Magda Gabor

Magda Gabor

(aged 81)

Magda Gabor
Born	Magdolna Gábor June 11, 1915 Budapest, Austria-Hungary
Died	June 6, 1997 Palm Springs, California, U.S.
Resting place	Desert Memorial Park
Occupation(s)	Actress, socialite
Years active	1937–1991
Spouse(s)	Jan Bychowski (m. 1937; died 1944) William Rankin (m. 1946; div. 1947) Sidney Robert Warren (m. 1949; div. 1950) Tony Gallucci (m. 1957; died 1967) (m. 1970; annulled 1971) Tibor Heltai (m. 1972; div. 1975)
Parent(s)	Vilmos Gábor Jolie Gabor
Relatives	Zsa Zsa Gabor (sister) Eva Gabor (sister) Francesca Hilton (niece) Tom Lantos (brother-in law)

Magdolna “Magda” Gabor (June 11, 1915 – June 6, 1997) was a Hungarian-American actress and socialite, and the elder sister of Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor.

Early life[edit]

The eldest daughter of a jeweler, Jolie (1896–1997),[1] and a soldier, Vilmos Gábor (1881–1962), she was born in 1915 in Budapest. Her parents were both from Jewish families.[2][3][4] She is listed in Hungary: Jewish Names from the Central Zionist Archives, under her first married name, as “Magda Bychowsky”.[5]

During World War II, Gabor was reported to have been the fiancée of the Portuguese ambassador to Hungary, Carlos Sampaio Garrido;[6] another source claims she was his mistress and another claims she was his aide.[7][8][9] After she fled to Portugal in 1944, following the Nazi occupation of Hungary, and, with Sampaio’s assistance, she was reportedly the mistress of a Spanish nobleman, José Luis de Vilallonga.[10] Gabor arrived in the United States in February 1946, from Natal, Brazil. Within a year of her arrival she married an American citizen, William Rankin, and remained in the country.[5]

Marriages[edit]

Gabor was married six times. She was widowed twice, divorced three times, and one marriage was annulled. All the unions were childless. Her husbands, in chronological order, were:

• Jan Bychowsky (m. November 19, 1937 – May 22, 1944; his death), a reputed Polish count and RAF pilot. Gabor gave her name as “Magda de Bychowsky” and her marital status as divorced on a February 11, 1946, airline passenger manifest, accessed on ancestry.com, December 30, 2011; according to this form, she had left her city of residence (Lisbon, Portugal), where she lived at 17 Buenos Aires, and arrived in New York City to visit her family.
• William M. Rankin (m. December 3, 1946 – August 11, 1947; divorced) an American playwright and screenwriter (The Harvey Girls, among other films); they divorced in Los Angeles in 1947. He was born on March 31, 1900, and died in March 1966.[11]
• Sidney Robert Warren (m. July 14, 1949 – 1950; divorced) an attorney. They married in Riverhead, Long Island, New York, in 1949, and divorced the following year.[12]
• Arthur “Tony” Gallucci (m. April 1, 1956 – January 22, 1967; his death), president of Samuel Gallucci & Son, “one of the oldest building contracting concerns in the United States”.[13][14][15] They wed in Franklin, New Jersey. He died of cancer in 1967.[16]
• George Sanders (m. December 5, 1970 – January 6, 1971; annulled) a British actor, who had previously been married to her sister Zsa Zsa. They married in Riverside, California.[17]
• Tibor R. Heltai (m. August 5, 1972 – 1975; divorced) an economic consultant who became a real-estate broker. They married in Southampton, New York, in 1972, separated in June 1973 and divorced two years later in 1975.[17]

Death[edit]

Gabor died on June 6, 1997, five days before her 82nd birthday and two months after the death of her mother.[18] The cause was kidney failure. She was interred next to her mother in Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.[19][20]

Filmography[edit]

See also[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Turtu, Anthony; Reuter, Donald F. (2001). Gaborabilia: An Illustrated Celebration of the Fabulous, Legendary Gabor Sisters. Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0-609-80759-5.

References[edit]

1. ^ “The Hungarian-Jewish Family Tree of Zsa Zsa Gabor – Nick Gombash’s Genealogy Blog”. April 20, 2012.
2. ^ “Reflecting on the life of Zsa Zsa Gabor”. August 17, 2010. Archived from the original on December 22, 2016. Retrieved July 11, 2016.
3. ^ “Jews in the News: Bonni Tischler, Steven Spielberg and Vilmos Gabor – Tampa Jewish Federation”.
4. ^ Bennetts, Leslie (September 6, 2007). “It’s a Mad, Mad, Zsa Zsa World”. Vanity Fair.
5. ^ a b The online database is based in Provo, Utah: The Generations Network, Inc. (2008); information accessed at http://www.ancestry.com on December 30, 2011.
6. ^ conVistaAlMar.com.ar. “Dr. Carlos Almeida Afonseca de Sampayo Garrido”.
7. ^ Relationship with Dr. Carlos Almeida Afonseca de Sampaio Garrido cited in “The Most Wives Club” article in Palm Springs Life (1996)
8. ^ Relationship with Dr. Carlo de Sampaio Garrido referenced during an interview with Magda’s sister, Zsa Zsa, as cited in Vanity Fair
9. ^ Zsa Zsa Gábor: my story, written for me by Gerold Frank (World Publishing Co., 1960), p. 161.
10. ^ Paul Preston, Doves of War: Four Women of Spain (UPNE, 2002), p. 106.
11. ^ “The Billboard”, August 23, 1947, p. 53.
12. ^ “Mrs. Magda Gabor Married”, The New York Times, July 15, 1949
13. ^ “Arthur Gallucci, Contractor Here; Chief of Building Concern, Active in Charities, Dies”, The New York Times, January 24, 1967.
14. ^ “Magda Gabor Weds in Jersey”, The New York Times, April 2, 1956.
15. ^ Jolie Gabor, with Cindy Adams, Jolie Gabor (Mason/Charter, 1975)
16. ^ “Arthur Gallucci, Contractor Here – Chief of Building Concern, Active in Charities, Dies”, The New York Times, January 24, 1967
17. ^ a b “Notes on People”, The New York Times, February 19, 1975.
18. ^ “Glamour and Goulash”. Vanity Fair. July 2001.
19. ^ Brooks, Patricia; Brooks, Jonathan (2006). “Chapter 8: East L.A. and the Desert”. Laid to Rest in California: a guide to the cemeteries and grave sites of the rich and famous. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press. p. 238. ISBN 978-0762741014. OCLC 70284362.
20. ^ Explorer’s Guide

External links[edit]

• Magda Gabor at IMDb

• 1915 births
• 1997 deaths
• 20th-century American actresses
• 20th-century Hungarian actresses
• Actresses from Budapest
• Actresses from Palm Springs, California
• Age controversies
• American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent
• American television actresses
• American socialites
• Burials at Desert Memorial Park
• Deaths from kidney failure
• Gabor family
• Hungarian emigrants to the United States
• Hungarian Jews
• Hungarian socialites
• Hungarian television actresses
• Jewish American actresses
• Naturalized citizens of the United States
• 20th-century American Jews