IN MEMORIAM vanity fair

I wanted to find a story you wouldn’t have necessarily seen on your own.

The legendary star’s ashes were transported to Hungary on a first class flight complete with champagne and caviar.

Five years after her death, Zsa Zsa Gabor’s ashes got to go for one last first class joy ride befitting the late actress’s high-flying life.

Before being brought to their final burial site in Hungary on Tuesday, the glamorous socialite’s ashes were flown first class on a multi-stop international flight complete with champagne and caviar. Gabor’s ninth and final husband, Frédéric Prinz von Anhalttold Reuters of the trip, “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.” Von Anhalt, who was married to the star from 1986 until she died at age 99 in 2016, was tasked with accompanying her urn on the transatlantic flight, carrying three-quarters of his late wife’s ashes from Los Angeles—where one-quarter of her remains—to London, then Germany, before ultimately bringing her to her final resting place in Budapest.

Von Anhalt explained, “She definitely wanted to be in Budapest because her father is buried here, too. That’s what she wanted and that’s what she had in her last will.” Gabor stipulated in her will that she wished to be buried in her place of birth. Upon their arrival in Budapest, von Anhalt also hosted an event he described as a “celebration of life, not a funeral,” per the socialite’s wishes, which included a performance from a gypsy band and lots of her favorite yellow and pink roses.

Gabor was born into a wealthy Hungarian family and named Miss Hungary in the 1930s. But as World War II swiftly approached, she and her two sisters, Eva and Magda, fled the country for the US, leaving behind her first husband, a Turkish diplomat whom she married at 15. “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. Once they landed in Los Angeles, all three sisters became silver screen stars with Gabor going on to appear in over 30 films.null

Gabor was married to a number of high-profile men, including Conrad Hilton, actor George Sanders, oil heir Joshua Cosden, and Barbie-inventor Jack Ryan. The actress was also famous for keeping her real age and husband count a closely-guarded secret, prompting longtime family friend and gossip columnist Cindy Adams to once quip that “the only way you can tell the age of a Gabor is from the rings around their gums.”

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