Sabrina - A cult takes (to culture)

By Robert Muller

Picture Post

25 Feb 1956

Sabrina-worship has reached new frenzy. But Sabrina is not satisfied. A 40-inch bust is not enough. A girl must improve herself. Picture Post documents Sabrina’s pursuit of The Better Things. But does culture become Sabrina?

by ROBERT MULLER

"There's only bad publicity," said Sabrina, "when they don't write about you."

One has heard this sort of thing from hardened comics. And politicians. It doesn't sound much like Norma Sykes from Blackpool. And when Norma Sykes expresses this opinion, one responds as to a child who has said something scandalous beyond its years. Who taught you to say that, dear?

Norma Sykes doesn't remember because during the last fifteen months many people have told her to say many different things. The girl who began her career by saying nothing again and again, has, in fact, learned almost all the answers. (Though one cannot always be sure that she has heard the questions.)

Sabrina is a success story of its time and country, and needs a Zola to do justice to it. A little over a year ago, as an obscure Lancashire model, Miss Sykes appeared on the cover of a magazine (this one). Arthur Askey was sufficiently taken by it to put her into his new TV show as a non-speaking bosom-projecting decoration. By saying nothing, Sabrina, as she began to call herself, succeeded in in making electric contact with the public. Today the nineteen-year-old Sabrina is a star and a symbol. Wherever she goes she is the quarry of photographers. for opening bazaars she draws top fees, and crowds mob her during 'personal appearances'. Editors give up their front pages for her every word and move, ghost-writers are bent over typewriters embellishing her 'memoirs’, and every comic knows that to milk applause he only has to say the magic word 'Sabrina' .

What Sabrina has got is no mystery. With her forty-inch bust and very blonde hair, she has become Bill Brown's goddess of glamour (made in Britain), the Teddy Boy's symbol tor opulent sex. Incessant Sabrina propaganda has turned Norma Sykes into a national tonic, a seaside postcard brought to life, sex for the unimaginative, inflated into absurdity.

Of this unique position in the Britain of today, Sabrina herself has remained serenely oblivious. She doesn't know that she is the comedian's easiest laugh, the promoter's most obvious gimmick, the prey of every dead-beat and hanger-on of show-business, out for brief glory and the quick quid.

Jokes and gibes about her figure leave her cold. All she 'minds' are insinuations that her hair is dyed, references to a 'Lancashire' accent (it is, in fact, a sort of neutral Prof. Higgins' delight) or inaccurate statements about her body measurements. "And if anyone calls me a Dumb Blonde," says Sabrina, "well, it's vicey-versa. I'm only nineteen - look at what I've achieved. I can go to Paris or America or anywhere I like. I got lots of money. I mix with people with a higher intelligence than most people. I got two television series coming up and a season at Blackpool. Look what I've got, yet it's me what's supposed to be dumb."

The world of Norma Sykes has the depth of a cinema poster. With her father and mother (who "hates this place" and can't wait to get back to Blackpool, she inhabits a...