Sabrina for posterity.This portrait was destined for the Grundy Art Gallery at Blackpool, England.
(A better quality, but cropped version. Taken 4 September 1956 - so this article appeared 4 years later!)
BRITAIN'S most talked about show girl tells the intimate story of her rise to stardom, of how she made every move, calculating the effect on her future fame.
I am a star. It took me six years to learn my part in show business, but they were six of the hardest years of my life.
I have posed for revealing photos because I was hungry. I have intentionally fainted on the stage of the Prince of Wales theatre because I had a hangover.
I have used men as playthings to achieve my ends and have, in turn, been ruthlessly exploited by them.
I have mixed with the good and the bad, the famous and the infamous, I have been promoted as the sex symbol of the nation. Now, for the first time I am writing my story in its entirety. I have not glamorised it or touched it up. It may shock, astound, excite or depress you. It is the truth.
Now I am the star of my own show on the swank Miami Beach, the only English entertainer in one of the greatest entertainment centres in the world. I am telling my story now that I am at the top for I feel that it is an important one for every stagestruck girl or worried parent.
The world of entertainment is glamorous, star spangled, and exciting to the general public. To a teen-ager from a middle class North country home as I was, it turned out to be a ruthless jungle. It did not take me long to get tough. It took me even less time to be exploited. I learned early that I had to fight my own way. No holds are barred. The normal human decencies are in many cases ignored.
One of my most regular escorts at one time was the tall, good-looking Prince Christian of Hanover; a prince of one of the oldest royal houses in Europe, a brother of Queen Frederika of Greece and popular in London society.
Poor Christian; when I look back on what I did to him, I feel ashamed. At the time, however, he was simply another rung on the ladder to the top. He hated publicity. He had been trained to avoid it.
We would never meet in public. Always he would either pick me up at my flat, or I would join him in his flat.
In spite of his precautions, stories about our friendship and pictures of us together soon started to appear in the newspapers. The poor dear never suspected for a moment that it was I who was tipping them off.
It was through Prince Christian I got exactly the sort of publicity I thought I needed.
Soon, however, ordinary pictures of us together were not enough. The Sunday papers wanted something different, something more intimate. I saw to it they got what they wanted.
One evening I asked Christian to take me to the River Club, one of the smartest of London's night clubs. Here we were joined as part of the plan, although Christian did not know this, by my manager Joe Matthews, one-time press photographer.
After coffee and several brandies I thought the time was ripe. I told Christian I wanted some romantic pictures of the two of us for my private album.
"How lucky it is," I said, "Joe has brought his camera with him, we can take the pictures now." He was very reluctant, but finally agreed to do so, provided I promised him that I would not use the photos for any publicity purposes.
I glibly promised, and it was only a matter of seconds before Joe set up his camera and started flashing pictures of me with my arm entwined round Christian's neck and even some of me actually kissing him.
The Sunday paper was delighted. I got the publicity I wanted and Prince Christian stopped a right royal rocket from his sister Queen Frederika, who warned him that there would be very serious consequences if anything like it happened again.
In spite of that, Christian and I continued to see each other, and it only ended when he began to take me too seriously.
All this of course was far removed from my early days in London where I took a tiny attic room with no window, just a ceiling grating, over a cafe in the King's Cross. Here I eked out a living by making costume jewellery and selling it through some of the local shops, but it was tiring and precarious work.
I soon realised the effect my 42-18-35 figure had on people. They would frequently stop and stare at me in the street especially if I was wearing a sweater, but it was some months before the idea of photographic modelling ever occurred to me.
It happened in an extraordinary way. Alex Sterling, the well-known fashion and news photographer, saw a snapshot of me in the wallet of one of my. friends. The next thing I knew was that I got a telegram from him asking me to see him.
I didn't know what to do. I was frightened and finally went in to a well-known Bond Street photographic dealer to ask them if they had ever heard of a photographer called Alex Sterling. They assured me that he was very well known.
I went round to see him and then and there we started a series of sittings that was to bring my face and figure before the public for the first time. Almost every day I went to his enormous studio. He must have taken nearly 1000 shots in every kind of pose.
After that I moved from King's Cross into a tiny one-roomed flat in Kensington, which was to be my home and that of my dog for the next year. I found, however, that photographic modelling was no easy way to a fortune. My figure meant that fashion modelling was impossible for me and there was not enough pin-up work available to earn a good living. For months I lived on little except bread, potatoes and tins of baked beans. Almost all the meat I could afford went to my dog.
One day I received a booking from a studio in Paddington. I was not asked to bring any accessories, but was simply told to be there at 10 a.m.
When I got there it was a tiny studio with barely enough room to turn round. Almost the only furniture was a rather dilapidated couch. The photographer looked at me rather non-committally and said, "Get undressed. We are a bit late and I want to get on with it as quickly as possible."
I was completely flabbergasted. "You mean you expect me to pose in the nude? I have never done such a thing in my life/'
"Of course, didn't I tell you?" came the answer. "Please hurry up." For a moment I just stood motionless. I did not know what to do. I knew one thing. I had not had any breakfast that morning because there was no food in the house, and I had walked the last mile to the studio because I did not have enough money for the bus fare. There was only one answer. I needed the money too badly to refuse to do the job.
At last, about an hour later, it was over. I do not think I have ever got dressed quite so quickly in my life, and I literally rushed from the studio. Clasped tightly in my hand in my pocket was the princely sum of 15/-.
I have never since posed in the nude for anyone, but those pictures were to dog my whole career. As soon as I had started to appear on the Arthur Askey television show and my face and figure became known to millions all over Britain, the photographer rushed to cash in on his one hour's work.
A break on TV
Thousands of post-card size enlargements were produced and distributed to sleezy book-stalls, and junk shops all over Britain. A vast under-the-counter trade in pictures of me was carried on and I was virtually powerless to prevent i t.
Soon, however, something was to happen that was to change the whole course of my career. I had joined Bill Watts' agency which represented many of London's top glamor girls. One day I was asked to come along for an audition and was given no idea at all what it was for. I went along to find myself one of about 20 girls with an awe-inspiring selection committee of four, including Arthur Askey.
I walked onto the stage, paraded up and down in front of them and then walked off. I was pulled back again immediately and asked to do it again.
The following day I was tele phoned by Bill Watts and informed "the job is yours." I did not even know what the job was and told him so. It was only then that I learne d that I had been audit ioning for the glamor spot in the new television series starring Arthur Askey that was about to be launched.
Right from the very beginning, the idea seemed to tickle the interest of the Press. It was almost the first time that the BBC had indulged in such blatant sex appeal.
Those first few weeks of television were amongst the happiest, the most exciting of my life. It was a new world and an enthralling one. I loved working with Arthur Askey who was kind, tolerant and exactly like a father to me.
Soon, however, I was to learn for the first time the power and the unpleasantness of the wicked rumors that were to follow me round through so much of my career.
I was made so miserable by this that I searched out Anthea, Arthur Askey's daughter, and poured out the whole story to her. "Take no notice" she told me, "that is one of the vices of sho w business. When they don't talk about you at all, though, it is even worse."
Although I had no stage experience, my face and figure became familiar to millions through the medium of television, and as a result, unscrupulous theatrical managers and agents tumbled over themselves to get in on the act.
