Sabrina - The first photoshoot

Hi Mark,
A number of years ago my step-dad was talking to a friend & mentioned that I had a keen interest in photography....It turned out the guy was at some point a London photographer & passed to me a box of negatives & prints - a total of 13 different poses from a shoot he'd done during this time The box is marked " Sabrina" Norma Sykes.

After looking through your site, I believe they could be some of the earliest shots taken of Sabrina as she is wearing the striped bikini of '55 (complete with beach ball) & the floral one-piece, but these were taken in a different studios.

I'll try to get a copy of each shot (I might be able to scan the large size negatives ) over to you sometime over the Easter holidays. It is definitely Sabrina in the shots as she has the scars on her right ankle visible in some of them, something that I hadn't noticed until I read your site!

And so he did! The photos of an incredibly young Norma Sykes, still with some of the puppy fat she later shed before becoming Sabrina. He added this note with the first set of scans... I've made Colin a lifetime member of the Sabrina B.O.O.B.S. society for his services to Sabrina.

Hi Mark, I found a few minutes to scan a few of the pics I mentioned. I also have the photographer's details too (although no exact date ). His name was S.Redman of 113 Gloucester Rd, London SW7.

I imagine that the shots were taken for a newspaper competition as there is a cutting with the pics: it's for "The Weekend Mail £1000 Cover Girl Contest."

As I mentioned, I'm pretty sure these are some of the first photos of Sabrina & seems to to me that they were taken not long after she moved to London at the age of 18/19. The costumes Sabrina wore are the same as in your pics from 1955, so the dates would match up !

I did search for info when I first received the pics, but as you mentioned on the site "There didn't seem too much to find" at the time. Finding your site has answered the many questions I had about Sabrina & a lot more as well.

Please pass on my regards to Sabrina if possible & thanks again for the great site. Hope these & the other pics (to follow) are of interest to you/Sabrina & please feel free to post the pics on the site (you can use my real name if you want to).... Take care.

Thanks, Colin. Now I'm off to find out exactly when the Weekend Mail ran their covergirl contest. (So far it's hard enough even finding any reference to the paper. It seems to be not only defunct, but wiped from history.)

In the meantime, please enjoy these rare early glimpses of a slightly awkward Norma Sykes as she starts her career...

In 2023 found a nice colourised version

Compare these bikini shots with the ones on the Sabrina in Bathers picture page .
Very similar shots were used in Blighty (30 July 1955) and Span (February 1955).