Eva Gabor was born on February 11, 1919, in Budapest, the youngest of the three celebrated Gabor sisters. Her father, Vilmos, was a soldier and jeweler; her mother, Jolie, was the heiress to a Hungarian jewelry fortune. An economic downturn in the family meant Eva did not enjoy the finishing school experience that had been available to her older sisters. Instead, she was tutored by governesses and attended the Forstner Institute in Budapest.
Even at seventeen, Eva understood the value of a well-chosen marriage. At a party hosted by her sister, she met Eric Drimmer, a handsome Swedish doctor working in Hollywood. By the end of the party, he had proposed, and she had accepted. She arrived in Hollywood in 1939 as a new bride, soon drawn to the desire to act.
Her first attempts were unsatisfactory, largely because of her youthful appearance and difficulty with the English language. Still, Paramount gave her bit parts in two unsuccessful films: Forced Landing in 1941 and Pacific Blackout in 1942. Discouraged but not deterred, she continued to pursue roles, playing secondary parts in A Royal Scandal in 1945 and Song of Surrender in 1949, as well as appearing in plays. Her appearance in the 1949 CBS television play Ella Moore the Merrier brought her to the attention of Richard Rodgers, who saw her as the perfect Mignonette in his and Oscar Hammerstein’s new production of The Happy Time in 1950.
The play ran for eighteen months and was an undisputed success for Gabor. During the same period, she was hosting The Eva Gabor Show on television in 1950. These performances led to frequent television appearances, including co-starring with Boris Karloff in a television production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Her personal life followed a pattern of short and sometimes overlapping marriages.
She divorced Eric Drimmer in 1942 and married millionaire Charles Isaacs in 1943; by 1950 they, too, were divorced. The 1950s were the heyday of the Gabor women. The relationship among the sisters was often stormy, marked by personal and professional rivalry, but the Gabors were never seriously or long estranged. They were frequently featured in magazines, with Eva and Zsa Zsa appearing on the covers of Life and Collier’s.
In 1953, the three sisters entertained together in a nightclub act in Las Vegas. Gabor continued to work on stage both on and off Broadway. She starred in the short-running Little Glass Clock in 1956 and appeared in Noël Coward’s Present Laughter in 1958. Her second starring role was in Lulu in 1958, yet another unsuccessful play.
In 1963, she replaced Vivien Leigh as Tatanya in Tovarich, continuing the role on national tour. She also acted in several films during the 1950s, including The Last Time I Saw Paris in 1954, Artists and Models in 1955, Gigi in 1958, and Youngblood Hawk in 1964. After long seeking stability in her acting roles, Gabor finally found stardom through the television series Green Acres. Co-starring with Eddie Albert as Oliver Douglas, she played Lisa Douglas from 1965 to 1971.
The series was consistently in the Nielsen top ten, and Gabor was often cited as television’s most popular actress. She remained professionally active throughout her life, making more than two dozen television guest appearances. She provided the voice of Bianca in the animated films The Rescuers in 1977 and The Rescuers Down Under in 1990. In her seventies, she reprised her role as Lisa Douglas in the television movie Return to Green Acres in 1990.
Despite her busy career, Gabor married and divorced five husbands in addition to Eric Drimmer and Charles Isaacs. In 1956, she married plastic surgeon John Williams; that alliance lasted eight months. In 1959, she wed Richard Brown, a Wall Street stockbroker, to whom she remained married for thirteen years. In 1973, she married Frank Jameson, an aerospace mogul and her husband for ten years.
Although she was the youngest of the Gabor sisters, Eva was the first to die. On July 4, 1995, two years before her mother’s death in 1997, she succumbed to a respiratory infection. She is buried in Westfield Memorial Park in Los Angeles.