Celebrating 100th to the birth of Zsa Zsa Gabor, the Hungarian-American actress and socialite, whose connection to design history is by the house in which she had lived in the 40s, while married to Conrad Hilton. After crowned as Miss Hungary in 1936, Gabor emigrated to the United States in 1941 and married Hilton (1887-1979) in that year. The marriage to the legendary hotelier was the first, but most celebrated, of nine. During their five-year marriage, the two were living in one of the most iconic houses of the time, Casa Encantada in Bel-Air, California. The 43-room mansion, the most ambitious commission of Russian-born Beverly Hills architect James E. Dolena, was decorated by British, New-York_based decorator T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, who considered this as his finest work With no less than two hundred exquisite pieces of furniture, which have since become blue-chip in the marketplaces, the mansion was purchased by Hilton from the original a year after its completion. The bed (below), I was told by a dealer friend, is the only bed in history used by both Gabor and Elizabeth Taylor (who was briefly married to Hilton’s son).
