The Hollywood legend Zsa Zsa Gabor was finally laid to rest this week five years after she passed away at the age of 99.
The iconic actress was known for being over the top during her lifetime, so it’s only fitting that her ashes were transported to a Hungarian burial site on a multi-stop international flight that was filled with Champagne and caviar.
“She was first class, she had her own seat and she had her passport, everything there. It was her last trip, she always used to go first class, she had her Champagne, caviar,” Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, Gabor’s ninth and final husband, told Reuters. The urn that was sent to Hungary held three-quarters of Gabor’s ashes, as the other quarter of her remains are staying in Los Angeles.
Von Anhalt, 78, traveled to London, then Germany and, finally, Budapest as he honored his late wife’s wishes that she be interred in her home country of Hungary.
“She definitely wanted to be in Budapest because her father is buried here, too,” von Anhalt said. “That’s what she wanted and that’s what she had in her last will.
Once at her burial site in a Capital city cemetery, a “celebration of life, not a funeral” was performed for Gabor, just as she wanted. This ceremony included a gypsy band and yellow and pink roses, which were the actress’s favorite.
“She did a lot for Hungarians, be it for those who fled after the 1956 uprising, or during the polio epidemic, and she did not do those things because she wanted to get into the news,” von Anhalt said of Gabor, who fled to the United States with her family upon the start of World War II.
Gabor shot to stardom with her sisters, Magda and Eva, and quickly became known as one of the final stars of Hollywood’s golden age. She appeared in over thirty movies, but by the 1970s, she was rejecting smaller roles.
“I may be a character but I do not want to be a character actress,” she once said.
Gabor suffered from many health problems in her final years, and she even had to have one of her legs amputated in 2011. She passed away in December of 2016 at the age of 99, and she is still dearly missed by her fans to this day.
Rest in peace, Zsa Zsa Gabor.
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