to render a full account.

Zsa Zsa said that her sister volunteered as a Red Cross driver taking medical supplies to Polish soldiers who had escaped to Hungary after the Germans invaded their country. Hungary, however, as an ally of Germany, found itself in a most awkward position vis-à-vis these refugee soldiers. The solution: they were interned in prisoner of war camps some seventy-five miles outside Budapest. Those medical supplies that Magda delivered were sent by the British embassy. Soon, along with medical supplies, Magda also delivered civilian clothes to the soldiers. Once out of uniform, and dressed in the apparel of ordinary Hungarians, many of the soldiers crossed the border into Romania, from there to Bulgaria and on to neutral Turkey, eventually making their way to Egypt where they joined up with British fighting men.

Magda, after delivering civilian clothes, would return to the British embassy in Budapest with a truckload of discarded Polish military uniforms, which were then burned. As the situation became more urgent, she also smuggled men from the prisoner of war camps into Budapest, where they were dispatched with documents forged by the British. One of Magda’s few statements about her work is this: “The Embassy gave me directions, telling me when I could bring in men, when I could only transport clothes.”

Those activities ceased, however, in December 1941, when the British embassy closed. From then until March 19, 1944, when Hitler at last invaded Hungary, Magda’s story resembles a white page sprinkled with cryptic jottings. Based on somewhat sketchy evidence, however, I have pieced together her continued efforts to save lives. To put the situation in context, I quote from Raphael Patai, author of The Jews of Hungary.

Patai devotes several pages to what he calls “a relatively unknown chapter of the history of the Jews in Hungary during World War II. It is the story of the Polish Jews who were given refuge in Hungary, and thereby got a brief lease on life until the Nazi fury overtook them.” After the German army crushed all Polish resistance in the fall of 1939, many civilian refugees, along with the soldiers already mentioned, streamed into Hungary. They were able to do so because the Soviet Union, in an attempt to stop Hitler, had occupied eastern Poland on September 17, 1939. An estimated 20,000 refugees, Jews and non-Jews, fled eastern Poland, crossed into Soviet Ukraine, and from there into Hungary and Romania. Others took a more direct route through Slovakia, which had achieved brief status as an independent state. The journey was perilous; many did not survive it. According to Patai, “The German Embassy [in Budapest] demanded that the Polish Jews be intercepted at the border and sent back to German-occupied Poland, but the Hungarian border guards were instructed by József Antall, of the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior, to register all Polish refugees as Christians, with the exception of those who insisted on registering their non-Christian religious affiliation.”

Roman Catholic clergy in Hungary were also instructed by Cardinal Serédy to issue Christian papers to all Jews applying for them. Printed copies of basic Catholic prayers were distributed to Polish Jews so that they could pass as Christians if tested by Germans attempting to trip them up. Patai concludes his discussion of Polish Jews in Hungary with this melancholy statement: “All these efforts came to naught with the German occupation, after which only a few of the Jews under Christian protection were saved.”

Perhaps Magda Gabor’s silence had to do with a sense of failure on her part that so many of those she had rescued were soon caught and killed when the Nazis overran Hungary. Then, too, she herself was increasingly under suspicion: Jewish by ethnicity if not by religion; the ex-wife of a Pole who, until his death in May 1944, was a fighter in Britain’s Royal Air Force; and not without local enemies whom the Gabors had snubbed or insulted in years past with their high-flown habits, pretensions, and superior airs.

Or perhaps Magda remained silent because the Gabors did not trumpet their good works. While Zsa Zsa and Jolie boasted about their amorous conquests, their jewels, their couturier gowns, their success at every level whether real or imagined, Eva and Magda, by contrast, veered in the opposite direction. Yet the charitable acts of all four remained largely unheralded, and no doubt that was their wish. After all, glamour girls and glamour moms in the public eye of the 1950s worked hard to maintain the image of femme fatales. Neither the studios nor the media wanted nobility; leave that to Eleanor Roosevelt and Helen Keller.

* * *

Whatever Magda’s level of secrecy, she was observed. The daughter of the jewelry Gabors driving a truck; entering and leaving the British embassy and then after its closure taking a job in the embassy of a neutral country—Portugal—that was perhaps not so neutral after all. Whispers circulated in the Jewish community, then spread across Budapest, reaching the ears of the Arrow Cross Party, Hitler’s Hungarian subsidiary. An invisible question hung over Magda’s head: Had this un-Jewish Jewess now become a total Jew? She never found out when, but her name appeared on a list.

And then Magda met the ambassador. Her timing could not have been more exquisite, for it was he, and others at the Portuguese embassy, who saved her life, along with the lives of her parents and hundreds of others, as well.