Eva Gabor

 

"I was the first actress in the family, and I am still the only actress in the family.  I shouldn't be saying it, but it slipped out!"

Eva Gabor was born in Budapest, Hungary on February 11, 1919.  She was the youngest of three sisters born to mother Jolie, a jeweler, and father Vilmos, a soldier.  When Eva was just 18, she immigrated to America, the first in her family to do so.

Her first acting role came in 1941, when she appeared in the feature film Forced Landing.  Over the next decade, she'd land a number of small roles in other feature films, including The Last Time I Saw Paris, with Liz Taylor.  In 1953, Eva was even given her own television talk show, the aptly titled Eva Gabor Show, which ran for one season.

In 1965, Eva landed the role for which she is most famously remembered, that of socialite Lisa Douglas on the CBS sit-com Green Acres.  For reasons this blogger has never understood, the series was a huge hit, running for six seasons on CBS.  It proved so popular that Eva's character appeared on two CBS sister series, The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction.

After the show was canceled in 1971, Eva remained active in Hollywood, appearing as a semi-regular panelist on The Match Game.  She did a lot of voice-over work for Disney as well, appearing in such animated classics as The Aristocats and The Rescuers.  She attempted a return to television in 1990, but the pilot for her proposed series Close Encounters was never picked up.

In the summer of 1995, Eva was on vacation in Mexico, where she fell in the bathtub.  She returned to Los Angeles, but the damage was already done.  She died of pneumonia and respiratory failure on July 4th.  She was 76 years old.  Although she was the youngest of the three sisters, she was the first to pass, even preceding mother Jolie who would die two years later.

She was laid to rest at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village in Los Angeles.

Location: Lot #306
Inscription #1: Our Darling Eva
Inscription #2: You Are in Our Hearts Forever

Rest in peace.

Trivia

• If you want to learn more about Eva Gabor, take a voyage to Amazon.  Its all in books.
  
  
• In 2005, Eva's co-star Eddie Albert passed away at the age of 99.  He was also laid to rest at Pierce Brothers, just a short walk from Eva's grave.
  
  
• Speaking of Albert, Eva reunited with him in 1983 for a Broadway production of You Can't Take it With You.
  
  
• Eva was a successful entrepreneur, marketing a host of women's accessories, including fashionwear, beauty products and a wig line called Charming Lady.  Check out this commercial from 1981 on YouTube.
  
  
• Of the three Gabor sisters, Eva is the only one to have never married actor George Sanders (Mr. Freeze).