Photo: Bettmann/Getty
“Clichés about this legendary family seem indestructible. I hope, however, to have punctured two of the silliest. The first is that they were famous for being famous,” Staggs writes in the book, which was released on Tuesday. “On the contrary, the Gabors were famous because they worked at it, and because they worked at their careers, every hour and every day for close to a century.”
Earl Leaf/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
(In a phone conversation with PEOPLE, Zsa Zsa’s last husband Prince Frederic von Anhalt denounced the book, calling it “bulls—”.)
Here are some of the most glitzy and heart-wrenching highlights fromFinding Zsa Zsa.
The Gabors were terrorized during World War II
Born of Jewish ancestry, Zsa Zsa and her family experienced many hardships during World War II. Though Zsa Zsa and Eva were ensconced in the U.S., their family was living in Budapest when the Nazis invaded. Zsa Zsa had nightmares (“I saw every member of my family tortured,” she once explained) and feared what would happen to them, according to the book. In 1944, the sisters visited influential people in Washington, D.C., looking for “anyone who might offer a shred of hope,” Staggs writes. While their mother, father, and sister survived, other relatives weren’t so lucky. (Jolie and Magda eventually escaped to the U.S.) “According to Zsa Zsa, her grandmother refused to leave Hungary because so many of her relatives were there, and [her son Sebastian Tillemann] would not depart without her,” Staggs writes. “They were both shot to death.”
Zsa Zsa’s tumultuous marriage to Conrad Hilton
Hotel magnate Conrad Hilton married Zsa Zsa, who was 30 years his junior, in 1942, “against his better judgment,” Staggs explains. Though Conrad was drawn to her gaiety, they didn’t share the same bedroom and he kept his wife, a lover of the finer things, on a budget, according to the book. Zsa Zsa, for her part, struggled with depression while awaiting news about her family. Even as she reveled in spending sprees, she wavered in self-confidence because Hilton “had only two passions in life: his religion and Hilton hotels,” according to the book. After their divorce in 1947, Zsa Zsa gave birth to their daughter, Francesca Hilton. In her memoir, Zsa Zsa claimed that Conrad raped her, which resulted in the pregnancy.
InFinding Zsa Zsa,Staggs writes that Conrad didn’t believe Francesca was his daughter, though his name appeared on her birth certificate. The author, who knew Francesca, explains that Conrad’s distance forever affected her. When Conrad died in 1979,he left Francesca only $100,000 out of his estate, leaving the majority of his money to charity. He was worth about $200 million at the time, according to Forbes. (Francesca also had acontentious relationship with her mother that lasted right up until Francesca’s death, at age 67, in January 2015.)
Ron Galella/WireImage
Revealing the Real (and Very Complicated) John F. Kennedy Jr. 20 Years After His Death: ‘He Was Two People’
Zsa Zsa’s mental health struggles
The actress told her ex-husband to marry her sister
Staggs’ book is rife with details about Zsa Zsa’s husbands and lovers (from a chaste romance with the president of Turkey and an affair with her director, to allegations of abusive boyfriends). But one of the most shocking stories of all is Zsa Zsa’s insistence that her third ex-husband, the actor George Saunders, marry her sister Magda. When Zsa Zsa heard that her ex-turned-roommate was looking for a wife, she thought of the perfect solution because she wanted to “keep George in the family,” Staggs writes. “Magda is rich. She is terribly lonely, and so are you,” Zsa Zsa reportedly told George, according to the book. “You need each other, you can help each other.” George became Magda’s fifth husband,but the marriage only lasted six weeks, according toVanity Fair.
Darlene Hammond/Getty Images
Zsa Zsa’s last husband and her final days
“You know, the moment a man is bad I fall in love with him,”Zsa Zsa told PEOPLE in 1986. “I always marry bad men. It’s a sickness, my sickness. The more bad they tell me they are, the more I am attracted. That’s my tragedy.”
Finding Zsa Zsaison salenow.
source: people.com
