Sabrina: made to measure

Crowd , 19 March 1958 (Australia)

MEET the Sabrina you never see — unless you surreptitiously possess some of the old prints she now tries so hard to suppress. The old prints? They were taken when she was a struggling model … and only the photographer's arc light kept her warm. But the Sabrina you never see?

She's a lifeless, headless 41-19-36, which doesn't yell when the pins stick in. The papier mache model, covered in cloth, faithfully follows Sabrina's contours so that dressmaker Maude Wright can sew and snip while her client faces the footlights… or rests in a sound-proof room at the London Clinic. It was hand-made: there's only one figure like THAT in the United Kingdom.

Tempestuous Sabrina, who may visit Australia this year [1958], has been hand-made to measure - for her dressmaker. A little bird told her the dressmaker's pins might hurt.

When dressmaker Maude isn't fussing around the dummy Sabrina, she snips and sews in the star's dressing room.

It was Maude, grey-haired and 62, who saved the day when Sabrina stamped her foot at a London TV studio recently.

She'd just been told her dress was... er... not right for a Sunday night showing.

"I won't go on... I won't go on... I won't go on....' she wailed while the TV men hammered at the door. Maude came to the rescue.

She fed Sabrina a sedative and stuffed a whisp of chiffon in the appropriate places.

Next day, Sabrina entered the London Clinic, a fashionable retreat where (among other things) debutantes disappear to cure their teen-age ulcers.

Sabrina hasn't been a happy girl lately.

Don't know why: she's earning nearly 1000 pounds each week.

Perhaps it's because of Prince Christian of Hanover, her shy boy-friend.

"I think he's ashamed of me... he never takes me to a movie premiere or anything like that," she confided.

"And he hasn't asked me to marry him," she added to reveal the full story of her misery.

Isn't it sufficient to make ANY girl take a spell in the clinic?

Particularly when she's allowed out at night to earn her fabulous salary at a London theatre.