Sabrina : Norma Sykes

Sabrina

Dr Norma Ann Sykes

Norma Sykes D.Litt (Hon) is the voluptuous British lass who became Sabrina and accomplished above the hips what Elvis accomplished below.
She is the Cheshire cheese-cake pinup, actress, singer, cabaret star, publicity pioneer, and sex-queen who didn't like to be touched.
She was a 'dumb blonde' who was a genius at self-promotion and an honorary Doctor of Letters with an impossibly-proportioned figure.
A victim of polio, mocked for her lack of talent and excess of bosom, she became an international phenomenon who charmed both the public and the cynical reporters, and generated more myths, lies, legends and throbbing memories than anyone else of her era.  

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Welcome

to the

Sabrina

Site

 

Sabrina - Norma Ann Sykes - was the impossibly-proportioned darling of Britain, the cast of the Goon Show, and most discerning testosterone-enabled beings during the 1950s and 1960s.

Falling more or less accidentally into an industry for which she was - at first - unqualified, she endured, trained, paid her dues, and thrived to become the biggest, least talented, most photographed celebrity of her day.

Was she, as she herself once said, just a dumb blonde with a 42½ inch bust and a 17 inch waist? Or was she an unacknowledged promotional genius with a native sense of publicity that would make most agents weep with envy?

Please enjoy the phenomenon that was our Sabrina who - contrary to rumour - is alive, gorgeous, and fairly well in Hollywood, and in contact with the Sabrina Site!

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See all new and old stuff - a complete site history and index

4 May - British S-Bomb - Foto-rama, March 1958. Spookily, it arrived just days after one of the men in her pictures wrote to me! And there are great new turtleneck/walkabout photos!

19 April - One shopping month 'til Sabrina's birthday!
31 March - A new and improved DivX rendition of the Goodnight with Sabrina silent short film, with remastered supplementary audio of her singing Persuade Me and a little bit of I Want A Man, Not a Mouse. It's just on 50 Megabytes, so it's for BOOBS contributors only, I'm afraid. Gotta pay for the bandwidth somehow... The original, smaller WMV version is still available for everyone, however.
21 March - I have obtained a DVD version of Sabrina in Tarzan and Mountains in the Moon. A little editing and it will be online soon.
9 March - Bigger and better DivX BOOBS clips of Sabrina in Make Mine a Million, the newsreel of Sabby's 1958 arrival in Oz, and her Australian TV ad for Caltex

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I will continue to offer normal sized, screen-resolution (72 dpi) watermarked scans on this site in keeping with the Sabrinasite policy of always remaining free to Sabrina Lovers. Donate a little, and get the Best Of Our Beautiful Sabrina.

If you help Support Sabrina, I guess you'd be a BRA - Boobs Registered Accomplice. Hmmm. Am I taking this acronym thing a bit too far now?

 Boobs!

Looking at vintage naked women helps me pay my hosting bills!



Complete
Sabrina
Index

Somewhat spurious Sabrina stuff...

A
Word
From
The
Web
Master

 

This site began at nylon.net as a tongue-in-cheek single page to complement the Goon Show pages. It was never meant to get this big, but its size, I guess, is proportional to the assets of its subject. Even if she was not a great artiste, she was certainly a great pioneer and phenomenon of modern celebrity. This is what this site celebrates.

I have made it a personal quest to discover everything about Sabrina. I call it a research project into the role of the internet in archiving memes and preserving our shared social history. Other people call it pathetic and sad... anyway! If you've read this far, you obviously agree with me, so to hell with the others.

She was a model, TV hostess, actor, singer, stage performer - and had no talent. Even she admitted that. Why then, was the Western world and the bearded president of Cuba so keen to see her that - at one time -10,000 people in Perth caused an airport terminal to collapse? Why did The Goon Show audience wet themselves whenever Spike Milligan slipped another reference to Sabrina past the BBC censors?

Like most of the male world (albeit 40 years after the event) I was intrigued by the lass. Were they real? (Yes, and they were insured). Who was she? (Norma Ann Sykes.) How did a bed-ridden teenage Cheshire girl end up as an international icon of femininity who rivalled Jayne Mansfield, Diana Dors and Marilyn herself? Why did she cause hysteria that made young people of all sexes literally push Frank Sinatra out of the way to get her autograph?

Those questions, and more, are the subject of the SabrinaStuff Site.

Continued... for those who are interested

Vital
Sabrina
Stats

Stage name: Sabrina (origins)
Real name: Norma Ann Sykes
Born: 19 May 1936 in Stockport, Cheshire, England.
She was not born in Blackpool or Wales in 1933 or 1938.
Measurements: 42½-18-36 (the "½" was vital)
AKA:

"The Hunchfront of Lime Grove"
"The British Bosom"
"The Careless Cleavage"
"Britain's Jayne Mansfield"
"Britain's finest hourglass"
"England's Maid of the Mountains"
"Queen of the Big Top"
"The Juliet with the Built-in Balcony"
"The average Englishman's Goddess of Glamour."

Career span: 1954-1969
Golden years: 1955-1963
Talents: Stage actress, model, television personality, singer, film and TV actor, cabaret and concert performer, self-publicity.
Current status: Alive, fairly well, and living in North Hollywood.

In
Search
Of
Sabrina

Stuff

If you have, or can help locate Sabrina stuff, I would be delighted if you contacted me. There are precious few undiscovered pictures still to be on the internet but I'm sure there are still a few knees trembling out there, especially in the UK, and those knee-owners may have a buried Sabrina treasure or two in the sideboard. This is an international philanthropic enterprise, for the benefit of red-blooded males everywhere!

Young men: go to your aged fathers and grandfathers and say, "Do you remember Sabrina?" If their eyes glaze over and they start drooling, let me know. Personal recollections of Sabrina are valuable.

You knee-tremblers of the Sabrina generation: wait 'til the missus is out and rummage through your secret stash of goodies you don't think she knows about. There may just be a magazine, photo or love letter related to Sabrina. Perhaps you have one of these elusive goodies stashed away in your pyjama drawer?  If you find something, steady your trembling fingers and let me know.

(Puts "Land of Hope and Glory" on gramophone)

Go to it, lads! We cannot let the memory of Sabrina sink into the abyss of forgotten legends. We owe it to our sons and grandsons!

(Wipes tear from eye.)

And the final appeal is from Sabrina herself (in Mountains of the Moon)

Thank you! Thank you all!

Can you support the Sabrina Stuff Site?

 

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Click to visit Retroraunch: both naughty AND nice!

Look around carefully. Listen for the sounds of footsteps in fluffy slippers on the stairs.
Is it all quiet in the manor?

Quickly! Quickly!
Click... the following link... NOW!

100 years of naughty naked women at Retro Raunch

Who knows, lads? You probably went behind the bus stop with half of these lassies for a quick knee-trembler many moons ago!

Sabrina
Links

 

Do you have a site related to the Sabrina era? Email me to get a link here

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All hail Queen Sabrina!
(Click her to see her full size)

 

In
Conclusion

Thank you for visiting, and I hope some happy memories have been stirred.

Many people have gone "Corrrr - blimey!"
since the first Sabrina page was created at
nylon.net on 16 June 2000.
It moved to
sabrinastuff.com on 1 Sept 2003.
Moved back to semi-retire at
nylon.net/sabrina on 12 April 2005

Visit the original site from way back when.

Last modified: Sunday, May 4, 2008 1:00 PM

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None of the copyrighted pictures or text on this site may be re-used without permission. Many pictures here are the exclusive intellectual property of Sabrina or other contributors. If you want to use this Sabrina Stuff, please read the conditions of use

 

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