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Eva Gabor
UPDATED March 2003
Eva was the first of the Gabors to immigrate to America from Hungary, she was in a few B movies, and starred in four Broadway plays, but is best known for playing Lisa Douglas on the show Green Acres.
Eva settled in Bel-Air, a swanky bit of Los Angeles. Her house was on Delfern Road. To get to it, head west on Sunset from Hollywood, and when you get into Bel-Air, turn right on Delfern. The house on the right with the flagpole in front of it, number 100, was hers. Here's the front door. Think of how many times her "best friend," spermin' Mervin Griffin walked through those doors.
Eva also kept a home in Baja, Mexico, and in June of 1995, she went there with friends, to vacation for a week. The story goes that on June 20th, she "ate a bad piece of fruit," and contracted viral pneumonia. The condition made Eva so weak, she became disoriented, and she collapsed on a staircase in her house, fell and broke her hip. Unable to get a plane back immediately, and probably not wanting to risk a Mexican hospital, her friends called Merv Griffin, who was "devastated" at the news. He provided a private jet to whisk Eva to Cedars Sinai Medical Center, in LA, the next day.
By the time she was admitted into Cedars on June 21st, her condition had worsened. She had fluid in her lungs, and a fever. Upon further examination, a blood clot was discovered. Doctors put her on antibiotics for the pneumonia, and heparin for the clotting. She was also breathing with the assistance of a respirator, and heavily medicated for the hip pain. Eventually, Eva became comatose. When her condition showed no signs of improvement - family and friends prepared for the worst. Eva finally died in her fifth floor room at Cedars Sinai. It was 10:05 AM on Tuesday, July 4th. She was 76 years old.
She was cremated, and buried in Westwood Memorial Park. Spitting distance from John Cassavetes and Mel Torme's new hole.
Her memorial service was held at Good Shepherd Catholic Church, one week after her death, Tuesday July 11th, at 7pm. I crashed it, and some of the guests I saw included Eva's sisters, Magda and Zsa Zsa, also included in the cast that night were Eddie Albert, Merv Griffin, Johnny Mathis, Mitzi Gaynor, and Rosie O'Donnell. I'm pretty sure I saw Sandra Gould (cringe) there too. After the service, I went into the church. They had gone over the place with a fine toothed comb, so souvenir hunters couldn't find anything. But I kept looking. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I found this little funeral card on the floor. Hooray! I went out the side door, and THAT'S where they took all the flowers. There was a huge arrangement of yellow roses there, and yes, here's mine.
As for the other Gabors:
On Tuesday April 1, 1997, the matriarch of the Gabor clan, Jolie, died in the Eisenhower Medical Center, in Rancho Mirage. She was 1000 years old. Funeral services took place on Friday the 4th. The weird part about Jolie, is that she never knew that Eva had died. She was so ill and old, they just decided not to tell her. Hello Joe Kennedy!
A few months later, Magda, the little known sister of Eva and Zsa Zsa, was put in Eisenhower Medical Center as well, (Family rate?) with a kidney infection. She had been put on a respirator, and her family (well, Zsa Zsa anyway) were told there was no chance of recovery. Zsa Zsa told doctors to pull the plug, on Friday June 11, 1997. Both Magda and Jolie are buried in Desert Memorial Park, in Palm Springs.
See Magda's Grave See Jolie's Grave
Zsa Zsa is still alive, well, as of this morning (August 9th (happy anniversary Sharon!)) she was. The Zaz-piece was most likely the beneficiary of her family's estates, which makes her a Very Rich Lady.
Trivia: Just up the road from Eva Gabor's house, is where Connie Stevens lives (they used her house in Postcards from the Edge), and across the road from Connie's is the house where Henry Mancini died.
Thank you to Terri Rios, for the Cedars Sinai photographs.
UPDATE March 2003, from Findadeath friend Lisa Jacobson:
Hi,
First of all, let me start by saying your site is incredibly
interesting. I'm hooked!
Now a peanut-gallery comment from a doc about the Eva Gabor story. It
all hangs together well from the pieces you've provided and the death
cert. The "bad fruit" thing is irrelevant. I don't even
think it was
viral pneumonia. It was probably pneumococcal pneumonia all along. It's
a
really bad bug that hits really fast and kills fast. That, and has a
bunch of antibiotic resistance these days, too. (This, incidentally is
the same thing that killed Jim Henson, I hear. He went from
walkie-talkie to dead in a little over 24 hours. I use his story to
persuade people to get vaccinated.)
What probably happened to Eva was the pneumonia hit and made her
confused, as older people tend to get when ill, hence the "disoriented
and weak" part that led her to fall and break a hip. By the time she
arrived in the states, the damage had been done. Adult Respiratory
Distress Syndrome (ARDS) is really hard to recover from. What happens
is the toxins released from the germs damage the delicate walls of the
capillaries in the lungs, which releases fluid, and the person
basically drowns in their own lung fluid. Very, very hard to treat, and
usually fatal. If people ever survive ARDS, it's usually after a long
course. Eva was old and there was a long interval before she could get
treatment, so...
Anyway, the "blood clot" part is confusing. It could definitely
be
that during her illness, she was immobile, formed a clot in her legs
that broke off and went to the lungs (people with hip fractures are
especially prone to that). Another thing that happens with some
frequency among people with long-bone fractures is "Fat Embolus,"
where
a piece of bone marrow is released after the fracture and travels to
the lung.
So, anyway, Eva was a sick gal. It's fun to speculate whether she
would have survived had she not been too hoity-toity to get medical
assistance in Mexico. In reality, she probably would have died anyway.
Thanks for the fun site!
Lisa
Thanks for the info, Lisa!
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