by Sam Staggs
Born in Berlin in 1892, Lubitsch, twenty-seven years Eva’s senior, satisfied the Electra complex common to the three Gabor sisters. His maturity, however, was only one of the reasons Eva loved him. He was urbane, a natural mentor to young women even when they were not his lovers, and according to Eva, “a man who spoke only the truth concerning matters of importance to him.” And his old-world manners reminded this homesick young woman of life in Budapest. Their affair lasted from 1943 until his death on November 30, 1947. Until now, the circumstances of that death have been whispered. During Eva’s lifetime, no one published the facts for fear of legal action. Biographer Scott Eyman, writing in 1993, two years before Eva’s death, veiled the story. “After lunch,” Eyman wrote, “[Lubitsch] welcomed the woman he had had dinner with the night before. Shortly after two o’clock in the afternoon, Lubitsch retired to his den with her. They made love. A few minutes later, he felt the familiar tightness in his chest. The constricting pain began to encircle him, possess him. He excused himself and went into the bathroom, probably to get to his angina medicine. Then, a sudden tearing explosion inside his chest overwhelmed and obliterated all that was Ernst Lubitsch.”
Lubitsch’s chauffeur, “summoned by the terrified woman, picked Lubitsch up and placed him on the couch fifteen feet away.” The chauffeur called several of the dead man’s friends, telling one of them that he would have to “take the lady out of the house.”
Describing the funeral, Eyman continued, “At Forest Lawn, Ernst was laid out in the new suit he had worn to dinner the previous Saturday night. Mary Loos [a platonic friend of the late director] attended with Eva Gabor and Margo [the wife of Eddie Albert, Eva’s future costar on Green Acres]. Neither of Mary’s friends had ever seen a dead body before, let alone that of someone they loved. They were frankly terrified. Loos suggested that they just walk by the open casket and not look. Even so, she kept a firm hold on both their elbows just in case.”
For decades, rumor had it that Lubitsch died from the overexertion of sex with a prostitute. In 2014, Scott Eyman clarified for an interviewer on the Hungarian website Magyarnarancs.hu what he wasn’t allowed to include in his Lubitsch biography. The woman with Lubitsch during his final hour was Eva Gabor.
* * *
Zsa Zsa lived with Eva and Eric Drimmer for five months, from the time of her arrival in Los Angeles in June until Eva’s separation from Eric in November 1941. Then the sisters moved to a small bungalow in Hollywood, so modest that they slept in the same bed—even when they weren’t speaking. They squabbled just like old times, but each was glad to have the other. Although surrounded by Hollywood glamour, these two now learned the real meaning of fear and anxiety, for after the outbreak of war they had no news of Jolie, Vilmos, and Magda, nor did they learn for a long time the horrendous fate of other family members. Both applied to become U.S. citizens. In Eva’s case, a second marriage to a native-born American sped the process: in September of 1943 she married handsome Charles Isaacs, scion of a wealthy Los Angeles family. By this time Zsa Zsa was Mrs. Conrad Hilton, and she arranged for Eva and Charles to marry at the Hilton estate in Bel Air. Zsa Zsa, however, overspent the budget that Hilton had agreed to, and in protest he skipped Eva’s wedding.
During the war, Eva’s new husband served in the coast guard. “Charles was the most considerate man I have ever known,” Eva recalled many years later, saying that he spoiled her and blaming herself for their eventual divorce, in 1949. Her alimony from Isaacs was $1,000 a month for eleven years, to be reduced to $600 a month in the event of his death. That event took place in 1953, when Isaacs was only forty-one years old.
Eva’s intermittent affair with Lubitsch, beginning in 1943, ran simultaneously with her second marriage. All parties had ample time for other lovers, and in Eva’s case unemployment allowed her and Zsa Zsa to make many attempts to rescue their family from a situation in Hungary that grew more ominous each week. The two sisters in America had a better grasp of wartime reality than their isolated relatives in Hungary, for Jolie and others in the Tillemann and Gabor families danced around the volcano, ignoring its snake-tongue licks of flame and drafts of hot smoke. Their revels resembled the merrymaking of doomed guests in The Masque of the Red Death.
Chapter 10
The California Gold Rush
Zsa Zsa hated her role as the poor refugee living with relatives in a new world teeming with rich men and rich opportunities. Here I am in a bungalow, she thought, when a mile away are ten thousand mansions. Surely one of them was destined for her? And an American husband to go with it, since her second desire—or third, after money and fame—was the security of U.S. citizenship. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, and the American declaration of war against Axis nations, she risked being declared an enemy alien owing to her Hungarian nationality. Once more, that Turkish diplomatic passport served her well. Still, with divorce from Burhan pending, she could not clutch it indefinitely.
It is unlikely that Zsa Zsa knew the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty, though certainly its spirit inflamed her. Had she read those words as her ship sailed into New York Harbor—“I lift my lamp beside the golden door”—she might have fancied herself the very one that Lady Liberty had in mind. A sentiment echoed by Oscar Levant, who cracked in 1955, “Zsa Zsa not only worships the Golden Calf, she barbecues it for lunch.”
On April 10, 1942, ten months after arriving in the U.S., she married one of the richest men in America, Conrad Hilton. To the public, Zsa Zsa’s name is now better known than his. Everyone of course knows the Hilton hotels, and viewers of Mad Men, season three, may recall a ruthless character named Conrad Hilton who frustrated and annoyed Don Draper. That character, played by Chelcie Ross, neither looked nor sounded like the actual Conrad Hilton. The producers might as well have cast Meryl Streep. By contrast, compare on youtube.com Conrad Hilton’s appearance as a guest on Art Linkletter’s House Party in 1954. There he exudes bonhomie and sincerity, whether genuine or not. He was sixty-seven years old at the time and as sexy as—well, a senior Don Draper, though minus Draper’s tightly wound intensity. Throughout a long career, Hilton used his Southwest accent and easy Western charm, along with the confidence of a super-rich man, to project affability. Unlike today’s robber barons, many of them robbing even more efficiently in politics, Hilton was as upright as a multimillionaire capitalist can be. As J. Randy Taraborelli writes in The Hiltons, “Generally speaking, he was well liked and had a stellar reputation among his colleagues. He was known as much for his philanthropy as for his hotel empire.” It’s easy to see how Zsa Zsa, or any woman who liked older men, might go for Conrad Hilton, “Connie” to his friends. What Zsa Zsa didn’t realize in 1942 was this: she had met her match.
And so had he. Hilton married her against his better judgment, for he was a devout Roman Catholic who had divorced his first wife, the mother of his sons Nicky, Barron, and Eric. His remarriage meant estrangement from the Church. In his 1957 autobiography, Be My Guest, Hilton recalled his sadness at being denied the sacraments. “Sundays when we went to church, for I went as I had always done, and Zsa Zsa went with me, there was this difference: When the congregation rose and made its way toward the altar rail to receive Holy Communion, I stayed on my knees in the pew, chained, as it were, to the side of my beautiful wife.”
His better judgment surely told him, too, that beautiful Zsa Zsa, exactly thirty years younger than he, was not unaware of his affluence. Had their marriage lasted longer than five years, she might have depleted the riches of his empire. Turned loose among such bounty, Zsa Zsa toiled not, neither did she spin. But frugal Connie gasped to see her spend.
Before the start-up of her conspicuous consumption, however, she must marry the man, and so she lost no time waiting for him to propose. Zsa Zsa took charge herself. It came about like this. Early in December 1941 she and Eva went to Ciro’s, the Sunset Strip nightclub, with their dates. Zsa Zsa’s escort that night was Greg Bautzer, a handsome, high-profile Hollywood a
ttorney who had dated every star in town and would continue to do so until his marriage, in 1956, to actress Dana Wynter. As it happened, Conrad Hilton had also come to Ciro’s with a date, and during the evening someone pointed him out to Zsa Zsa. She didn’t know his exact age—fifty-four—but he reminded her of Vilmos and of the other older men she had swooned over. When she learned that he was in the hotel business, that he had no wife, and that he liked respectable women as long as they didn’t carry decency to extremes—she dazzled him with a smile that flashed the signal she meant it to.
He asked her to dance, for he was a good dancer, and as soon as he held her in his arms he realized what an unusual girl he had come across. The accent, the unpronounceable name, the erotic aggression that she, unlike American girls, even in Hollywood, didn’t try to cover up. Several times he attempted to wrap his tongue around “Zsa Zsa,” but finally gave up. She suggested her stage name from Vienna, and he announced, “I’m going to call you Georgia.” And so he did for the next thirty-eight years, for he and “Georgia” Gabor remained friends long after their divorce. He didn’t approve of her, and often she irritated him beyond endurance, but that smile like a simultaneous declaration of war and peace, along with the blonde hair and the outrageous wit that really should be censored, Conrad thought, even as he roared at her latest ribald remarks—all of that made her impossible to let go. “She brought more laughter and gaiety than I had ever known in my personal life,” he said.
On the dance floor at Ciro’s she looked up at him, smiled like an odalisque, and said in her most cunning English, “I think I vill marry you.” He had been around, he knew how to play the game, and so he quipped, “Is that what you think, Georgia? Well, why not? I dare you!”
“Our marriage was doomed before it started,” Conrad Hilton wrote sixteen years later in his autobiography.
* * *
Lest Zsa Zsa appear as a complete mercenary, I quote further from Be My Guest. “Zsa Zsa was not always on the receiving end by any means. She herself loved to give. She showered presents and attention on my mother; she would drive halfway across the city to take her a nosegay. Mother was enraptured and, much as she regretted that our church would not welcome Zsa Zsa, referred to her affectionately as ‘that dear girl.’ Zsa Zsa also bought tennis rackets and fishing poles for Nick and Barron.”
Had it not been for Zsa Zsa’s inconvenient previous marriage, she might have become a fixture in the Hilton family’s place of worship, the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. There Francesca’s confirmation took place, and Zsa Zsa herself attended from time to time over the years along with scores of other stars including Eva, Merv Griffin, Loretta Young, Irene Dunne, Gary Cooper, Carmen Miranda, and Rosalind Russell, who dubbed the church “Our Lady of the Cadillacs.”
Conrad and Zsa Zsa had more in common than was evident to casual observers of their marriage. Both loved animals, especially dogs and horses, and both thrived on work, although not until her entry into show business did Zsa Zsa begin the grueling agenda that belied her playgirl image. A look at her schedule, and Eva’s, makes one wonder how either had time for the occasional rendezvous, let alone fourteen marriages between them. Neither knew the meaning of nine to five. Their days often stretched in the opposite direction—from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. or later, with hours of socializing still to come. Zsa Zsa also loved the trappings of Old World romance, and Connie, while courting, sent roses every day.
Even as the roses faded, romance faded. Before long, Zsa Zsa realized that Connie had only two passions in life: his religion, and Hilton hotels. At home on Bellagio Road, in the grandiose Spanish-inspired Hilton estate, he formulated an austere budget for Zsa Zsa to follow. Next, he declared that his wife would have her own bedroom, and he would keep his. He offered two reasons for this: well along in middle age, he had his routines and sleep habits that he did not wish to change. He also disliked witnessing a woman’s elaborate beauty rituals—makeup, hair, fussing over this dress versus another one and switching outfits as if in a house of couture. He prayed regularly on his knees at the prie-dieu near his bed, and a sprightly young wife of Zsa Zsa’s temperament would surely claim that kneeling bagged her nylons. “Can I stop him from praying?” she wondered, a line that belongs in a Molière comedy. According to members of the Hilton family, separate bedrooms soon precluded conjugal visits.
So the marriage lumbered on, and despite the prestige and financial security of her coveted title, Mrs. Conrad Hilton, Zsa Zsa declined, her self-confidence wavered. Why did her husband no longer find her attractive? Why couldn’t she make him laugh? What did the future hold for her? Once she had dreamed of becoming an actress, but here she was in Hollywood and her husband’s name and reputation overshadowed her. Zsa Zsa’s great consolation, during her empty days in what came to be known as her wing of the vast Hilton house, was Ranger, Conrad’s German police dog. “Until I began to lavish love on her, she hid from everyone,” Zsa Zsa recalled. “Little by little she grew to have confidence in me and became my constant companion, sleeping on the chaise longue in my room at night. Sometimes when I walked about aimlessly, she would nudge her wet nose into my palm as if she sensed my loneliness.”
Zsa Zsa visited Eva almost daily. Bundy Solt, their school friend from Budapest, joined them and “for an hour we were back home again, chattering in Hungarian, our plates piled high with salami and green peppers.”
* * *
Almost two years into the marriage, on March 19, 1944, Zsa Zsa heard the worst possible news from Hungary. Hitler, losing patience with his lackadaisical ally, Admiral Horthy, had invaded the country. All Jews were to be rounded up and systematically destroyed. Adolf Eichmann arrived in Budapest to supervise the job. Horthy, meanwhile, attempted to negotiate an armistice with any Allied nation not under German control, whether Britain or the United States. Despite his antipathy to communism, he even decided that the Soviet Union was a lesser evil than Germany, and made plans to surrender Hungary to the Red Army. Hitler, learning of Horthy’s intent, removed him from office on October 15, 1944. To render Horthy completely impotent, Hitler kidnapped his son to Germany. (These events, and the plight of Hungarian Jews under Hitler, are represented with unusual accuracy in Mark Schmidt’s 2014 film, Walking with the Enemy, in which Ben Kingsley portrays Admiral Horthy.)
Up to the time of the invasion, most Jews in Hungary, at least those in the middle classes, remained at least dimly optimistic that the war would soon end and normality return. As Mrs. Annette Lantos, Jolie’s niece, told me: “From 1940 to 1944, Hungary was a pleasant place to live if you had money.” Nevertheless, during this time many Jewish men, including Mrs. Lantos’s father—Jolie’s brother, Sebestyn Tillemann—were inducted into a nonmilitary labor brigade. Mrs. Lantos said that he, unlike some, was treated well “because he was known for his charitable works and giving money to many worthy causes.” Since the time had now passed when he, and countless others like him, could leave the country, it seemed wise to face, accept, and let time pass.
Jolie, Vilmos, Magda, and others in the Tillemann and Gabor families, along with thousands of others identified as Jews by Hungarian fascists and German authorities, now wore the yellow star. So shameful was this badge of bigotry and hate that no Gabor ever mentioned it. Mrs. Lantos, on the other hand, like many Holocaust survivors, kept hers as a symbol. I do not presume to speak for anyone who did or did not preserve the yellow star, for each person surely had enormous cause either to remember, or to forget.
* * *
Several years prior to the German invasion of Hungary, Magda had joined the anti-Nazi underground. Owing to her marriage to a Pole, and to her time in Warsaw, she spoke passable Polish. When Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Magda had already returned to Budapest. Her family gave various accounts of her wartime activities, though Magda herself said almost nothing. For that reason, it is difficult to render a full account.
Zsa Zsa said that her sister volunteered as a Red Cross driver taking medi
cal supplies to Polish soldiers who had escaped to Hungary after the Germans invaded their country. Hungary, however, as an ally of Germany, found itself in a most awkward position vis-à-vis these refugee soldiers. The solution: they were interned in prisoner of war camps some seventy-five miles outside Budapest. Those medical supplies that Magda delivered were sent by the British embassy. Soon, along with medical supplies, Magda also delivered civilian clothes to the soldiers. Once out of uniform, and dressed in the apparel of ordinary Hungarians, many of the soldiers crossed the border into Romania, from there to Bulgaria and on to neutral Turkey, eventually making their way to Egypt where they joined up with British fighting men.
Magda, after delivering civilian clothes, would return to the British embassy in Budapest with a truckload of discarded Polish military uniforms, which were then burned. As the situation became more urgent, she also smuggled men from the prisoner of war camps into Budapest, where they were dispatched with documents forged by the British. One of Magda’s few statements about her work is this: “The Embassy gave me directions, telling me when I could bring in men, when I could only transport clothes.”
Those activities ceased, however, in December 1941, when the British embassy closed. From then until March 19, 1944, when Hitler at last invaded Hungary, Magda’s story resembles a white page sprinkled with cryptic jottings. Based on somewhat sketchy evidence, however, I have pieced together her continued efforts to save lives. To put the situation in context, I quote from Raphael Patai, author of The Jews of Hungary.