Green Acres Star Eva Gabor's Hidden Scars: What The Cameras Never Saw

Eva Gabor was the beloved star of "Green Acres" and has a special place in Disney lovers' hearts after having voiced the likes of Duchess in "The Aristocats" and Miss Bianca in "The Rescuers," but she certainly didn't have the easiest start. Despite growing up in a wealthy family, Eva's mother was notoriously tough on Eva and her famous sisters, Magda Gabor and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Fans of the Gabor sisters may be aware that it was their mother who instilled in them the desire for fame. That's because Jolie Gabor had had big dreams of becoming an actor herself. Unfortunately, the time and circumstances in which she was raised didn't exactly allow for Jolie to follow through with that desire. According to Peter H. Brown's "Such Devoted Sisters: Those Fabulous Gabors," she'd even been devastated when she learned she was pregnant with the eldest of her children, Magda. Two more daughters later, Jolie was too late to follow her ambitions, but found a solution. In "Such Devoted Sisters," Brown quoted her as saying, "I looked at my beautiful young daughters and decided, for good or bad, to live through them. They would be everything I had wanted to be but could not."

Unfortunately, that didn't always make for an easy childhood experience, and "Such Devoted Sisters" begins with Eva gasping for breath after she and her sisters were thrown from a boat by their mother. The same scene was also documented in Darwin Porter's "Those Glamorous Gabors: Bombshells from Budapest." In that retelling, Jolie was quoted as having told Eva and her sisters, "Somehow you didn't drown. You've just learned one of life's most important lessons: How to survive." That may be so, but it's certainly a child-raising tactic that would be frowned upon today. 

Not all of Jolie Gabor's life lessons were quite as harsh as the boat incident, but she nonetheless continued to push her children to be excellent in all things. In a scene that sounds like a more intense version of one from "The Aristocats," Eva Gabor's description of the daily lessons she and her sisters had was also included in "Such Devoted Sisters." "While Magda studied with the piano teacher, I practiced on the other piano. Then Zsa Zsa moved from her books to my piano, and Magda rotated to her piano," she recounted. Once that was finished, they would also do fencing, dance class, and language lessons. All of the above was also after their formal school day.

Strict or not, Jolie maintained that Eva was desperate to become an actor, and she did. Eva moved to the U.S., and after her second screen test at Paramount, was promptly told she was about to be the next big thing in Hollywood. However, that all changed a few days later when another look at the footage revealed that she looked like a teenager on camera. Understandably, Eva was gutted, and Brown quoted her complaining, "If I hadn't photographed too young I would have become a big star. They had the contract already written."

Of course, a few years later, Eva's fortunes would change. In addition to working steadily throughout the '50s (and landing a gig as Miss Valen-tie for the American Men's Necktie Foundation), she went on to land her starring role in "Green Acres" in the '60s. Is it possible she may have become an even bigger star had that second screen test worked out? Possibly. However, Eva certainly had an incredibly successful career all the same — the kind her mother dreamed of.