Jolie Gabor

Jolie Gabor, born Janka Tilleman on September 29, 1896, in Budapest, was a Hungarian-American jeweler, memoirist, and stage matriarch of the celebrated Gabor family. The daughter of a prosperous Jewish-Hungarian merchant family, she was educated in convent schools and acquired the European poise and ambition she would later transmit to her three daughters.

In 1914 she married Vilmos Gabor, a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army who became a successful Budapest jeweler. The couple had three daughters in quick succession: Magda in 1915, Zsa Zsa in 1917, and Eva in 1919. Jolie groomed all three for beauty pageants, the stage, and advantageous marriages, with Zsa Zsa winning the 1936 Miss Hungary title and Eva later starring on Broadway and on the television series Green Acres.

The family's life in Hungary ended with the rise of Nazism. Eva emigrated to the United States in 1939, Zsa Zsa followed soon after, and Jolie escaped Budapest with Magda and reached New York in 1945 after harrowing wartime ordeals — Magda had worked in the Portuguese embassy assisting refugees. Vilmos remained in Hungary, and the couple eventually divorced; Jolie later remarried Edmond de Szigethy.

In New York, Jolie opened a costume-jewelry boutique on Madison Avenue that became a salon for celebrities and European émigrés. She published a candid 1975 memoir, Jolie Gabor, ghostwritten with Cindy Adams, and continued to function as the family's public center until her death on April 1, 1997, at age 100, in Rancho Mirage, California.

Jolie is a French feminine name from the adjective joli meaning pretty or lovely. She used the feminine name as her professional and public name throughout her life.