Eva Gabor ✝

Eva Gabor (/ˌeɪvə ɡəˈbɔːr, - ˈɡɑːbɔːr/ EH-və gə-BOR, -⁠ GAH-bor; February 11, 1919 – July 4, 1995) was a Hungarian-American actress, businesswoman, singer, and socialite. She voiced Duchess and Miss Bianca in the animated Disney Classics, The Aristocats (1970), The Rescuers (1977), and The Rescuers Down Under (1990). She was popular in her role on the 1965–71 television sitcom Green Acres as Lisa Douglas, the wife of Eddie Albert's character Oliver Wendell Douglas. Gabor was successful as an actress in film, on Broadway, and on television. She was also a successful businesswoman, marketing wigs, clothing, and beauty products. Her elder sisters, Zsa Zsa and Magda Gabor, were also actresses and socialites. Gabor was born in Budapest, Hungary, the youngest of three daughters of Vilmos Gábor, a soldier, and his wife, trained jeweler Jolie (born Janka Tilleman). Her parents were both from Hungarian Jewish families. She was the first of the sisters to immigrate to the U.S., shortly after her first marriage to a Swedish osteopath, Dr. Eric Drimmer, whom she married in 1937 when she was 18 years old. Her first movie role was in the U.S. in 1941's Forced Landing at Paramount Pictures. During the 1950s, she appeared in several feature films, including The Last Time I Saw Paris, starring Elizabeth Taylor; and Artists and Models, which featured Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. These roles were bit parts. In 1953, she was given her own television talk show, The Eva Gabor Show, which ran for one season (1953–54). Through the rest of the 1950s and early 1960s she appeared on television and in movies. She appeared in one episode of the mystery series Justice and was on the game show What's My Line? as the "mystery challenger." Her film appearances during this era included a remake of My Man Godfrey, Gigi, and It Started with a Kiss. In 1965, Gabor got the role of Lisa Douglas, whose attorney husband Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert) decides to leave the "rat race" of city life. He buys a farm in a rural community, forcing Lisa to leave her beloved big-city urban life. The Paul Henning sitcom Green Acres aired on CBS. Green Acres was set in Hooterville, the same backdrop for Petticoat Junction (1963–70), and would occasionally cross over with its sister sitcom. Despite proving to be a ratings hit, staying in the top 20 for its first four seasons, Green Acres, along with another sister show, The Beverly Hillbillies, was cancelled in 1971 in the CBS network's "rural purge" — a policy to get rid of the network's rural-based television shows.