Jolie Gabor

Jolie Gabor, Countess de Szigethy (September 30, 1896 – April 1, 1997) was a Hungarian-born American socialite, jeweller and memoirist, best known as the mother of actresses and socialites Magda, Zsa Zsa, and Eva Gabor.

Family

Born as Janka Tillemanin Budapest, Austria-Hungary (present-day Budapest, Hungary), the youngest daughter and third of four children, born to a Jewish couple, Jona Harsch Tilleman, who later took the name "Josef", and his wife, Chane Faige (née Reinherz or Reinhartz), who later adapted the name "Franceska", both of whom were born in Galicia. The Tillemans were prosperous jewelers who owned a jewelry shop known as "The Diamond House". After the death of Jona Tilleman, Franceska briefly remarried, to Dr Miksa Kende, a medical doctor and general physician.

Gabor’s friend, Cindy Adams, who helped with Jolie's memoirs, once recalled one of Eva Gabor's weddings, at which the bride wore a cross, "They would lie about everything ... When I wrote my book about Jolie, Eva was getting married to her 44th husband, and the wedding gown was very décolleté. Between the fleshly hills of Gabor was a cross larger than St. Peter's Basilica. The Gabors were Jewish, so I said to Jolie, 'What's with the goddamn cross?' Jolie said, 'Eva's new about-to-be-husband hates the Jews, so in this book you make us Catholic.' They have always lived with no reality; there was never any truth to anything."