The Founder Of Modern Celebrity, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Passes Away At 99

Zsa Zsa Gabor:  the name that you probably recognize but can’t put a face to until you google her, but then will say – oh, I remember her, has passed away at 99 from a heart attack at her home in Bel Air.

For more than sixty years, she had appeared on television and film up until the 1996, Very Brady Sequel. What made Zsa Zsa so unique was that she was the first actress to regularly appear on various series as herself. Decades before being famous for being famous was to become a regular occurrence, she was the one that would lay the groundwork for being a character in her own right.

Her long life in the spotlight would come to feature the kinds of antics that the Kardashians still only aspire to, only Zsa Zsa would always do so with class.  Among her nine marriages was one to Conrad Hilton, none other than Paris Hilton’s grandfather from 1942-1947.  On another occasion she was married for a single day to Felipe de Alba because her prior marriage to Michael O’Hara had not yet been fully dissolved (the punchline to that is that O’Hara was her divorce lawyer who had helped her in her prior divorce from the original Barbie Doll designer, Jack Ryan.

Born in Budapest, she was crowned Miss Hungary in 1936 and followed her older sister Eva (who became well known in the role of Lisa Douglas on Green Acres) to Hollywood. Her longest term recurring role was as one of the panelists on the Hollywood Squares. Younger audiences would at least remember her role as the Lady Erika Tiffany Smith on an episode of Gilligan’s Island.

In more recent years she had a run of bad health luck, from a 2002 car accident which left her wheelchair-bound, and a stroke took more of her mobility in 2005. However much like her long career of being in the spotlight, she always continued to be a presence on the socialite scene with lavish birthday parties thrown by current husband and fellow socialite Frédéric Prinz Von Anhalt.