Interview with Agota Gabor

Agota Gabor has a written a memoir, "Forever on Pointe", that details her origins as a ballerina in Hungary, her days on CBC Television, as well as her rise as an icon in the public relations industry in Toronto. We talk about her love life, too.

Watch: https://youtu.be/0mTAHhQKd18

Unedited transcript

Jim Allan: If you are connected to the world of public relations or communications in Toronto, you've probably heard the name of Gabor. Or perhaps you actually know Agoda Gabor, better known to me as Agi, so welcome Agi.

Agota Gabor: Thank you.

Jim Allan: Anything I know about public relations I probably learned through you or working for your company. You arguably invented media training in Canada.

Agota Gabor: Thank you.

Jim Allan: Or at least you brought it to Canada. And that's what we have, you've got a couple of books out, public speaking presentations, media interviews, helping you succeed. So tell me what's in this book.

Agota Gabor: Steve Kee, who was your guest the other day, and he very kindly said, everyone in communication should have this on his or her desk. Because it really is just tips for presentation skills and media interviews.

Jim Allan: You used to charge big bucks for this.

Agota Gabor: Big bucks.

Jim Allan: And now you're not giving it away, but you're selling it.

Agota Gabor: Selling it for less than $10. So it can be useful to many, many people, those who would never be sent by their corporation to a workshop that would cost $5,000 a day. Which is what we used to charge for about seven, six, seven people. And a lot of it's preparation and rehearsing and that sort of thing.

Jim Allan: A lot of the advice you're giving in the book.

Agota Gabor: For sure. The structure of you. A couple of new things I included, because I have, for example, some tips for women who present. I have some tips for people like me, whose first language is not English. I have some tips in there for the first minute of your presentation, how you can get rid of the butterflies. Which is really common sense, but very, very important because the first and the last minutes are very important. I have the structure of your presentation. Keep it simple, sweetheart. You know, the three tells. Tell them what you want to tell them. Tell them what you told them. Very, very nothing really basically new, but it's all there.

Jim Allan: It's all in there. So when we when we first started swapping emails about maybe talking about your book, just getting another shot of it here. This we were going to talk about this book. And I said to you, it'd be nice to. Well, you've had such an interesting life. I could I should also ask Aggie about. I don't know. I could ask her about some of the other things. And then you you actually said. Well, you know, I've got a memoir coming out. Some of these things I kind of knew about you. And I just because people talk behind your back at work.

Agota Gabor: Right.

Jim Allan: I knew you're from Hungary. I knew you had been a dancer. It's it's very personal. I do feel like I'm reading your diary at times. So how long did it take you? Right. Or did you write? Did you go over and over and over it? Or how did it come together?

Agota Gabor: About three, four years ago, I wrote a short, I guess a half of the first chapter about being a ballet rat and how it was like, how did I get in? And the first chapter. I put it away because I got so busy. Everybody always told me for the last 25 years, you should write a book because you did so many different things. But I never considered myself a writer because I always I know how to write. I know how to write scripts, but I always depend on the visuals to fill in the details. So I never thought I could write a book. And so I just put this away. And then the pandemic came. And then I wrote the other book. And I realized I enjoyed writing. And that was very easy because really and truly, I was just writing down what I'd been talking for 35 years. But then I went back to that first little essay or chapter that I wrote about being a ballet student and the life I had, which I loved. And I thought, oh, I just keep on writing. And I fell in love with it. I just told the story as I remembered. And I do have a good memory.

Jim Allan:  You’re a dancer, a ballerina. You love dancing. So tell me about being a little girl and loving dance. And you're obviously very good at it.

Agota Gabor: Yes, I was told that I was very good at it. And I think I was. I know I was. I got into the I got admitted to the upper house right after the war. I before the war, I had a very difficult childhood, which I don't really remember that much. What I write about during the war, I remember some, but mostly is my mom telling me because I was too young, but it was terrible. But I did take classes until it was impossible because my mom was Jewish and we couldn't go to dance class anymore. But this was when I was three and four. So this is more not not much in my head anymore. But anyway, after the war, I got into the opera house. And it was a different life. I mean, we took class in the morning and then we would an hour and a half every morning from eight until ten thirty. Then we went on to another classroom, another area of the opera house. This was all inside this beautiful Budapest Opera House, one of the nicest in the world. And we practically lived there. Then we learned the parts of children in the different ballets. That was all the morning. And then we would have lunch. Then we would have school in the afternoon in the opera house. Again, in one of the big dressing rooms, we would have school. And then at night, sometimes we would go home and sometimes we would be in the opera, whether we were the kids in Cavalier or Rusticana standing in the church just as a backdrop to the singers, or we would do the Nutcracker, which I did dance sixty four times. The Paletroie, that was my biggest accomplishment. So I loved it. I lived for it. And then I was a pandemic, not unlike, not an epidemic, not a pandemic, the polio epidemic. It was before the virus, one year before the vaccine, I'm sorry, one year before the vaccine. And I got it.

Jim Allan: Polio.

Agota Gabor: Polio. So that was hard. That was very hard.

Jim Allan: And that has effectively ended your, any hope to be a professional in Ballerina?

Agota Gabor: Yes, yes. And I was 15 and I had a very hard time coping with it. Physically, I went to therapy, physiotherapy very difficult for a year. I went back trying to dance because dance, excuse me, dance is very good exercise. So it would strengthen you, but I couldn't do it. And it just about killed me trying.

Jim Allan: And it's affected you. I mean, in the, at the very end of the book. At the end, it says you needed to be encouraged to expand on the theme of polio in your life. Is this the kind of thing that you didn't want to, you didn't tell anyone as the years go by? Like were you embarrassed or ashamed? You always, sorry, you never told anyone.

Agota Gabor: And that, yeah, that's very true. Anna Porter told me that actually. She is, she was Canada's first publisher. I don't know if you know her name and she's friend. And I did send her, she was one of the first person that saw the book. And she said, Aggie, I noticed that you walk with a limp. Is that because of your polio? And I said, oh, I don't walk with a limp. She says, well, you do. And I said, well, sometimes, you know, I, I, that was my life. I never told anyone of my fight continuously. And so she advised me to bring that theme stronger into the book because that and really and truly she was so right because it's an important fight in, in the book. And yeah, and it's getting me because I have post polio now. So at the end.

Jim Allan: 40 years later, it comes back.

Agota Gabor: Comes back. Or something comes back. Something comes back. I mean. Or the weekend. So you always needed to do special exercises for your, for your leg. I always exercise because I like it. It's in my, you know, I, but now I do. But post polio comes back. It's not as bad as when you first get polio. But the same area like my right leg is the one that was really bad when I got polio. And it's now the one that's really weak with post polio. So I'm, I keep on fighting.

Jim Allan: That mention at the end of the book about polio being a theme that needed to be developed made me think of the best way to talk about this book is not just to go over it, you know, chapter by chapter, but pull out some themes. Polio being one, you know, and we've kind of hinted on it too. Just reinvention, like just being forced to reinvent yourself time after time after time. And I think people will find that inspiring because there's just that you're there's your young life, but there's just some romantic, your romantic life. You've reinvented yourself a few times, which we'll talk about later. Trust me. And I might wait, keep that to the end so you don't walk out in a huff. Hungary, obviously, is in the book a lot because later in life you're able to visit. Then you're visiting a lot. And it's a big part of who you are, is the country Hungary, right?

Agota Gabor: Very much so.

Jim Allan: You love visiting, returning.

Agota Gabor: You know, I think you'll find that with most immigrants, you end up having two homes. When I go to Budapest, I say I'm going home. And tien from there, I come to Toronto and I say I'm coming home. So it never goes away. And I was well, I was very lucky when I talk about husbands when I met my now husband and my partner for a lot of a lot of years. That's how I met him. We did a documentary on me returning to Hungary after there was an amnesty for all the refugees of the 56th Revolution.

Jim Allan: Another big theme in the book, really, is your mother. It was very interesting.

Agota Gabor: I love my mother. And yes, she was there with me when I was little. And she had to hide me from all kinds of horrible things. I probably would have been killed in Auschwitz if she didn't hide me. But then we were very close, just the two of us, growing up. And then we left. And at 17, at the border, when we were walking through the border, mom twisted her ankle. She couldn't walk. And then we were in refugee camp. And then we left. And it's still something went wrong with her ankle. And then we were in Montreal. And all of a sudden, everything shifted because my father was living in Montreal at the time because they were divorced. And he left Hungary years before. My father said, OK, I get your job as a waitress and you can support your mom. So, you know, within two weeks, I became the person who is going to take care. I spoke French. Mom didn't speak any English or French. And so my little French had to do the communications unless it was in Hungarian. And I was making money and she couldn't get a job. So all of a sudden, I became, you know, it shifted. She used to take care of me. And now all of a sudden, it kind of shifted. But we became later became just partners, really. You know, we had a dancing school and she was very good at business. And she did the business part. I at the time, that was my very first business, but she had more to do with it than I just thought. And she played the piano. And so we had another life together. And she we had, you know, no relationship is always perfect. She had her own ideas about my love life, which I didn't like. And that was difficult. But, yeah, she was very important in my life.

Jim Allan: So, talking about Re-Invention, so you worked as not a ballerina, but you worked as a dancer in clubs and nightclubs in Montreal. And Montreal was a little crazier.

Agota Gabor: Oh, it was extremely exciting. I was young and beautiful. And it was Las Vegas like Montreal was nuts. And the Rosemary Bistro Cafe in Montreal was kind of in the center, right off St. Catherine Street. And it was a meeting place of all the the artists and the magicians and not the big stars, but the support people of all these big clubs. And that's how I met these people. And they said, well, if you know how to dance, which I did, it wasn't Swan Lake type of dancing because, oh, I became a good dancer. I was strong enough. And I think I was talented enough to compensate well enough to look good. And so I started doing the nightclub circuit. I had a couple of members, the Hungarian Csárdás, that's, you know, Brahms number five, which is always popular, as well as C'est Magnifique was my other number for the song C'est Magnifique. And I did very well as a waitress. I made $40 a week with tips. And I was hired after I had my pictures taken and I was making $125. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money at that time. These are Las Vegas style nightclubs in Montreal. And then I got into the Bellevue Casino. That was a big production. I was very lucky. I became a chorus girl and it was great fun. And then I became a soloist and that was even more fun. And then a long time. This is going back to history. But you might remember Drapeau, the mayor of Montreal, who decided to clean the city up and shut down all these big clubs. So that's when I reinvented myself and I got a job at Arthur Murray's to teach ballroom dance.

Jim Allan: You start teaching. That was in Montreal or was that in Ottawa? So you went to Montreal and then you're teaching in Ottawa. You came to Toronto. You're also teaching dance.

Agota Gabor: Yeah, that's where I got the idea to put it on television. So you started your own company, though, in Toronto as well. I started a studio, a dance studio with my mom. And then I thought, well, if I can teach anyone how to do ballroom dancing, why shouldn't I teach the camera? And so I went to at the time I watched CFTO Morning Show and they had all these, you know, cooking demonstrations and dress and design. And I thought, wouldn't that be good if I just did a little eight minute segment about how to do the foxtrot, the cha-cha, this or that. And Dodie Robb, who was a great pioneer for women in television, I was lucky enough that I got an interview with her and she liked my idea. And they put me on CFTO in the morning at eight o'clock or something teaching dancing. And then Dodie got a job at CBC as head of daytime programming and Take 30, which was a national show. And she took me and my little segment with her. And it became very popular. And I did that for about five years.

Jim Allan: So, you're on CBC. Like, once are we doing a daytime dance segment?

Agota Gabor: Dance segment. And then on Fridays when Adrian Clarkson had the day off, I did this 15 minute segment and I was the co-host with Paul Soles. Yes. So Adrian Clarkson, Paul Soles, Take 30. I remember that show. And then that just grew.

Jim Allan: It led to other things once you get into the CBC.

Agota Gabor: And then Disco Tech came and I started doing Disco Tech. But at CBC, and then I got a job at CBC in production, met my husband.

Jim Allan: You were a script assistant at first?

Agota Gabor: I was a script assistant, which I loved. And researching and that sort of thing. And then I went back to school and got a degree in journalism.

Jim Allan: Right. To Ryerson.

Agota Gabor: And I went to Ryerson during the day and I was a script assistant.

Jim Allan: You were doing both at once for a while.

Agota Gabor: It was good.

Jim Allan: So,you're busy. You were busy. You've always been busy. Okay. You're almost like the queen of the cold call. And I'll explain what I mean by that. You spent some, I don't know, three, four years in Hong Kong. And you walk right into a hotel in Hong Kong and get a job. And you're living in London, England, and you walk right into a hotel and get a job. And you walk into the King Eddie in Toronto and get a job. What's your secret in those cold call meetings? What is it?

Agota Gabor: The first time I really worked in public relations, I was in Hong Kong doing freelance work for CBC. I was married to Bill Cunningham, who was CBC's foreign correspondent in Hong Kong. So we were living there. And I was doing freelance work for documentaries. And a friend said, did you ever do PR? And I said, no. But why? And they said, well, because Demandarin is looking for a public relations person. And the person who was running the department, Kyne Lowe, I didn't realize this, was leaving the next day for New York. She just got this call and she was desperate. And that's how I got the job. My husband got a transfer to London and it was an intercontinental hotel. So my general manager wrote a note, just an introduction to the manager who was going to open the intercontinental in London. And so I got a bad job. So it was really being in the right place at the right time. The CBC thing played out, I guess.

Jim Allan: Is that another reinvention you decided at a certain point to go?

Agota Gabor: It was called Gabor Communications at a certain point. The first time it was called Media Techniques. And then I got the General Motors account for media training. And practically three months later, McLaren Advertising offered to buy my little company that wasn't even a company. It just had a couple of accounts. But they were so protective of General Motors that they didn't want anyone training their chairman on what to say. So they bought my company. I was with them for four years and then I left, changed the name because they had the name. And then I had Gabor Communications. And then I sold to Grey Canada because I needed the money because I bought a house and the renovations went south. I really needed some money, so I sold out again. And I don't like working for a big agency.

Jim Allan: So,the last 25, 30 years, you were on your own.

Agota Gabor: And then I left and on my own. And that's when you have kind of crossed my life with the Gabor Group.

Jim Allan: It’s part of your personal history in the book. So again, it's like reading your diary at times. So I'm learning. So you married a Hungarian fellow, but in Canada. Is that right? OK, I'm getting that right.

Agota Gabor: We met in the student camp in Petronel in Austria. We left the country. We had a big refugee camp in Isostat and it was not very nice and a lot of a lot of people and not very good. And but there was a small place that somebody gave an aristocrat gave to young students to stay. And so that's where I met my first love. And so we had a very innocent, romantic interlude. We were in love. But, you know, kissing one kiss was about all there was. And then he was going to look me up in Canada because my mom and I got on a plane and they were he and his friend were going to go on a ship. And they did come. But somehow we didn't connect. And then five years later, I was walking in the street in Montreal and I bumped into him. And a year later, we were married. It was great. But we had different plans for life.

You divorced and he ultimately went back to Hungary. Is that correct?

Jim Allan: You met Bill. You're married to Bill. And then quite famously, for people that know you, you split, you divorced Bill and and split for almost 20 years. And that could be a book or a movie unto itself. That story now, which one of the you know, the unspoken themes of the book is is is forgiveness.

Agota Gabor: Really?

Jim Allan: You don't say it. But there's obviously a story there. I mean, young Bill or middle aged Bill was a bit of a scoundrel. I mean, you write it in the book so I can say it to you. It's like, what is what is it about this story that that? Why did I go back? Well, I mean, you had a child with him and everything, but it is an interesting story. And and there's no in the book, there's no bitterness or anything. You clearly forgave him. I mean, you're not an overtly religious person or anything. You're not. You don't hold grudges by the sounds of it.

Agota Gabor: But oh, I do. I do hold grudges.

Jim Allan: OK, I want to hear about the grudges.

Agota Gabor: No, no, no. Sometimes even today I will say something that comes from nowhere. You know, that comes from that other marriage a long, long time ago. So everybody you don't totally forget those things, but you forget being terribly upset about it. And I. OK, how do I say this? OK, we had we were married. It was more like an affair because we always traveled. It was so by the big life. You know, he was a foreign correspondent back in the day. So he was he was a swashbuckling. He was Vietnam, Northern Ireland, but all over the place, all of the place. And he became a big shot at CBC and and it wasn't what I really wanted. I wanted my own life. I mean, he yes, he had affairs. That was one. And that was enough for me to get out of there. But I think that was another reason to I didn't want to live his life. I wanted to have my own. And it was almost impossible because he had such a big life. You couldn't have your own life, you know. And we've thought about it. And and it was a constant fight. And it wasn't fair because he was already an established television journalist and I was an immigrant. And I wanted to become all those things. So we thought we were competitors within a marriage. And it all worked out until we had a child and we came back to Toronto. And he wanted me to take care of that child totally on my own, not disturb his life. So he was really old school. Totally. And then we had the girlfriends. Where does that leave you? So we split. And then we were separate for a long time. And because we had a child, eventually became became acquaintances, friends, cordial. And then I lived with someone for close to 10 years and he had serial long term relationships. And I suppose at one point, neither one of us had anyone. And we both like sailing. And we had a colleague, Larry Salve, who had a big boat. And we ended up sailing together with many other people. And we just kind of drifted together and started talking. And the good parts of what the attraction was in the first place was that we could always discuss and talk and enjoy each other's company. And that came back and we started dating. And all of a sudden, and then we got together and I didn't want to marry him again. I didn't see any reason to get married. We already done that. We had a child. Why? But Bill, would you believe it, said he has never lived with anyone that he wasn't married to. And of course, our daughter Cathy thought that would be great. And so we got married. And we have a very good relationship. Now it's been 25 years. So this time it worked. I think it's more even Stephen too.

Jim Allan: Has Bill read the book?

Agota Gabor: Yes, he read the book. He read the first five chapters, actually. He liked it, but he got very jealous at one point. He said, Oh, my God, you know, you're going to get lost in his eye. I think that's in the book. My first husband. And he was kind of a little uneasy about it. And then we had a talk. And I said, Look, I'm not going to let you read anymore because then it's going to influence how I write. But I said, I'll promise you that when it's finished before it's too late, you can read the whole thing. So I guess that when the question comes up, has Bill read the book? It's more about obviously when he's there, his shenanigans and then the 20 year gap.

Jim Allan: And so he's he's cool with all of that.

Agota Gabor: Yeah, because I wasn't the sugar plum fairy either. Right. Maybe that's why I could forgive because, you know, I was totally broken up when it happened. But if I look back on it, you know, everybody was doing it at that time.

Jim Allan: Well, what? It's the 60s. Is that your excuse?

Agota Gabor: Kind of.

Jim Allan:  Why should I buy this book?

Agota Gabor: If there's any message that I want people to take away is that it's worth reinventing yourself and keep on trying to create a life that you like instead of just put up with what happens to you.

Jim Allan: Have you sold the movie rights yet?

Agota Gabor: Not yet, but I'm certainly going to try. I think it would make a wonderful movie or a series. Now, why should I buy this book? Well, if you a person in the business world who has to do interviews, who has to make presentations, who has to represent either her own company or the company she works for or he works for, I think you find very helpful tips on how you can do that successfully.

Jim Allan: Well, congratulations on writing two books during the pandemic. And they're both great. So so thank you.

Agota Gabor: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.