MARY ZSUZSI

Contributions to culture and science

 Hungarian singer. Winner of the main prize and audience prize at the 1968 Dancing and Singing Festival. After graduating with honours from the prestigious Ságvári High School in her hometown of Szeged, she travelled to the capital to make her dreams come true. She moved to Buda, to an apartment in Hattyú Street, and started performing as a substitute singer with the then already very popular Atlantisz band. In 1965, she became famous when she sang the theme song of Péter Bacsó’s film ’Bicyclists in Love’, ’You Love Me at Least’.

Her real success, however, came in 1968 at the 3rd Dancing and Singing Festival, when her future husband, Attila Dobos, composed the hit Mama for her – with Iván Szenes’ brilliant lyrics – which won her a shared first prize and the audience’s top prize. Upon this success, she travelled to the Eastern Bloc’s Dancing and Singing Festival, organised in Sochi. Here, Mama was awarded third place. The song of the first place – sang by Soviet singer Edyta Piecha – was later performed by Zsuzsi Mary in Hungarian, making for even greater successes (’The trumpet Player’). Upon the zenith of her successes, she unexpectedly emigrated. Leaving her star life behind, pregnant with her first daughter, she followed her husband to West Germany to start a new life, only returning to Hungary in the late 1990s. Her first major album, written and released by András Payer with the help of Hungaroton in 1991, went gold. After moving back home in 1999, she was almost immediately drawn to a life of active concert and show performances by popular dance singers. She was touring every week, performing in popular TV programmes and singing contests.  In 2001 she received great admiration for her role as Marlene Dietrich in the musical called Edith and Marlene, and for her role in Hyppolit, the Butler in Éva Rutkay Theatre in Budapest. 2002 she released her second own album, making it to top lists with songs mostly written by Iván Szenes previously exclusively performed in live acts. She established fame reaching over generations. She made famous appearances on the commercial channel’s, TV2’s League of Singers programme, where week by week she had to perform in distinct genres. Her third album was released in 2005. In that year she also conducted a successful tour in Canada, performing in several cities of Ontario. She was the prevailing star of national magazines and commercial TV channels, making appearances all over Hungary.

Short biography

 Zsuzsi  Mary (1947, October 13th, Szeged  – , 2011, December 25th, Budapest) Hungarian singer. Winner of the main prize and audience prize at the 1968 Dancing and Singing Festival.

She gave birth to six children, losing one of them shortly after. Her first husband was Attila Dobos lyricist and songwriter, her second husband was György Klapka. She lived and worked in Germany from 1968, and moved back to Hungary in 1999. Her two adult children, Nicole and Christian, stayed in Germany, while Sandy and Dennis, then aged ten and twelve, followed their mother to Hungary, where Zsuzsi raised them in her ex-husband’s converted office on the Normafa Way property. On 24 December 2011, she committed suicide in her family home in Budapest, District XII, and her body was found the next day, 25 December. The suicide was confirmed by her second husband, György Klapka.

She had been drinking and taking drugs after a family Christmas dinner. In the evening, she spoke on the phone to her sister, Ági, who lived in Nuremberg, to whom she told all this. After the phone call, her sister made a desperate phone call to Klapka, who lived on the same plot of land, and sent his partner up to the flat under the garage where Zsuzsi lived. According to the woman, she heard Mary Zsuzsi snoring through the door due to the drugs and alcohol she had taken, so she left without going inside or calling an ambulance. The next morning, she was found dead.

 Interesting facts

 1968 – first prize and audience prize – 3rd Dancing and Singing Festival

2010 – Hungarian Tolerance Prize

 Solo Albums:

• 1991 This is the last tango
• 2003 PremierM
• 2005 Drifting by the wind

 In February 2012, Zsuzsi Mary was due to release her last album, which she was working on before her death. The CD was to have featured a song that has since been leaked, Elszálltak az évek (The Years Have Passed), which was the last song recorded by Zsuzsi Mary. The CD was released only in 2017.