SABRINIA*

*Yes, throughout the article, she is referred to as "Sabrinia".

You can tell the nature of the mag by their other cover headlines: Adolf Hitlers Secret Love (no apostrophe), College Scandals , Monster Children and Missile Scandal Revealed . Sigh. But just when you might have been doubting the credibility of the journal, it reassures us that Sabrinia is 'an avid reader of the classics and Zen poetry'! Ahh. That's a relief.

SABRINIA

(sic)

Start making with the superlatives. Start with a 40 plus busting out line. Travel up from that to a face that can be sultry or sweet. Or travel down to curves and lines that delight British night club audiences night after night. Sabrinia is rapidly earning a position as a prime British national resource. Of the indispensable trinity of Wine, Women and Song, she personally represents what may be called the major two-thirds. Her act appeals to the eye and the ear — And the imagination.For what Sabrinia dispenses is womanhood.

Or sexhood, or whatever you dare label it. It is the quality that history associates with Cleopatra, that the 30's found in Mae West. The vital quality that inspires writers and makes artists give up abstractions. The warm, spirit-caressing quality that fills night clubs. Sabrinia has a remarkably well-balanced attitude toward herself and her success. She thinks she is very lucky. Lucky to be able to provide sunshine and cheer for her countrymen in the time of austerity. She even laughs without embarrassment at jokes suggesting she should be made available as a tonic under the National Health Plan. She reads heavily in philosophy, particularly Zen-Buddhism.

Sabrinia [sic] pauses long enough to appraise her figure and study the effects of her new evening dress. Can you imagine having any doubts about the end product?

So far, she admits, the tranquilizing power of these concepts has not dampened her own radiations. It has helped her keep her composure under the exacting challenge of an audience that divides by sex: men who start by staring and end in a dreamy daze: women who come to find fault in the publicized magnificent torso, and suddenly begin to remember advertisements of creams that profess to nourish and develop underprivileged bodies. Her career has its own dramatic interest. By the time she was fifteen her talents could no longer be overlooked. But her family of middle class tradition, with characteristic British reserve, went along with the idea that she might become a school teacher.

Luckily, for the adult population, the town's merchants association staged a Local Products Fair, and hired Sabrinia along with dozens of local girls as an attendant for one of the display booths. The disproportionate bunching at that booth attracted the attention of the press agent for the Fair. Let us pause for a moment in silent thanksgiving to that perspicacious young man. And don't underestimate the work he had to do. First he had to convince Sabrinia that he was not a city slicker pulling the old—"I can get you in the movies" gag. And then he had to sell her conservative parents on the amazing notion that she was something extraordinary.

Oddly, dramatically, the turning point was a pinch. A town councilman, a pillar of respectability, with the furled umbrella and the spotless cutaway pinched her on the last day of the Fair. It didn't get to court. Sabrinia shrieked. The crowd surged forward to kill the dastardly cad — until he voiced the secret thought of all of them. "I just had to," he said with simple honesty. "I could not go another day without finding out if they were real." They were real, and her family agreed with the press agent that if the phenomena could matter so much lo the townsfolk it was bigger than their humble plans; a far, far bigger thing than they had a right to keep hidden in a small provincial town.

"This," as the press agent said when the first contract for night club appearances had been signed, "uncovers a new wealth of British superiority." The four years since that unveiling have more than justified his prophecy Sabrinia's night club debut was sensational. The publicity photographs were gratefully received by the magazines and newspapers. A Sabrinia cult rapidly and spontaneously developed. Artists called to engage her as a model. Fashionable designers created gowns that displayed her best features while providing unbeatable advertising for the fortunate firms.

The movie possibilities are now being explored Traditionally the movie career starts with bit parts. But there is the problem of how you confine all that there lusciousness in a bit part. Strictly a contradiction in terms, my friends, a violation of the meaning of words. The thought is to find a good part for Sabrinia from the first, something historical, something Roman and decadent, something that provides ample scope for her ampleness.

Television is the other obvious field. There was some attempt to discourage the plan for TV appearances. These timid souls offered the fallacious argument that the home screens of England (generally smaller than the American standard) wouldn't be able to hold all that width, depth and cleavage.

Nonsense — the surplus can be managed, if the engineers and camera men are but given a free hand. An interviewer discovered one slight flaw in the philosophic calm of the gracious Sabrinia. For some reason he felt it necessary to refer to a French rival who had just modelled a very French type bra. "Bra for her." Sabrinia practically snorted. "It's like putting a saddle on a Pekinese."

Sabrinia is an avid reader of the classics and Zen poetry.

THE END