[7] The middle of three daughters, her parents were Jolie (née Janszieka Tillemann) and Vilmos Gábor (né Grün),[8][9] owner of a jewellery shop[10] store in Budapest,[11] a Royal Hungarian Army officer.

During a layover at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Nebraska en route to Hollywood, she made headlines by telling the Associated Press that she had danced with Adolf Hitler twice.

[23] In January 1933, following her time as a student at a Swiss boarding school, Gabor placed second runner-up in the fifth Miss Hungary pageant, behind Lilly Radó and crown winner Júlia Gál.

[24] In 1949, Gabor declined an offer to play the leading role in a film version of the classic book Lady Chatterley's Lover.

According to the Cedar Rapids Gazette, she turned down the role of Lady Chatterley due to the story's controversial theme.

She did cameos for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), and A Very Brady Sequel (1996), as well as voicing a character in the animated Happily Ever After (1989).

[citation needed] She was also a regular guest on television shows, appearing with Milton Berle,[26] Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Howard Stern,[27] David Frost, Arsenio Hall, Phil Donahue,[28] and Joan Rivers.

She's a woman from the court of Louis XV who has somehow managed to live in the 20th century, undamaged by the PTA ... She says she wants to be all the Pompadours and Du Barrys of history rolled into one, but she also says, "I always goof.

[38] Her husbands, in chronological order, were: Gabor's divorces inspired her to make numerous quotable puns and innuendos about her marital and extramarital history.

"[51] Gabor dated German composer Willy Schmidt-Gentner,[52] Turkish president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,[53] and Dominican diplomat Porfirio Rubirosa.

They also found her guilty of driving without a license and possessing an open container of alcohol—a flask of Jack Daniel's—in her $215,000 Rolls-Royce, but acquitted her of the charge of disobeying Kramer when she drove away from the traffic stop.

[67] On October 25, 1989, Beverly Hills Municipal Judge Charles G. Rubin sentenced Gabor to serve three days in jail, to pay fines and restitution totaling $12,937, to perform 120 hours of community service, and to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

[70] Gabor had a long-running feud with German-born actress Elke Sommer beginning in 1984 when both appeared on Circus of the Stars, and escalating into a multimillion-dollar libel suit by 1993.

[71] On January 25, 2009, the Associated Press reported that her attorney stated that forensic accountants determined that Gabor may have lost as much as $10 million invested in Bernie Madoff's company, possibly through a third-party money manager.

[72] On November 27, 2002, Gabor was a front seat passenger in an automobile crash on Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, from which she remained partially paralyzed and reliant on a wheelchair for mobility.

[75][76] In August 2010, Gabor was admitted to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in serious condition and received last rites from a Catholic priest, but survived.

[82][83] In April 2016, it was reported that Prinz von Anhalt was arranging to move with Gabor to Hungary in time for her 100th birthday in 2017, in accordance with her wishes that she return to the country and spend the rest of her life there.

[61] While in a coma, Gabor died from cardiac arrest at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center on December 18, 2016, at the age of 99.

[86] Her funeral was held on December 30 in a Catholic ceremony at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, where around 100 mourners attended.