| Subject: Eva Gabor, 74, the Actress; Youngest of Celebrated Sisters |
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July 4, 1995
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Date Posted: Wednesday, July 04, 2012, 10:49:58pm
Eva Gabor, the actress best known for her role as an out-of-place city socialite stuck on a farm on television's "Green Acres" in the 1960's, died today at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center here. She was 74.
The cause was respiratory distress and other infections, a hospital spokesman said. She had entered the hospital on June 21 after breaking a hip in a fall.
Miss Gabor, who probably achieved as much celebrity from being one of the three Gabor sisters as she did from her acting, was born in Budapest to an upper-middle-class family and began her career as a cafe singer and ice skater. She and her older sisters, Magda and Zsa Zsa, and their mother, Jolie, emigrated to the United States in the 1930's and 40's.
Critical acclaim in the 1950 Broadway production "The Happy Time" earned Eva guest roles on television variety shows and led to her own interview program, "The Eva Gabor Show."
It was during the 1950's that the much-married Gabor sisters gained notoriety for their love lives. Eva Gabor, who was married four times, was credited with saying: "Marriage is too interesting an experiment to be tried only once or twice."
People often confused Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor, although Zsa Zsa's divorces and other legal troubles gave her the more colorful reputation.
"It's awfully boring to be called the 'good Gabor,' " Eva Gabor said in a 1990 interview. "Why should we be linked together, darling? That annoys the hell out of me. Because we have very different lives and what is white for her is black for me. Of course, she's my sister and I love her."
On "Green Acres" Eva Gabor was Lisa Douglas, the slightly daffy housewife opposite Eddie Albert's farm-loving husband. The CBS sitcom was on the air from 1965 to 1971. With her feathery negligees, perfectly coiffed platinum hair and Hungarian accent, Eva Gabor epitomized the fashionable city dweller suffering her husband's whims.
Though she was best known for that role, Ms. Gabor also had a career on the big screen, with parts in "A Royal Scandal" (1945), "The Wife of Monte Cristo"(1946), "The Last Time I Saw Paris" (1954), "Artists and Models" (1955), "The Truth About Women" (1956), "Dont go Near the Water" (1957), a remake of "My Man Godfrey" (1957), "Gigi"(1958) and "A New Kind of Love" (1963). More recently she was the voice of Miss Bianca on the animated films "The Rescuers" and "The Rescuers Down Under." Her last appearance on Broadway was in 1983, when she replaced Colleen Dewhurst for two months in "You Can't Take It With You."
In later years, Ms. Gabor, whose name conjured images of Hollywood glamour and high-priced living, ran a multimillion-dollar wig company.
But in a 1988 interview, she said she did a lot of her shopping at the 10-cent store. "Because of my allergies I like to buy very cheap makeup with no perfume. I buy things on sale. The prices today are shocking."
In 1990 Ms. Gabor, who was a frequent companion of the television personality and entrepreneur Merv Griffin, starred in "Return to Green Acres," a made-for-TV movie.
"It was easy for me to fall back into the role of Lisa," she said. There's a part of me that is just that kooky, but only a little part. I'm Hungarian, and that accounts for why I've been mixed up since the day I was born."
She is survived by her mother, of Palm Springs, Calif., her sisters, Magda, of Palm Springs, and Zsa Zsa, of Bel Air, and two step-daughters from her fourth marriage, Mary Jamison and Joanne Hunt, both of California.
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